Keynote Speaker

Reimagining Our Roles as Library Workers

Library workers are often called to meet the moment. Considering the current context, we must reimagine and consider the role we all must play in moving in a just and sustainable direction. Now, perhaps more than ever before, there is a need for radical imagination, reckoning, accountability, collaboration, and healing. This keynote will explore how we deconstruct systems of oppression while simultaneously reconstructing systems of support that cultivate individual and community well-being.

Ozy’s Background

Ozy (Ozioma) Aloziem is a TEDx speaker, Igbo social work professor, and scholar deeply committed to collective liberation, transformational education, racial healing, and radical imagination. She is an award-winning visionary, a well-regarded facilitator & speaker, and has served as a consultant for numerous organizations across the nation and globe. Ozy focuses on cultivating space for learning, healing, and joy through her teaching, scholarship, and activism. Presently, her research and teaching are centered around power, privilege & oppression; healing-centered practice; embodied leadership; social policy & social justice; trauma-informed care; radical healing; and radical imagination. She spends her time reading, laughing, learning, and loving. You can find her wearing yellow somewhere in the world with her cat Mushu.

Virtual Workshop

As organizations continue to build practical knowledge around addressing microaggressions, minimizing implicit bias, and developing allies, it won't be enough to just create as many allies and champions as possible.  Changing entrenched, biased systems and practices requires leadership at every level of an organization.  And leadership around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) will require more than management skills.  As DEI leaders (whatever our organizational role may be), we will be required to build agency for social change among our colleagues and model how to hold ourselves - and others - accountable.  This can feel challenging when we are among friends, but even more daunting in a work setting.  Using a frame of Emotional Intelligence (EQ), we identify how we’re already showing up as allies - and how we can develop as relational and brave DEI leaders.  With an interactive focus, participants will practice having the challenging - and necessary - conversations that mark DEI work.

Dr. Phibbs Background

Anne Phibbs, PhD, is Founder and President of Strategic Diversity Initiatives and has extensive experience in training, teaching, curriculum development, and training of trainers, delivering workshops and classes to participants in corporate, government, higher education, nonprofit, healthcare, and faith community settings. Anne served as Director of Education in the Office for Equity and Diversity at the University of Minnesota, where she built a successful diversity and inclusion leadership program with a focus on emotional intelligence (EQ). Anne is an EQ Practitioner certified in the EQ-i2.0 and EQ360 method. Anne earned her PhD in Philosophy and Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota and resides in Minneapolis.