CURRENT POSITION Director, Inclusion and Talent Management, North Carolina State University Libraries DEGREE MSLIS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011 FAST FACT Anantachai jokes that she’s secretly trying to find a way to represent her talent of using GIFs on her CV. Photo by Charles Samuels

Foundationally Diverse Support

While she wears numerous hats at North Carolina State University Libraries (NCSU), Tarida Anantachai says that “my work is centered on people and supporting not just who they are as fellow colleagues, but especially who they are more personally, and their individual lived experiences.”

According to nominator and NCSU Communication Strategist Chris Vitiello, Anantachai “has transformed the libraries’ recruitment, interviewing, and hiring processes through the lens of equity and inclusion and extend[s] that work into how our organization mentors and retains our talent.”

Anantachai shares that it’s crucial to “not just measure, but examine how we measure and approach things like retention, advancement, engagement, and instilling a culture of belonging, particularly for our BIPOC and other marginalized colleagues.” For example, she is interested in building leadership opportunities for library workers who may not want to move into formal management.

As the coordinator of the NCSU Fellows Program, Anantachai recruits recent library school graduates for three-year fellowships. Since taking on this role, she has observed that candidate pools for the program have become increasingly diverse. She’s also fielding more requests from other campus units and external organizations that are interested in making their own strategic recruitment changes. Says Anantachai: “The outcomes that mean the most for me are the numerous individual responses received from candidates, new hires, and colleagues alike on how supported and cared for they feel throughout our processes.”