CURRENT POSITION Customer Experience Manager, Howard County Library System, MD DEGREE BA, Journalism, Wayne State University, 1999 FAST FACT McCauley helped her mom care for close to 50 children in foster care in their home, and ran for state representative in her twenties. Photo by Geoffrey Baker

Experienced Outreach

Brooke McCauley’s career spans activism and politics, anti-hunger/anti-poverty advocacy, and lobbying. In 2019, she learned about a new role at the Howard County Library System (HCLS)—customer experience manager—and made it her own. She built relationships with Nava Be Diné, an organization that produces cultural events and sells authentic Native arts and crafts. She connected the organization to the Howard County Office of Human Rights and Equity to create an annual Native American Heritage Celebration at HCLS where Native performers, authors, speakers, and vendors have provided a rich cultural experience for hundreds of attendees since 2021.

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, McCauley developed a Vaccination Equity Corps to engage Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, addressing anxieties and offering information about local clinics. The team’s outreach efforts resulted in 6,000 people receiving information and more than 600 being vaccinated, with a significant portion from the local Latine and African American communities.

McCauley also worked with a local alternative school for low-income, mostly African American and Latine students, hosting lunch discussions with them to ensure that a library-school partnership would be guided by student perspectives. She helped secure funding for a washer/dryer and helped promote and collaborated to find funding for a back-to-school bash featuring free haircuts, school supplies, and activities.

McCauley started a Chromebook and hotspot collection for the library as part of a digital-inclusion initiative, identifying partners whose residents or clients might benefit from these devices. “The customer-experience position was an opportunity to use my skills in a new industry,” McCauley says, “helping the library connect with new customers and increase access to resources.”