CURRENT POSITION Adult Services Assistant Manager, Palos Verdes Library District, CA DEGREE MLIS, University of California, Los Angeles, 2009 FOLLOW lessaforlibraries.com Photo by Alyse Pelayo

"Come Along"

Lessa Kanani‘opua Pelayo-Lozada learned about the value of solidarity early in her career. At the University of California, Los Angeles, an instructor would gather Asian students every few months for pizza and conversation, just to check in. “She showed me what it meant to build that community,” says Pelayo-Lozada.

Those meetings, and the volunteer opportunities that followed, were “a series of invitations that showed me how to have impact, but also instilled in me: I have to give back,” she notes. “These folks have invested in me—I have to invest in the community and help bring others up.”

Pelayo-Lozada has done just that, becoming an effective champion of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) library workers and a strong voice in the American Library Association (ALA) and the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA), where she was the first Pacific Islander to serve as executive director. She is now ALA president-elect.

According to ALA’s current demographics, AAPI library workers represent fewer than four percent of the profession, and Pelayo-Lozada wants to see that change. And while AAPI issues weren’t a primary focus of her ALA presidential campaign, she feels that her presence can only help boost awareness—particularly as she will be stepping into the role immediately after Patty Wong, ALA’s first AAPI president.

In 2021 Pelayo-Lozada and APALA president Raymond Pun, in collaboration with the Chinese American Librarians Association, received a $100,000 Institute of Museum and Library Services  grant to create the “Path to Leadership: National Forum on Advancing Asian/Pacific Islander American Librarianship.” The virtual gathering took place in January, in conjunction with ALA’s LibLearnX conference, and convened nearly 120 AAPI library students and workers to discuss leadership challenges, barriers, opportunities, and strategies. Wong gave the keynote, and a panel of AAPI library leaders spoke on their work; participants discussed their experiences in breakout groups. Forum co-leads are currently hosting monthly webinars, and participants will reconvene at the ALA Annual conference in June. A white paper with findings from the forum is in the works, and will be previewed at the upcoming Joint Conference of Librarians of Color in October.

Pelayo-Lozada hopes that her leadership in ALA and APALA will provide more opportunities to mentor and bring people together, both formally and informally. “Just asking folks to come along is really important,” she says. “If people didn’t ask me to come along, I would not be where I am today.”