CURRENT POSITION Director of Equity and Fair Practice, Enoch Pratt Free Library and Maryland State Library Resource Center, Baltimore DEGREE MS in Criminal Justice, New Jersey City University, 2016 FOLLOW linkedin.com/in/lubangura; bit.ly/BanguraBio Photo by John Cassini

Food for Thought

Libraries provide food for the spirit through books, information, and services. Lu Bangura wants to ensure they also nurture their community through the stomach and wallet.

After earning degrees in public administration and criminal justice, she intended to work in fraud investigation. A hiring manager in Tacoma, WA, steered her into risk analysis and civil rights, which led to immersion in employment issues. She met a Baltimore official at a conference and took the leap to a city where equity has moved to the forefront across services.

As Director of Equity and Fair Practice at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library (EPFL), Bangura works to instill equity throughout the system, facilitating staff equity training and communicating institutional progress through a soon-to-be-released equity dashboard. Outside the library walls, she has reached out to underserved Baltimoreans by spearheading nontraditional library programs, including a free community grocery store, scheduled to open in a library branch in September 2023; a discussion series that centers local voices; and an employment project for women fresh out of prison: Five women will be selected through interviews and given a stipend, apprentice in the library system for six months, and ideally be brought on as employees.

Bangura—who is described by EPFL President and CEO Heidi Daniel as bringing “a sense of joy to work that can be serious and daunting”—is optimistic that the library and its expansive role can be a positive force in its community. “Equity starts at home,” she says. “And whatever your end goal is, whatever your objectives are, DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] is one of the ways that you can achieve that.”