One of our favorite things about NISO Plus is our scholarship program. Supported by the Alfred B Sloan Foundation in 2020, and by Digital Science in 2021, it enables information professionals whose voices are underrepresented or unrepresented to attend the NISO Plus conference and to engage with our work.
Our first two cohorts of scholarship recipients are nothing if not diverse. They hail from every continent (except Antarctica!) and represent all our stakeholder groups—librarians, content providers, service and infrastructure providers, and more. Some scholarship winners are still students, others are well-established in their careers, but they all share a passion for their work and for the information community more broadly. And many of them will be involved in NISO Plus 2022, whether as members of the Planning Committee or participating in the conference itself.
Some of them will also be helping us review next year’s scholarship applications, and we’ll be announcing the application process for the 2022 scholarships later this year. In the meantime, we are delighted to share some updates from the current cohorts. Our congratulations to them all on their achievements!
Kimberly Arleth (Class of 2020)
Kimberly is now Digital Asset Manager for the Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit organization committed to clinical practice, education and research, providing expert, whole-person care to everyone who needs healing. She was formerly Product Analyst, Vendor Relations for the American Psychological Association.
Lieke Boerefijn (Class of 2021)
Lieke also has a new position, having just joined CABI as their Platform Manager from Brill Publishers, where she held a similar role. CABI is an international, inter-governmental, not-for-profit organization that improves people’s lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.
Kelly Denzer (Class of 2020)
As you may have seen in our June Information Organized newsletter, Kelly is one of this year’s Society for Scholarly Publishing Emerging Leader Award recipients. Established in 2012, this award recognizes an SSP member, working in the scholarly communication field for up to 12 years, who has demonstrated their potential through outstanding service and contribution on an SSP committee or task force and has made innovative contributions to their field.
Jessica Nombrano Larsen (Class of 2021)
Jessica has been busy! She was recently awarded a grant by her institution, Cal Poly, for a proposal entitled ‘Learn by Doing’ Meets ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’: A Research Mentoring Program for Autistic College Students to Develop Universal Design for Learning (UDL)-based Online Supports. Students in the program will receive peer, faculty, and staff mentoring and advising, training in research methods and relevant technical/design skills, and be paid as research assistants to work with the larger autistic student community at Cal Poly to create online workshops that are fully accessible by neurodiverse students. In addition, she has also been chosen as an American Library Association 2021-2022 Spectrum Scholar.
Michelle Courtney Lee (Class of 2021)
Michelle is about to start a new job as Reference and Instruction Librarian at Kennesaw State University, a public research university in Georgia, USA. She was formerly Interlibrary Loan Assistant at the Atlanta campus of Georgia State University Library.
Gabriela Mejias (Class of 2020)
Gabi has a new role at ORCID, where she is now Engagement Manager for Global Consortia, responsible for developing community adoption of ORCID, including supporting 24 national consortia and working with the community to develop new ones. Gabi is also now on the Board of Directors of NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations).
Raymond Pun (Class of 2020)
Last but definitely not least, earlier this year Ray moved to a new position as Education/ Outreach Manager at The Hoover Institution Library & Archives, a research center and archival repository documenting war, revolution, and peace in the 20th and 21st centuries, based at Stanford University.
