Veronda J. Pitchford
Biography
Veronda J. Pitchford is the assistant director of the Califa Group, a nonprofit library membership consortium representing over 200 public libraries across California. Califa is committed to unleashing the impact of libraries. As part of her role, she manages Infopeople, Califa’s national online training arm for library people, and is responsible for strategic partnerships and grants administration for the organization.
Veronda is an active American Library Association (ALA) member who proudly serves on the Presidential Advisory Board for ALA president Lessa Kananiʻopua Pelayo-Lozada, the Center for the Future of Libraries Advisory Board, and the ALA Business Advisory Group.
She served on the United for Libraries Board for several years as well as many other ALA committees throughout her career. She founded the former ASCLA, now CORE eBook Interest Group; and co-led the 2018 ASGCLA National eBook Summit that convened leaders from the publishing, library, and vendor worlds.
She was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2005 for her local, state, and national library advocacy and was awarded the 2018 American Library Association Cathleen Bourdon Service Award for her outstanding service and sustained library leadership.
She also serves on the PBS Point of View (POV) documentary series library advisory board and recently joined the Reading Between the Lines board, a non-profit organization that serves people who are justice impacted that are either transitioning to life after incarceration or currently incarcerated.
She lives for Dorothy Parker quips, reading about badly behaved women from history, creating playlists, and discovering words for which there are no English translations.
Personal Statement
“I have committed my career to elevating and expanding the role libraries play in supporting thriving communities. Libraries have become the catchall for the cracks in the social safety net; we soldier on through long shifts, trauma, and uncertainty. Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers as to how we can change this reality. However, I believe we have the power to collaboratively co-create our future for a better way forward to save ourselves and our communities. Equity and access are at the core of everything I do. To counter the narrative of being unaware of BIPOC talent for open positions, I established membership in the ethnic caucuses for my organization so that we could encourage other library organizations to participate in the discussions my colleagues of color are having online and interact with talented BIPOC library leaders in action. We are here. I use my superpowers of connecting, convening, and collaborating to support the needs of library people and am committed to a future where rest is resistance, wellness is commonplace, and libraries are always at the decision-making table in the communities we serve. Libraries always hustle hard. I am and will always be a die-hard library chick ready to serve them.”