Denise Brush
I believe that I am well-qualified to contribute to the ALA Sustainability Round Table as Secretary due to my experiences with serving as a secretary for various organizations, with academic and public librarianship, and with sustainability and environmental issues. My undergraduate degree is in civil and environmental engineering, and I have been science and engineering librarian at Rowan University in New Jersey for 12 years. Prior to that I worked in a public library for 3 years. Over the past several years I have been active in local environmental groups such as Food & Water Watch and Transition Towns US. I serve on the environmental commission in my town, which holds a Bronze Certification from Sustainable Jersey. I was the secretary of my neighborhood civic association as well as secretary of the Green Party of Delaware for 2 years, and have been secretary of the Green Party of New Jersey since 2016. I believe passionately that both sustainability and libraries have important roles to play in our immediate future. I am excited about the initiatives that SUSTAIN-RT has been working on and believe that my organizational skills can help bring them to fruition successfully.
Lisa Kropp
As past secretary for the Youth Services Section of my state association (NYLA), I have experience in taking and posting accurate minutes in a timely, organized fashion. I joined NYLA’s Sustainability Initiative because I wanted to help my local community move forward using the triple bottom line of environmental, economic, and social equity. Part of my work with NYLA-SI was having my library serve as a pilot site for its sustainable libraries benchmark program. Today, we are one of thirty libraries fully participating in the just launched sustainable libraries benchmark certification. My work for the Sustainability Initiative also focuses on creating curriculum and serving as a mentor and trainer for the Community Change Agents program, also in its pilot year. We work with five library/community partner teams on projects that promote resiliency and sustainability. If elected to the SustainRT board as Secretary, I hope to assist the group with share knowledge gained from my state’s commitment to sustainable library practices so that SustainRT can begin to cross pollinate across the different ALA divisions and increase both its membership and ability to work with libraries across the country on developing sustainable communities and workplaces.