CURRENT POSITION Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies Librarian, University of Nevada–Las Vegas DEGREE MLIS, North Carolina Central University, 2016 FOLLOW linkedin.com/in/brittani-sterling-ms-mls-22326830; bit.ly/LVweekly-UNLV; bit.ly/UNLV-fight-for-DEI Photo by Natalie Kristeen Photography

Lead With Light

Brittani Sterling had planned on going into social work, but when she realized she could help people through librarianship, she chose that path and never looked back. 

She used the pandemic-era switch to online courses to broaden the University of Nevada–Las Vegas (UNLV) Rebel+ Workshop series with topics like “LinkedIn for Academics” and “Research Writing: How to Conduct an Original Research Project without Losing Your Marbles.” She says, “It transformed from a small program serving a niche population of the Graduate College to one of the Libraries’ largest, most recognizable public-facing programs.” From 2020 to 2022, Sterling grew the program from about 200 to between 600 and 1,000 participants per year. For her work, she was selected for the 2022–23 cohort of the Association of Research Libraries’ Leadership Career Development Program. 

Sterling also co-created the UNLV Libraries program “We Need to Talk: Conversations on Racism for a More Resilient Las Vegas.” Episodes have been streamed more than 4,000 times; she wrote about the series in the anthology Creating an Inclusive Library: Approaches for Increasing Engagement and Use with Students of Color. Her academically-centered advocacy work includes coauthorship of an article in the Journal of Academic Librarianship about mid-career academic librarians of color, which highlighted the need for inclusive, institutional support beyond early career recruitment. “Much of my teaching and professional ethos comes from my life philosophy, which my alma mater—Wittenberg University—sums up nicely in the motto, ‘Having light, we pass it on to others,’” says Sterling. “I have always lived my life with this subconsciously in mind.”