From Patrick Weil, Chairman and President of the Board of Directors

It is my pleasure to announce that the Board of Directors of Libraries Without Borders has unanimously voted to select Adam Echelman as the organization’s Executive Director, effective January 1, 2019. Adam Echelman started with Libraries Without Borders in June 2017 as a Project Officer for the Legal Literacy Initiative . He quickly demonstrated leadership by growing the Initiative to 4 new states, transforming bus stations, churches, and flea markets into access points for legal education. Adam instinctively understood a key tenet of our work: to promote access to information by meeting families where they are. From Providence RI to Washington DC, he blended the efforts from the Legal Literacy Initiative into the existing digital, medical, and educational programs of local organizations. He designed new strategies to share information, like forging partnerships between libraries and mobile homes in Moorhead, MN and between the local PBS station and a laundromat in Allegheny County, PA. In Salisbury, MD, Adam coordinating legal education workshops in local churches so that recent immigrants could access crucial information in their native language. When he realized that participants lacked the digital skills to locate the legal information they seeked, like the difference between a right and left click, Adam adapted the program to incorporate digital literacy into every stage.

The Board quickly promoted Adam to become our Director of Programs in January 2018. In this role, Adam has developed new partnerships and created a unified strategy that builds on local organizations to ensure community members can sustainably pursue reliable information.

“So much of Libraries Without Borders’ work revolves around informal education,” Adam said to me recently. “Whereas formal education encompasses our schools and universities, informal education makes up everything else–from after-school programs and conversations at the dinner table to visiting the public library, waiting at the laundromat, or learning about your health online.” Through the Ideas Box and programs like the Wash & Learn and Legal Literacy Initiatives, Adam has innovated and expanded the ways Libraries Without Borders support informal education across the United States.

Please join me and our community partners in welcoming Adam Echelman into his new role as Executive Director.

Sincerely,

Patrick Weil
Chairman and President, Board of Directors
Libraries Without Borders