Yasmeen Anis-Shah was born and raised in Florida where she grew up loving to read and learn. She found sanctuary in a good book and around the teachers and librarians who cared for her growth and well-being. She wanted to pass this feeling along to her students after earning her Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Flagler College. Since graduating in 2018 she has served as an elementary school teacher. Having taught in rural public schools, she was aware of the struggle many children – and parents – faced with reading and reading motivation. This inspired her to switch gears and pursue a Master’s in Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida. She recently moved to Kalamazoo after marriage and has continued teaching with Kalamazoo Public Schools while pursuing her MLIS online. It is her goal to combine her passions of teaching, reading, and working with children as a school media specialist.

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Born and raised on Kalamazoo’s Northside, Tyler Dancer is a 2005 Kalamazoo Central graduate who got his start in libraries as a volunteer, and later as an employee at the Alma Powell Branch of the Kalamazoo Public Library in the 1990s. Throughout his teens, becoming a librarian grew to be an academic goal as the library aided him in his intellectual and scholastic pursuits. With additional interest in music and psychology, the librarian career path offered him the flexibility to explore those professions as an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan. There he became the training director at WCBN FM, worked in its music archive, helped pilot the Global Scholars Program, and graduated with a degree in Psychology with concentrations in gender, culture, and immigration in 2009. With the recession in full swing his academic desires paused as his hard work as a music producer, sound engineer, independent artist, and radio personality matured, taking him to places such as Detroit, MI where he worked closely with the world’s first Techno museum (Exhibit 3000) as an artist in residence, the United Kingdom as a DJ for 106.8 Rinse FM in London, and Belgium as a recording artist. These experiences solidified his resolve to one day become a librarian having experienced firsthand the need for documenting, preserving, and creating access to information on living histories, especially those of local music phenomena. Returning home to Kalamazoo at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and discovering a potential means to fund the needed education to fulfill his dream through the Kalamazoo Community Foundation’s Amanda Green Scholarship, Dancer continued his work with the Kalamazoo Public Library as an aide in the circulation and patron services departments, receiving the award in 2023.

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KPL also wishes to congratulate Theodore Gill who recently graduated with his Master’s in Library and Information Science and is currently working as a library assistant in KPL’s Youth Services department.

Congratulations to all!