Oak Park Public Library’s Board of Trustees has decided to interview two of eight proposed vendors to help with an executive director search, following the firing of Joslyn Bowling Dixon on March 16.
Dixon was fired after controversy arose regarding her handling of a Palestinian cultural event and the elimination of two community engagement team positions. Deputy Director Suzy Wulf and Director of Collections Leigh Tarullo are temporarily filling the executive director role together.
The library board created an evaluation committee made up of three of its members to narrow down the proposed vendors. The vendors are consultants or search firms that will help find and present the board with executive director candidates. Trustee Maya Ganguly was the chair of this committee, and Trustee Theodore Foss and Secretary Susanne Fairfax were the other members.
The committee discussed eight proposals that came in during their request for proposals process. Two stood out to them: Alma Advisory Group and Koya Partners. The committee meeting recording is not available on the library’s website, but minutes summarizing the meeting are available.
“The two firms that we chose were above all the others,” Foss said during the May 29 meeting. “I was shocked at what the fees were being for them. It really was so much more than it was two years ago … But that was true pretty much across all proposals.”
Two years ago is when the last library executive director search occurred, leading to Dixon’s hire.
Ganguly, Foss and Fairfax used a one-to-five scale rubric to evaluate categories for each vendor. Those categories were completeness and quality, experience with diversity, equity, and inclusion, experience conducting similar searches relating to libraries, diversity within the search team, familiarity with Oak Park and the community, and recognition of anti-racism, according to the committee meeting minutes.
Koya Partners, according to the committee, has a history of diverse placements of directors and library staff in 2023. About 75% of placements from this vendor were people of color and 62% were women. This vendor also implements implicit bias training, according to the minutes.
Alma Advisory Group presented knowledge of Oak Park and library, experience with DEI and anti-racism work and book sanctuaries, according to the minutes.
Other vendors lacked experience with DEI work and familiarity with Oak Park, according to the minutes.
Library Board President Matthew Fruth said the board plans to have a closed session with both potential vendors for interviews. The closed session will ensure the vendor interviewed second will not have insight into the questions to prepare answers, he said. These interviews will take place in June, Fruth said.
“They both excelled in the work that they put into the proposal and their understanding of Oak Park and surrounding areas,” Fairfax said.
The board unanimously voted to move forward with the two proposed vendors at their May 29 meeting.