The Oak Park Public Library board, working with Koya Partners, is interviewing candidates for executive director in January.
Interim Co-Executive Directors Leigh Tarullo and Suzy Wulf have been working in the role since Joslyn Bowling Dixon, the former executive director, was fired in March 2024.
The library board hired Koya Partners, a nonprofit executive search firm based in Chicago, last June. The firm has a history of diverse placements of directors and library staff, according to the board.
On Dec. 23, OPPL sent an email to active library cardholders asking for input on the search. Koya Partners created an anonymous survey asking what qualities and skills library patrons would like to have in a new executive director. The survey was open until Jan. 8.
Feedback was shared with the library executive director search committee, made up of Tarullo and library Trustees Madhurima Chakraborty, Susanne Fairfax and Theodore Foss.
During a committee meeting Friday, Trisha Sutrisno from Koya Partners said they received more than 200 responses from community members in that survey, which included five open-ended questions.
“This is a good gut check to make sure that as we’re moving into interviews, we are incorporating questions that address the things community members are most interested in,” said Amber Gomes from Koya Partners. “A lot of the things that community members said they were interested in … are things that we’ve been using to screen candidates.”
When community members were asked what they envision the top three key responsibilities of the executive director to be, the most common answers related to organizational management, community relations and staff leadership.
The top response to a question about what personal qualities an executive director should possess was competent, experienced, proven or skilled. Others included being a critical thinker, setting professional boundaries and self-awareness.
Safety for library patrons was another top concern for the community in this survey, Gomes said. That’s likely related to the shooting outside the OPPL on Lake Street Nov. 29, where Oak Park Det. Allan Reddins was killed, Fairfax pointed out.
Community members also included questions they’d like to ask candidates in the survey, many of which were similar to planned questions or good ideas for further interviews, Gomes said. Those questions included how a candidate might respond to book bans, how they demonstrate values of diversity and inclusion and how they’ll support library employees.
Koya Partners also held a virtual office hour on Jan. 8 where residents could share thoughts with the recruiting team. Sutrisno said four individuals attended, only one of whom asked questions.
The library board wrote that the candidates up for interviews are “stellar.” The search committee decided Friday that nine questions for the 60-minute first-round interviews will be shared with candidates in advance. That will help prevent bias and create a “level playing field,” Fairfax said during the meeting.
Those nine questions relate to mission alignment with the library, staff leadership, development and empowerment, external community relations, library trustee collaboration and strategic leadership and organizational management.
Interviews will be conducted in closed sessions, meaning members of the public will not be able to attend. But audio recordings of the interviews are typically conducted and available for a few years after, according to Foss. Those recordings are not typically available to the public, however, unless a case is brought that is relevant to the Open Meetings Act, Chakraborty said.
Gomes and Sutrisno also asked the search committee to be prepared to answer candidate questions. Those could relate, they said, to why the position is open, what success for an executive director looks like, the biggest challenge of the role, staff morale or anticipated changes to the organization.
Second-round interviews are anticipated in early February.