2024 AAHSL New and Interim Director Symposium

The AAHSL Board and the New and Interim Directors Committee is excited to launch a new and unique year-long learning opportunity for new and interim library directors. This program will begin with a face-to-face session at the 2024 Annual Meeting in Atlanta. Three additional online sessions will be held in 2024-2025 with program completion by the 2025 AAHSL annual meeting. Facilitated by M.J. Tooey, MLS, AHIP, FMLA, retired Associate Vice Provost and Dean of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, this program will be tailored to explore the specific needs of the 20-person cohort.

Applications for the 2024 New and Interim Director Symposium have closed. Thank you to all who applied!

Program Goals:

Due to the pandemic, many new and interim directors were unable to develop support networks among other directors, and actively engage with the AAHSL community. The goals of the program are to:

  1. Introduce new and interim directors to concepts, issues, challenges, and solutions faced when entering new or interim academic health sciences library leadership roles.
  2. Provide a supportive and safe space for challenging conversations and questions.
  3. Develop a cohort of trusted colleagues experiencing similar situations.
  4. Build a solid and trusting relationship with AAHSL as a professional home for academic health sciences library leaders.

Program Details:

  1. The program is open to new or interim directors who have undertaken these roles since 2020.
  2. The program is not open to anyone who has moved from one directorship to another, unless their first directorship began in 2020 or later.
  3. Enrollment will be first come, first served. If more than 20 people are interested, a waiting list will be created.
  4. The cost of the program is $75.00, payable within 10 days upon notification of selection into the program, indicating commitment to the program.
  5. Upon acceptance and payment, a survey will be sent to participants gauging topics of interest for the program.
  6. Consisting of four sessions, the first session of the program will be held in person, at the AAHSL annual meeting in Atlanta in November 2024 from 8:00am – Noon on Thursday, November 7 in Atlanta. The remaining three sessions will be held via video conferencing.
  7. Attendees must attend the November 2024 session in person. The remaining sessions will be held via videoconferencing.
  8. A separate AAHSL list will be created for the program and a Basecamp project area will also be created.

2024 New and Interim Director Keynote

Building Your Leadership Brand

You already have a personal brand whether you are aware of it or not. A strong brand will help you network more effectively, receive recognition for your work, gain mentors and sponsors, and lead to new opportunities. This presentation will explain what a personal leadership brand is and why it’s important, and share the actions you can take to gain confidence in yourself and enhance your personal brand in your life and career.

Jennifer B. Litchman, MA
Senior Vice President for External Relations
University of Maryland, Baltimore

Jennifer Litchman is senior vice president for external relations at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). She received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of South Carolina and a master’s degree in public communication from American University, and certificates from Penn’s Wharton School and Harvard’s Kennedy School. 

After six years on Capitol Hill working for the National Republican Congressional Committee and then in the U.S. House of Representatives, Litchman left government service for The Business Roundtable, a nonprofit public policy organization of CEOs of the Fortune 200, where she was public information manager.  A highlight of her time at the Roundtable was planning and implementing a national media launch for a public service advertising campaign featuring Major League Baseball stars at Camden Yards with former Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken and then-President Bill Clinton. 

Litchman came to UMB in 1999 as director of public affairs at the School of Medicine, and established the Office of Public Affairs. In 2002, she was promoted to assistant dean with responsibility for public relations and marketing, crisis communications, media relations, advertising, publications, photographic arts, special projects and events, community relations, and web content and social media. 

Litchman was named special assistant to the president of UMB in January 2011. In that role, she functioned as chief of staff and principal executive on president’s initiatives, such as core values and anchor institution initiatives, and advised the president on reputation enhancement, outreach, and communications strategies. She was promoted to interim chief communications officer (CCO) and vice president (VP) in August of the same year. She assumed the role of CCO and VP in August 2012.  In that role, Litchman was responsible for internal and external communications, strategic planning and crisis communications, branding and marketing, media relations, social media, web development, publications and editorial, alumni communications, and protocol and special events for the University. The Office of Government Affairs began reporting to her in June 2015, followed by the Office of Community Engagement in November 2015, and in 2018 she was named senior vice president for external relations. 

In 2014, Litchman founded the Council for the Arts & Culture to enhance the quality of life on campus and in the West Baltimore community by promoting the use of UMB’s public spaces for the visual and performing arts, as well as to raise awareness of the links between the arts and sciences. Litchman chairs the council with honorary chair Yumi Hogan, former first lady of Maryland. That same year she founded and still chairs UMBrella, UMB Roundtable on Empowerment in Leadership and Leveraging Aspirations, an organization that works to engage a community that supports the success of women, advance women into leadership roles at UMB, and champion women at all levels of the organization through coaching, mentoring, networking, programming and scholarships. 

She is a two-time Emmy-nominated executive producer for the documentary series “From West Baltimore,” each episode of which premiered each fall on Maryland Public Television.  The “From West Baltimore” series chronicles the lives of five children from West Baltimore who took advantage of opportunities presented to them to rise above their circumstances and graduate from high school and go on to post-secondary education through the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s NIH-funded CURE Scholars Program which provides STEM experiences from 6th grade through 12th grade.

Litchman lives in Annapolis with her husband, Jonathan, and their two children, Jack and Jiselle “MeMe,” a pug named Theo, and a pandemic cat named Kitten. Originally from Ames, Iowa, she and her 10 best childhood friends are the subjects of the nonfiction book “The Girls from Ames,” which spent over six months on the New York Times bestseller list, reaching a high of No. 3.  

She is a member of the Board of Directors of Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre and the YumiCARES Foundation, and a member of the Women’s Leadership Advisory Board of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Baltimore. Litchman is a member of the Leadership Maryland Class of 2017, was named one of Baltimore Magazine’s Women Who Moves Maryland (2018), one of Maryland’s “Top 100 Women” by The Daily Record (2016 and 2022).