Build Back Stronger- Build Back Smarter. BRASS ALA 2022 Program: Alexandra Howard

Alexandra Howard is the Business & Entrepreneurship Librarian at the University of Louisville. She was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee and proudly attended public schools for K-12. Alex received her B.A. in Africana Studies from Oberlin College and her MLIS in Cultural Heritage Informatics from Simmons University. Before becoming a librarian, Alex managed a leadership and advocacy program for young people experiencing homelessness at a San Francisco nonprofit and worked as a criminal defense investigator for the Nashville Public Defender. As a librarian, Alex strives to work at the intersection of anti-racism and community engagement.  Professor Howard was chosen for the American Library Association’s 2022 class of Emerging Leaders.

• Winfield, J.D., & Davis, J.E. (2020). The Role of Race in Urban Community-University Relationships: Moving from Interest Convergence to Critical Literacy. Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs, 5(3), 16 - 32. https://scholarshare.temple.edu/handle/20.500.12613/7069
• Baboolall, D., Cook, K., Noel, N., Stewart, S., & Yancy, N. (2020). Building supportive ecosystems for Black-owned US businesses. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-and-social-sector/our-insights/building-supportive-ecosystems-for-black-owned-us-businesses#
• McIntosh, K., Moss, E., Nunn, R., & Shambaugh, J. (2020). Examining the Black-white wealth gap. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/

2020 brought not only a global pandemic but a national reckoning with our country’s centuries-long racism pandemic. Louisville was at the center of this national conversation due to the murder of Breonna Taylor inside of her home by Louisville police officers on March 13, 2020. On July 28, 2020, University of Louisville’s president announced a goal for the University of Louisville to become a “premier anti-racist metropolitan research university.” I started as the Business Librarian at the University of Louisville on October 19, 2020. I knew I wanted to figure out how to align my work as the Business Librarian with the institutional vision to become a premier anti-racist research university. There is a significant racial wealth gap in our nation, and here in Louisville, that I sought to address. Entrepreneurship is a key driver of wealth creation and generational wealth, and I wanted to start developing partnerships on campus and in the local community to help increase equitable access to our library and university resources for local Black entrepreneurs.

Project Description

This project started by exploring campus partnerships to discover what the university may already be doing to support local Black-owned businesses and to better understand what university resources may be available to local entrepreneurs. I held meetings with the following campus organizations:

• Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship
• Family Business Center
• Office of Community Engagement
• Office of Research and Innovation
• Entrepreneurship Law Clinic
• Center for Engaged Learning

While I did not find any specific initiative geared towards local Black-owned businesses, I got a better idea of campus resources and started building important relationships on campus. This relationship building led to the Director of the Forcht Center for Entrepreneurship introducing me to one of my community partners - OneWest. I began my community outreach through three different avenues:

• OneWest
• Opportunity Corner
• MELANnaire Marketplace

OneWest is a local community development nonprofit working to responsibly revitalize Louisville’s West End, an area of predominantly Black neighborhoods with huge economic disparities compared to the rest of the city. I was invited to present about library resources at a OneWest staff meeting. This led to the Director of Business Development at OneWest referring entrepreneurs from the West End to me to conduct market research for their business plans. I also conducted outreach at two local marketplaces featuring local Black-owned businesses, Opportunity Corner and MELANnaire Marketplace, to meet local entrepreneurs and share about the business research services I can provide at the University of Louisville.

Once I had established partnerships, my first goal was to hold research appointments in the library with local entrepreneurs. I realized that a lot of the research support I was providing to entrepreneurs was similar to research support I was providing students. I have now expanded this project to developing community-engaged student research projects in the College of Business that are created in partnership with the library, business faculty, and local entrepreneurs. These projects are mutually beneficial opportunities for students to gain real world experience working with a local business owner and for entrepreneurs to have students utilize their resources at the university to do research based on the entrepreneur’s self-defined business goals. In the Spring 2022 semester, I piloted one of these projects with Dr. Abby Koenig, her undergraduate Business Communication class, and one of the entrepreneurs I was meeting with in the library - Aaron Jordan, CEO and Founder of Black Complex. This project is continuing to expand and evolve. I hope you will learn more through exploring the resources on this guide, and please reach out to me if you are interested in discussing further: alexandra.howard.1@louisville.edu.

Community-Engaged Research Project Guides

• Black Complex Libguide https://library.louisville.edu/ekstrom/blackcomplex
• Community Engagement Libguide https://library.louisville.edu/ekstrom/BizComm/communityengagement

Scholarship related to this project

• Howard, A. Combating “The Other” Pandemic: Building Campus and Community Alliances Towards an Anti-racist Information Literacy. Session Presentation, LOEX 2022. Ypsilanti, MI

• Howard, A. “Building Relationships to Connect Local Black-Owned Businesses with University Resources.” Academic BRASS 17.1 (Spring 2022).

Relevant National Organizations

• Anchor Learning Network
  • Anchor Learning Network video: https://youtu.be/wbMxMUTRc_M  
• Engagement Scholarship Consortium

Resources

• Service Learning Librarian Blog
• Community-Engaged Scholarship: A Faculty Handbook: