2023 Election: Candidate Statements

The Archivists and Archives of Color Section Steering Committee is excited to announce the excellent slate of candidates running in this year’s election. Please review their bios and statements before casting your votes.

You will be voting for:

• 1 Co-chair (2-year term)
• 1 Newsletter Editor (2-year term)

SAA staff administer ballots through Survey Monkey and will email you the ballot when voting opens.

Co-chair

Kimberly Villafuerte Barzola
Digital Archiving Educator, LGBTQ Religious Archives Network

Bio: Kim Villafuerte Barzola (she/her) is a Quechua Peruvian American archivist and visual artist. She recently graduated from Simmons University School of Library and Information Science with a concentration in archival management. She has contributed to Oral History projects at the Boston Public Library and has worked at the Aga Khan Documentation Center and Harvard Law School Library Digital Lab. Her main interests include digital archiving, oral history methodology and practice.

Statement: I would love to serve as a co-chair to help reach the next generation of archivists of color such as myself who are new to the profession and looking for a space to advance the profession while being in community with folks who may face similar challenges and life experiences. I firmly believe that the strength of any organization comes from active and engaged membership and look forward to the opportunity to help build out the section's membership as well as level of participation by providing more opportunities to network informally while sharing the wisdom and knowledge that already exists within this section. Many of us come into this profession because of our passion for specific subject areas and/or serving our communities and I believe that tapping into this will be the key to making the Archivists of Color SAA Section a vibrant community hub.

Newsletter Editor

Melissa Prunty Kemp
Archivist - Owner, San Jose State University

Bio: I am a Spring 2023 graduate of the Masters in Archives and Records Administration program at San Jose State University. I am the owner of KPW-AMC, Inc. which conducts archives, records management, and professional and grant-writing for nonprofit organizations and individuals. I have worked as a contract archivist for a large international fraternity for the past ten years, including two years as an assistant webmaster in charge of database management and website content maintenance. My areas of study and research interest are digital archiving and exhibitions, oral history, using artificial intelligence to conduct digital archives tasks, and increasing access to archives in underserved populations. I am especially interested in helping Black and other ethnic populations conduct community archiving and preservation that can become integrated in their local education systems. I believe digital transformation of as many archives from these communities as possible is an appropriate, reparative way for traditional archives and universities to support Black and other ethnic communities in preserving their histories.

Statement: My academic background spans 30 years of high education instruction in African American literature of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement; Contemporary, Latin-American, and Native American literature; Organizational and Business Communications; and Creative Writing. While in these positions, I managed and maintained various sets of records and school histories, and assisted the registrar.  My motivation for serving is that my background of work with predominantly Black and other ethnic populations gives me first-hand knowledge of how instructive the appearance of teaching materials and subject matter that represents the communities and experiences of those being taught is on learning acquisition. I want to advance and secure the longevity of African American literature and culture in the nation’s high education repositories as well as within the communities who generate the history that archives are created to steward. I want to insure that reparative archival practice is applied to Black subject matter and special collections to restore hidden history to the public square of history.