2025/2026 Steering Committee Candidates

Thank you to all our excellent candidates for standing in the 2025-2026 SAA SNAP election. Please take some time to review their candidate statements and get to know them so you can make an informed choice. Ballots will be open June 25 - July 16!

You will be voting for:

• Vice Chair/Chair-Elect (two-year term)

• Secretary (one-year term)

• Three Steering Committee Members (one-year term). 

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidate

The following candidate is running for the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect position:

Erin Robinson
Post-master certificate student at San Jose State University; Digital Archives Fellow at California State University, Fullerton

Hello, my name is Erin Robinson, and I am interested in the Vice Chair position within SNAP. I have served an Ex-Officio role with the Blog and Social Media team for the past two years, and during that time I have come to see the importance SNAP plays for students and new professionals. It was a natural transition from my previous role as one of the Social Media Coordinators at  San Jose State University’s Student Chapter of SAA. I am a post-master certificate student at SJSU focused on digital archives and records management. I am also completing a Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium Community Fellowship through California State University, Fullerton. The role of Vice Chair would allow me to connect and exchange resources and ideas with the community of students and new professionals. This group is a critical part of SAA, and I intend to promote and advocate for the voices of SNAP.

Secretary Candidate

Maya Scheirer
MLIS Student, University of Maryland

I am an MLIS Student at the University of Maryland specializing in Archives and Collections Management. I'm looking to get involved with SAA and more specifically with this section because engaging students and new professionals is important to developing this field. I empathize with the desire to dive in and learn as much as you can about the field as a student, and how daunting it can be to get started. I am particularly passionate about education, having worked as a tutor since 2020 and volunteered in teaching and mentorship roles throughout my undergraduate years. I am thrilled to have this opportunity to get involved with this section, and to bring my detail-oriented note-taking skills to the Secretary role. Thank you!

Steering Committee Member Candidates

The following candidates are running for the section steering committee:

Mary Katherine Kearns
MLIS Graduate, Early-career Certified Archivist

As an early-career archivist with three years of experience and a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree, I am excited to contribute to the Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Section as a steering committee member. My journey in the archival field has been both rewarding and a worthwhile endeavor. As a certified archivist, I’m eager to continue developing my skills while supporting others navigating the profession.
I’m passionate about fostering a collaborative environment where emerging professionals can learn, grow, and share their experiences. As someone still early in my career, I understand firsthand the challenges new archivists face and the importance of a supportive, well-informed network. I hope to use my position on the steering committee to create opportunities for members to connect, learn from one another, and access resources that will empower them to succeed in this dynamic field.
I am committed to contributing my ideas, creativity, and enthusiasm to SNAP while gaining invaluable insights to further my professional growth. I believe in helping others, especially those just beginning their professional journeys.

Sarah Lewis
San Jose State University MLIS Graduate; Early-career Archivist at Lemon Grove Historical Society, Bonita Historical Society, and San Diego County Library

I'm a recent graduate (December of 2024) of the SJSU MLIS program, with an emphasis in archives, and live in the San Diego area of California. I became interested in archives when I joined the board of my local historical society and saw all the wonderful historical material they had, but it was inaccessible. As an all-volunteer organization, they have a completely unprocessed archive, and I wanted to learn about how archives were organized. This lead me to my degree and a profession I am excited about. I am still the volunteer archivist for the Lemon Grove Historical Society, and recently started as the part-time archivist and collections manager for the Bonita Historical Society. I am also an intermittent worker for the San Diego County Library, working on a digitization project. I'm excited to be a new professional, and have so much to learn! I love being able to meet and learn from other archivists and archive students.

Jason Smith
Scholarly Communications Instruction Librarian and University Archivist at Lewis University

I am running to serve as a SNAP steering committee member because, as a first-year librarian and archivist myself, I understand the unique challenges facing newly graduating archive professionals. Moving from graduate school into a professional position is a hard, oftentimes scary move to make, more so today when GLAM positions are under intense scrutiny. As somebody who has navigated and continues to navigate the challenges of being a first-year professional, I carry strategies that can help newly emerging archivists feel more comfortable in their skillsets, their careers, and their professional goals. Coming out of graduate school just a little over a year ago, the memories and stress of finding my own path are still fresh, and I will provide scaffolding and support for students currently discovering themselves. In my current role as both the Scholarly Communications Instruction Librarian and the University Archivist at Lewis University, I have led two massive digital projects for the University Library. One, I have implemented and built out an ArchivesSpace instance for our archives; this involved restarting and updating the Archives after a five-year vacancy and migrating from the DOS-based ARCS, which was no longer compatible on our software. I completed this work as a solo archivist. On the other hand, I led a university-wide committee focused on developing and implementing an Institutional Repository, of which I serve as the primary (and currently, only) administrator. We officially launched the repository at the end of April 2025 and continue to work together to build upon our repository. Thank you for your consideration, and I am looking forward to meeting everyone!

Emma Powell
Archivist and Assistant Librarian at Elon University; MSLIS (Advanced Certificate) from Pratt Institute

My name is Emma Powell, and I currently work as an Archivist and Assistant Librarian at Elon University. My current role entails work all across archives, ranging from processing to instruction to metadata. I recently graduated with my MSLIS with an advanced certificate in Archives from Pratt Institute in May 2024. Throughout grad school, I worked with a wide range of collections, including those at National Geographic, Sesame Workshop, Democracy Now! Productions, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Additionally, I served as an officer of Pratt’s SAA student chapter.

I know how isolating the current challenges feel as an incoming professional in the archives field, which is why I am very passionate about building communities of advocacy and support for students and early-career professionals. As a steering committee member, my goal would be to help make connections and encourage conversations to facilitate growth and excitement amongst SNAP members.

Katelyn Landry
Archives and Public History MA graduate from New York University

Hello! My name is Katelyn Landry, I’m a recent graduate of the Archives and Public History MA program at New York University. I’ve held graduate student positions at the Morgan Library & Museum, Barnard College Archives & Special Collections, and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU in which I worked to expand user access to institutional archival collections through arrangement, description, reference service, programming, and social media outreach. I’m passionate about resisting legacies of racism and policing in research spaces and describing marginalized archival subjects with respect and care.

I’ve been a member of SAA for just over a year, and will be presenting my capstone research project “Finding Mestizaje in the Archive” at the SAA Annual Meeting for the first time this August. I’m interested in applying my experience in outreach and programming development to the Programming Chair position on the SNAP Steering Committee so I may help serve emerging archivists who are seeking additional community-building and learning opportunities outside their graduate programs and workplaces. I would like to develop programming that is responsive to pressing issues facing our profession, such as violence against BIPOC immigrant communities, the archivist’s role amidst international wars and human rights violations, and attempts by the U.S. government to disempower archivists and historians. As a multiracial woman from a low-income rural community, I also want to ensure that SNAP is a welcoming space that proactively seeks input from our BIPOC, immigrant, queer and trans, first-gen and low-income, and disabled community members.

Katie Higley
MSLIS graduate from the University of Illinois; former University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign SAA Student Chapter Leader

Hello! My name is Katie Higley (She/Her). I recently graduated with my MSLIS from the University of Illinois, and I am interested in plugging into the student and new archives professional network. I have experience working in multiple university archives and doing research within the cultural heritage field. As a student, I was actively involved in the field through memberships with state, regional, and national organizations such as SAA. I have spent the last two years as a leader in the SAA student chapter at UIUC, serving first as Membership Director and then as President. I am nominating myself for one of the Steering Committee Member positions and the Student Chapter Coordinator, as I am qualified for the positions and could positively impact them. After spending the last two years in leadership positions with an SAA student chapter, I could offer meaningful outreach suggestions to engage directly with student chapters. From my time with the UIUC SAA chapter, I have become familiar with sharing information with  members, gathering input from members, and organizing elections. If given the opportunity, I will help coordinate educational outreach efforts that further professional development and dialogue and foster engagement for all SNAP members. Thank you.

Nicole Font
Shelby White and Leon Levy Processing Archivist at the New York Botanical Garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library. MA in Archives and Public History from New York University in 2022 and has since worked on projects for the Bob Dylan Archive, the New-York Historical Society, and the Center for Brooklyn History

I joined SNAP while I was in graduate school and have held various roles on the committee, including social media coordinator, steering committee member, and secretary. I’ve always been passionate about advocating for the needs of students and new professionals, and I believe SNAP is uniquely positioned to offer both engaging programming that benefits our members and a safe space where people can share their experiences as they navigate school, work, and the current political climate. As I approach the end of my early career phase, I want to use the experiences and connections I’ve gained as an emerging professional to share resources, plan programming, create content, and offer support to the SNAP community.