Carla D. Hayden, AM’77, PhD’87, was the first African American and first woman to serve as Librarian of Congress, a role she held from 2016 to 2025. As leader of the largest library in the world, she worked to make the collections more accessible and relevant to the broader population through digitization and public engagement initiatives.
Prior to leading the Library of Congress, Hayden directed Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library for 23 years, revitalizing one of the first free public libraries in the country to effectively serve the local community. Among her numerous awards, Hayden has been named Librarian of the Year by Library Journal and received the Joseph W. Lippincott Award and Melvil Dewey Medal from the American Library Association, where she served as president from 2003 to 2004.
Throughout her career, Hayden has worked to connect archives and cultural resources to people’s lives today. As she told the Mellon Foundation, where she became a senior fellow in July 2025, “For generations, libraries, archives, and cultural institutions have been the guardians of knowledge and the catalysts for human progress. … Together, we will work to strengthen the public knowledge ecosystem and ensure that the transformative power of information remains accessible to all.”