Angela Erickson – Committee Chair – is a former Head of Middle School English who currently works as the Head of Libraries at United World College (Dover campus) in Singapore. She is interested in how educational leadership, curriculum design and workshop pedagogy can be integrated to create a school culture of reading, thinking and writing. For the past few years, she has been working to create systems to articulate classroom and departmental libraries with the central school libraries to support the needs of all readers. When she is not reading, Angie is an aspiring mountaineer and a terrible cellist.
Dr. Chip McAuley – Committee Member – is a Reference Librarian at the Hamilton Township Public Library in Hamilton, NJ. A passionate reader and promoter (to patrons, friends and family) of literature in translation, he is interested in expanding the reading of literature in translation to the farthest extent possible global literacy and literature of all kinds and to all people, with a particular interest in the literature of Latin America as well as French and Spanish literature. He is an active member of the New Jersey Library Association and the American Library Association.
Thu (Ha) Ngo – Committee Member – has been a literary translator since 2012, with a particular focus on children and YA’s literature. Some of her significant English – Vietnamese translations include Wendelin Van Draanen’s Flipped, Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Benji Davies’s The Storm Whale, Oliver Jeffers’s Here We Are, and works by Dr. Seuss. She holds a Master’s degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney and taught translation and interpreting at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, until 2018. As a translator working between English and Vietnamese, she hopes to bring a perspective shaped by the challenges and dynamics of children’s publishing in Vietnam, while learning from fellow committee members. She also works as a conference interpreter and enjoys exploring coffee shops and sketching.
Frances Sims-Williams – Committee Member – is a bookseller, a small-time bookstagrammer, and a great lover of books – particularly of the fantastical variety. She has an undergraduate degree in Classical Studies from the University of Wales, Lampeter, and a postgraduate diploma in the same subject from the University of St. Andrews, where the focus of her studies was on Classical languages and literature. She can most often be found on Instagram (@nightjarreads), where she likes to chat about all the books she’s reading (or planning to read), and leaves the occasional review.
Emilia Packard — Committee Member — has been a freelance book reviewer for a decade or so, writing for Library Journal, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews. Previously, she worked as an historical archivist and received her MLS from the University of Illinois. In 2019, she relocated with her family from Texas to Tokyo, and over the course of their 6 years there, ended up with three bilingual children who read voraciously in Japanese and English. She hopes to bring to the committee the perspective of a parent reading and selecting youth literature through a cross-cultural, multilingual lens.
Kim Tyo-Dickerson — Committee Member — is the Head of Libraries and Upper School Librarian at the International School of Amsterdam, with over 25 years of experience across North America, Europe, and Africa. She holds an MLIS from Syracuse University and an MA in English from Miami University. Her practice is deeply informed by her Ethiopian American family and is centered on social justice, the freedom to read, and fostering environments of belonging. A seasoned advocate for global literature, Kim has served as a guest editor for GLLI’s #WorldKidLitMonth and contributed to the UN #SDGLitMonth and #IntlYALitMonth review projects. Kim’s professional and personal journey is rooted in the belief that language and literature are the essential tools for making sense of our world through the stories we share.
Tim Pruzinsky – Committee Member — is a high school English teacher at the American International School of Budapest where he passionately experiments in his classroom with implementing reading and writing workshop pedagogy within an IB framework. He also teaches “The Imperfect Art of Living,” a Global Impact Diploma course. Tim is a co-writer on the InThinking DP English A: Language and Literature website and is heavily involved with the IB as an examiner and workshop leader. But most of all, Tim is determined – now more than ever in our AI saturated world – to turn teens into readers and if they are already readers, to nurture their love of books in high school.
Minjie Chen — Committee Member — is a metadata librarian with the Cotsen Children’s Library, a collection of international and historical children’s materials for education and entertainment held at the Princeton University Library. She is the author of The Sino-Japanese War and Youth Literature: Friends and Foes on the Battlefield (Routledge, 2016), a study examining the portrayal of the war in Chinese comics and American juvenile literature. She grew up reading more translated children’s books than works originally written in her native tongue, Chinese (among her childhood favorites are Anne of Green Gables and Das doppelte Lottchen.)
Helle Kirstein – Adjunct Committee Member — is a teacher librarian currently serving as the Lower School Librarian at the International School of Amsterdam. She holds a Master’s degree in Business, Language, and Culture from the University of Southern Denmark, a BA in Teaching from Blaagaards Seminarium, and a Master’s degree in Teacher Librarianship from Charles Sturt University. A polyglot who reads fluently in four languages, she focuses her professional work on encouraging students to read in their home languages, while also championing translated books and international stories as essential tools for building empathy and understanding across cultures. She hopes to bring to the committee the perspective of an educator who views global culture as a vital component of the modern school library.
