Richard Reyes-Gavilan was appointed Executive Director of the District of Columbia Public Library in January 2014. He oversees a campus of 26 libraries, a staff of 600, and an annual operating budget of $57 million. In Fiscal Year 2015 over 4.2 million people visited public libraries in the District, a number that exceeds the combined home attendance of Washington D.C.’s professional baseball, hockey, and men’s basketball teams. He is responsible for oversight of an ambitious capital improvement plan that includes almost $300M budgeted over the next six years for branches designed by renowned architects Bing Thom, TEN Arquitectos, and others. Most important among the projects for which he is responsible is the full modernization of the landmarked Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the District of Columbia’s only building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Mies’s only realized library in the world. The building also represents the city’s first memorial to the slain civil rights leader.
Mr. Reyes-Gavilan has over twenty years of professional public library experience including serving as the Chief Librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library, the nation’s fifth largest public library as measured by population served. Among his major accomplishments in Brooklyn was leading an organizational assessment that resulted in the addition of over 400 weekly public service hours across the borough. Dubbed the “Open Libraries Initiative,” the assessment was recognized by the Urban Libraries Council as the top operational innovation of the year in 2012. He also conceptualized, secured funding, and oversaw construction for the Shelby White and Leon Levy Information Commons, one of the first collaborative learning spaces in a public library in the country. The $3.25M raised for the Commons, located in Brooklyn’s Central Library on Grand Army Plaza, represents the largest private gift ever bestowed upon the library system.
As Head of the New York Public Library’s Humanities Department, Mr. Reyes-Gavilan was responsible for collection development and public programming in one of the busiest circulating libraries in the country. Highlights include developing an entire day’s worth of programs to celebrate the centenary of “Bloomsday” – June 16, 1904 – the day on which James Joyce’s novel Ulysses takes place. Among the numerous other positions held during his 12 years at the New York Public Library, Mr. Reyes-Gavilan most fondly recalls his days developing Spanish language collections for a region of libraries in the South Bronx. His branch library work notwithstanding, most of Mr. Reyes-Gavilan’s career has been spent working in central libraries, thinking through ways in which they can expand their reach and impact.
Richard Reyes-Gavilan holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York at Albany and a master’s in library and information science from the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a proud graduate of Coro, New York City’s premier leadership training program and Stuyvesant High School, one of the country’s most prestigious high schools. The son of Cuban immigrants, he lives in D.C.’s diverse Mount Pleasant neighborhood with his wife Liz and two young daughters Louise and Margretta.
