Jewel Davis is an Education Librarian in a PreK-12 Curriculum Materials Center at Appalachian State University. Jewel is an active member of ALAN currently serving as an ALAN Board member, chair of the ALAN Award and Cart/Campbell Grant, 2021 workshop program consultant, and peer reviewer for The ALAN Review. She has also served on the Nilsen-Donelson Committee. Jewel is committed to furthering ALAN’s work promoting the value of young adult literature and empowering teachers’ use of it in the classroom. Jewel is also a former high school English teacher and is devoted to advocating for youth. She works with pre-service teachers on evaluating representation in youth literature and building inclusive classroom libraries. Jewel is active in local and national youth organizations and has served as chair of the North Carolina Library Association’s Round Table for Ethnic Minority Concerns, a judge for the We Need Diverse Books author mentorship, a member of the 2020 and 2021 Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury, and is currently on the 2022 Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated YA Book Prize Committee.

Robert Bittner has worked as a sessional instructor for the last decade, teaching gender, sexuality, and children’s and young adult literature to aspiring teachers and librarians. He also completed a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship focusing on trans young adult readers and representation in YA fiction. Rob is also currently the President of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes board of directors and serves on numerous committees for the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC) and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). These committees include the Newbery, Children’s Literature Legacy, and Printz awards, and he is chairing the upcoming 2023 Caldecott Medal committee. He served for three years on the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award, and has been a moderator, presenter, and workshop consultant with both ALAN and NCTE over the last six years.

Morgan Jackson, a high school English teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada, is committed to everything ALAN represents. She serves on the planning committee for ALAN 2021, the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Book Award committee, and chairs ALAN’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion committee. She has presented at ALAN and UNLV’s Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. Morgan is passionate about reading.  She maintains a fully accessible classroom library and provides for each student to receive an e-library card giving them access to their public library’s electronic materials. She also writes about YA literature. Most of her writing centers around the importance of equitable representation of cultures and identities in YA texts and the processes by which texts are selected for use in classrooms. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Curriculum and Instruction, focusing on literacy.

Jung Kim is an Associate Professor of Literacy at Lewis University. A former high school English teacher and literacy coach, she debated leaving her doctoral program to get her MLIS (and sometimes still wonders…). She has co-authored two books on teaching with graphic novels and just finished a third book on Asian American teachers. She has been an active member of NCTE for almost two decades, starting the NCTE Asian American Caucus, and serving on multiple committees over the years. Jung has attended and presented at ALAN for the last several years, serving on the ethics committee, and has recently joined the Walden Award committee. She believes fiercely in the power of literature to heal, excite, expand minds, and engage—and the importance of representation in children’s and YA literature. Book nerds unite!