Skip to main content
Celebrating the 2025 NISO Plus Scholarship Awardees

Celebrating the 2025 NISO Plus Scholarship Awardees

March 2025

These Emerging Professionals Strengthen a Global Community

The NISO Plus Scholarship Program plays a vital role in our community by advancing our commitment to a more inclusive future and supporting our mission to build knowledge, foster meaningful dialogue, and develop authoritative standards through collaboration across the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional sectors. By recognizing and empowering early-career professionals who are passionate about access to and engagement with knowledge, the program helps build a global network of practitioners dedicated to the unfettered exchange of information and equitable knowledge access.

Now in its sixth year, the NISO Plus Scholarship Program continues to foster international dialogue, professional growth, and community-building. Scholarship recipients are selected for their accomplishments, diverse experiences, and commitment to knowledge facilitation and the global exchange of information. They are chosen not only to support their own professional development but also to amplify the perspectives they bring to the broader NISO community. Their participation enriches our shared work, helping to shape a more inclusive, dynamic, and globally connected information ecosystem. The program reflects a model of mutual benefit—supporting emerging professionals from a wide range of backgrounds while strengthening our community through the richness of their insights and lived realities. The importance and enduring value of this initiative cannot be overstated.

Welcoming This Year's Cohort

This year, NISO supported the participation of three scholarship awardees at the in-person NISO Plus 2025 conference, held in Baltimore this past February. Danilo Reyes, Ashlea Green, and Gillian Eguaras attended and engaged directly with thought leaders and peers from around the world.

Ensuring global participation and diverse perspectives is central to the mission of the scholarship program. Thanks to a wealth of strong applicants, NISO was also able to identify twelve additional early-career professionals to receive scholarships for the NISO Plus Global Online Conference taking place this fall. These recipients will likewise be recognized and empowered to share their voices on the international stage. The entire 2025 NISO Plus Scholarship cohort also receives access to NISO’s educational programming and professional networking opportunities, supporting their ongoing development and deeper engagement with the global information community.

The 2025 NISO Plus cohort represents a wide range of geographic locations and professional roles, reflecting the richness and complexity of our global information community:

  • Jesubukade Ajakaye, Systems Librarian, Federal Polytechnic Ayede, Oyo State, Nigeria (currently based in the United Kingdom)
  • Selorm Anku Ankudey, Principal Library Assistant, University of Energy and Natural Resources, Ghana
  • Haimanot Birhanu Bulgan, Library ICT Team Leader, Jimma University, Ethiopia
  • Priscilla Carmini, Digital Repositories Librarian, University of Waterloo, Canada
  • Eleonora Colangelo, Open Science Policy Analyst, Frontiers, Italy
  • Lily De La Fuente, Humanities Librarian, University of Miami, United States
  • Sharanya DG, Assistant Editor, LLIDS (E.L.A. Project – Education and Liberal Arts Project), India
  • Gillian Eguaras, Research Librarian, McMillan LLP, Canada
  • Primrose Godini, Scholarly Communication Librarian and Faculty Librarian, Faculty of Social Sciences and Gender Transformative Sciences, Women’s University in Africa, Zimbabwe
  • Ashlea Green, Metadata Librarian, Appalachian State University, United States
  • Janani Krishnan, Brand Manager, Kriyadocs, India
  • Jennifer Moon-Chung, Assessment Coordinator, University of Pittsburgh, United States
  • Pavithran Narayanan, Content Acquisition Specialist, Wiley, India
  • Sanjeeda Rais, Library Assistant, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, India
  • Danilo Reyes, Fellow (IT Librarian), World Intellectual Property Organization, Switzerland

We recognize and celebrate each of these awardees not only for what they’ve accomplished, but for the curiosity, insight, and lived experiences they bring to our field. Their dynamic voices are essential to the continued relevance, inclusivity, and impact of the NISO community—and to the future of scholarly communication worldwide.

Grateful Thanks

We are grateful to the NISO Plus Scholarship Review Committee for their thoughtful service. Many are past scholarship recipients themselves—a testament to their continued engagement and their commitment to ensuring the awards are granted with insight and integrity.

The NISO Plus Scholarship program has been sustained over the years through the generosity of our community sponsors. We are especially thankful to the Sloan Foundation (2020 and 2024), Digital Science (2021 and 2023), and OCLC (2022) for their support. In 2025, although we did not have a sponsor, NISO remained committed to the program and underwrote the participation of three scholarship awardees. Their presence—like that of all past recipients—enriched the conference through the diverse perspectives they brought. We hope to make in-person participation possible for even more awardees in the future, and we enthusiastically invite organizations to consider sponsoring the program to help us achieve that goal.

Kimberly Gladfelter Graham

Education Program Manager & DEIA Advocate

Kimberly Gladfelter Graham's role at NISO has evolved since joining the organization in 2018.  In her role as Office Manager, she handled administration priorities and supported the Executive