FTRF President's Program 2025: Leading with the Freedom to Read Foundation and a Call to Action

Leading with the Freedom to Read Foundation
and a Call to Action

You are invited to the Freedom to Read Foundation’s President’s Program
In Person at ALA Annual 2025! Saturday, June 28, 1-2 p.m. PCC Room 107

FTRF President Sophia Sotilleo brings together a dynamic group of panelists to discuss First Amendment rights, how they look different in different sectors, and how our staff, members, and colleagues are dealing with challenges to their intellectual freedom. The panelists will also showcase the stellar work that has been done to champion First Amendment Rights, especially by those in our library community  You will leave this program with knowledge of ways to move forward and tackle these issues with the support of each other and the support and expertise of the Foundation.  Whether you are a long-time member or being introduced to FTRF for the first time, our mission is clear - Free People Read Freely®.

Nate Colter is a native of Nashville, Arkansas. He graduated from college and law school at Harvard University, then later earned a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. In March 2016, Coulter became the Executive Director of the Central Arkansas Library System. CALS has 15 libraries, an annual operating budget of approximately $28 million, and more than 300 employees. Nate is married to Nathalie, who is an assistant principal at Roberts Elementary School in Little Rock. They have four adult children, one grandson and their rescue pup, Theo.

Maia Kobabe is a nonbinary queer cartoonist, a kpop fan, a voracious reader, and a daydreamer. You can learn an astonishing number of intimate details about em in GENDER QUEER: A MEMOIR (America's most challenged book 2021-2023) and in eir short comics and writing published in The Nib, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR and Time Magazine. Maia’s second book is BREATHE: JOURNEYS TO HEALTHY BINDING with Dr Sarah Peitzmeier and eir third book will be a middle grade coming of age comic written with Lucky Srikumar, due out from Scholastic Graphix in 2026. Before setting out to work freelance full-time, e worked for over ten years in libraries.

Owen Wolfe is a co-lead for the Seyfarth Shaw appellate group and has worked on cases with clients ranging from individuals to large corporations at federal, state court trial, and the appellate court levels. In the past year, he has drafted an important amicus brief for FTRF in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in a legal challenge to an Iowa statute that would have resulted in the removal of hundreds of books from school libraries.  He also drafted an amicus brief in an Alabama case challenging a library policy that requires viewpoint discrimination in both removal of materials and acquisition policies for collection development.

Theresa Chmara is the General Counsel of the Freedom to Read Foundation. She is the author of Privacy and Confidentiality Issues: A Guide for Libraries and their Lawyers (ALA 2009). She has been a First Amendment lawyer for over thirty years and is a frequent speaker on intellectual freedom issues in libraries and is a contributing author for the Intellectual Freedom Manual published by the Office of Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association.

Sophia Sotilleo is the Freedom to Read Foundation President and Dean of the Thurgood Marshall Library at Bowie State University, Maryland. She is a seasoned academic librarian with experience and strengths in collaborative grant writing, library programming, project management, and assessment. Her current area of research and interest is Embedded Librarianship, with a focus on access, advocacy, and leadership in the field of Librarianship.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone is the Executive Director, Freedom to Read Foundation and Director, ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. She shas worked closely with library professionals for over 20 years and has served on the faculty of Lawyers for Libraries and Law for Librarians workshops. She is a contributor to the 10^th edition of the Intellectual Freedom Manual and has contributed articles on law, policy, and intellectual freedom to American Libraries and other Publications.

We will have door prizes for several lucky attendees who are present. 

Saturday, June 28, 1-2 p.m. PCC 107   See you there!