Bio
Jeanine Thomas-Cross is no ordinary librarian.The library she runs, Mott Haven branch on East 140th Street is located in one of the poorest Congressional districts in the country and sits amidst several homeless shelters and public housing projects. It’s a community with access to few resources, and under Thomas- Cross’s pioneering leadership, the Mott Haven Library has stepped into the gap. Serving 175,000 visitors per year, Mott Haven has become a model for what the modern 21st century library can be: a center of education, skills-building and community development.The nearly one thousand programs and community events held at Mott Haven each year target every demographic, age group, and educational level, and include adult literacy classes, computer instruction in English and Spanish, GED preparation, and arts programming for children of all ages. Thomas-Cross spearheaded the redesign of the library to make it more welcoming and opened the Community Room to all comers, hosting services that include family counseling and free HIV testing.A passionate and tireless advocate for community engagement, she constantly pushes to raise the profile of the library’s services inside the community. Be it school assemblies, community events, or local health fairs, everywhere the community gathers, Thomas-Cross is there. As one colleague re- marks, “Jeanine takes the lead in creating programs…Then she goes and sells them—door to door if that’s what it takes.” Co-workers and library patrons alike are awed by her vision of what a library can be. Says one colleague, “In a neighborhood with so few resources, what she has been able to accomplish is really spectacular. She is one of New York’s unsung heroes.”
