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Paul Signorelli

Helping you explore opportunities, Paul is a creative, inquisitive, results-driven writer who designs and facilitates learning opportunities, and facilitates transformative conversations designed to produce positive, measurable change. He brings extensive management experience in arts organizations, libraries (including nearly 15 years as Director, Volunteer Services and Staff Training for the San Francisco Public Library system), and other educational settings to all that he does, and draws upon the experience he gained in earning an M.A. in Arts Administration (Golden Gate University), an MLIS (University of North Texas), and a B.A in Political Science (UCLA).

Author of Change the World Using Social Media and co-author of Workplace Learning & Leadership: A Handbook for Library and Nonprofit Trainers (free PDF available), he works with clients to determine what they need to do to change their world; creates highly-interactive sessions to address the challenges they face; and helps foster sustainable onsite and online communities.

Paul, as a trainer-consultant, currently serves as Library Advocacy Training Project Manager for the California Library Association; facilitator for a variety of online employee assistance program sessions for Claremont EAP; a board member for the UCLA Daily Bruin Alumni Network, and developer and co-facilitator of a mentoring program for current members of the university newspaper; a member of the Public Library Association Continuing Education Advisory Group; and a presenter/facilitator for a variety of lifelong-learning projects.

Writer

Paul, in addition to writing Change the World Using Social Media and co-writing Workplace Learning and Leadership, has had work included in several anthologies; writes for print and online publications; and blogs extensively in addition to writing training material. New: paperback edition of Change the World Using Social Media released spring 2023.)

Keynote Speaker

Contact Paul for highly-interactive keynote presentations designed to foster positive change in response to the challenges your organization wants to effectively address.

Trainer/Facilitator

Talk with Paul for help in designing and facilitating creative, engaging, highly-interactive learning opportunities for onsite, online, and hybrid learning situations. Recent examples of his work include advocacy sessions through the California Library Association and employee-assistance workshops (e.g., conflict resolution, presentation skills, and fostering mindfulness) delivered through Claremont EAP.

The Lankes Corollaries: Librarians, Learning, Activism, and the Communities They Nurture"

“When my mother took me for my initial visit to a bookmobile, I met my first activist: Mel Turner, the librarian who brought that vehicle to our neighborhood once every two weeks. Mel probably would have laughed at the idea that he was an activist, but his job of connecting books with readers—and readers with books—to open worlds up to us was as revolutionary an act as any that a five-year-old child could have imagined. Mel brought that bookmobile and my own world to life. He helped my mother inspire in me a lifelong love of reading, learning, and exploring the world. And he became a cherished friend—one I continued to visit whenever I went back to my hometown during a college break or, years later, to be with my family in that mid-sized Central California Valley city during holidays.

“I think of Mel, his role as a lifelong-learning advocate, and all he brought to me through a friendship that eventually extended far beyond the walls of that tiny, miraculous vehicle again as I read scholar-speaker-writer-educator-advocate R. David Lankes’s fabulous article ‘The Lankes Corollaries.’ Not surprisingly, the depths and passion with which Dave consistently addresses the role of libraries, librarians, and the communities they serve in contemporary society—as in his decade-old presentation ‘The Faithful and the Radicals’ and so much of what he offers through his presentations and publishes in his books and on his blog—are fully on display here and certainly go a long way in reminding us that a) to ignore libraries is to ignore a community resource we continue to need and cherish, and b) to ignore the people who work in them—and use them—to actually make them libraries leaves us (mistakenly) believing that libraries have little to do with advocacy and activism, community-building, and supporting the common good....'”

For recommendations of first-rate books to help you address your training-teaching-learning challenges, please visit Paul’s Goodreads list here and short reviews of some of the best books he has read and used.