I am the Program Manager of BincTank, a business incubator supporting BIPOC entrepreneurs opening new bookstores in their communities. Our parent organization is the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (Binc), the safety net for booksellers. [In profile photo l to r: myself (Ken White), Oren Teicher, and President Obama in the Oval Office, ph cr White House photographer.]I have 30+ years of book retail industry experience, in management and developing independent bookstores both small and large, specialty and general, nonprofit and for profit. I also have expertise in event production for authors; and I have extensive experience in trade associations, including on the Board of Directors of the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, and of the American Booksellers Association.While on the ABA Board, in 2008-2009 as publishers considered options for transition from paper to digital catalogs, I spearheaded the broadly successful campaign aimed at publishers to adopt a single joint solution. Thus, publishers saved millions of dollars, and bookstores ended up with one standard platform through which to work with publishers, rather than dozens.In January 2011, I was part of an entourage of booksellers to meet with President Obama at the White House. We talked about books and poetry, and I gave him a copy of some Walt Whitman for his library.In 2013, I created the first-ever drag queen story time in a bookstore, alongside colleague Maggie Takuda-Hall and our wonderful reader Mutha Chucka.In 2017 I was part of the Binc Diversity Task Force which created the Macmillan Booksellers Professional Development Scholarship in partnership with Macmillan Publishers. The scholarship promotes diversity in the bookselling industry by providing grants for underrepresented bookstore employees to attend industry events such as the ABA's Winter Institute and the indie booksellers' regional meetings.Specialties: Organizational governance; advocating and building consensus around national issues affecting the book industry; strategizing solutions to common problems faced by booksellers; producing and promoting author and book events; and curation of book inventory.I believe in getting the right books into the right hands, however possible. As book formats multiply and new channels of distribution open up, I continue wanting to be part of that world, and in finding the place for the independent retailer in that ecosystem.QTPOC Filipino-American he/him/his