Tina Lerno is the 2025 CLA Member of the Year!

Tina is a Librarian for the Los Angeles Public Library’s digital content team, and has worked for LAPL for almost 10 years. Before becoming a librarian, Tina earned a degree in Art from UCLA and worked in the world of television animation doing color design on shows such as Harold and the Purple Crayon, Jackie Chan Adventures, and The Boondocks. Her past experience working in TV animation and graphic design provides her with a unique perspective on visual literacy and comics advocacy.

Tina joined CLA in 2010 when she was a student at SJSU’s iSchool and has been a member ever since. During her time in CLA, she has been a member of the conference Awards Committee, the Membership Committee, a co-founder of the Special Libraries Interest Group, and has been an active contributor to the annual conference. A common theme throughout Tina’s career has been mentoring other librarians, both those who are new to the profession and those who are looking to transition to a new area of librarianship. She is currently mentoring a library school student through LAPL’s mentoring program and has served in the past as a Conference Buddy for first-time attendees at CLA. She has presented at CLA on the topic of mentorship as a form of leadership and played a key role in developing and facilitating the 5-Minute Mentoring program at the conference for the last three years. Tina’s early involvement with CLA as a student was instrumental in helping her discover her career path and she loves sharing her enthusiasm for the organization with other members, especially students. Everyone who knows Tina, knows how much she loves a good conference and networking at CLA’s annual conference and meeting up with peers locally have been important to her throughout her career.

During her term on the Membership Committee, Tina generously donated her time and graphic arts expertiseto design the conference t-shirts and pins for the past three years. Despiteher term on the Membership Committee ending in 2024, Tina volunteered to stay on this year to design the conference t-shirt once again. In early 2025, catastrophic fires in Southern California caused indescribable damage, displaced scores, and destroyed individual and collective senses of community.  Tina was among those directly impacted by the Eaton fire in Altadena and was displaced from her home and community for most of 2025. Throughout this time, she continued to show up for her CLA community, worked hard to create this year's conference t-shirt, and kept a sense of joy and hopefulness within her that she continuously shared with the Membership and Awards Committees. We appreciate Tina’s thoughtfulness, dedication, and willingness to continue contributing to the CLA community in the face of tragedy. For this and everything else, we are proud to celebrate Tina Lerno as CLA’s 2025 Member of the Year!