CPDWL Standing Committee Member Highlight: Carmen Ka Man Lei

“This is How We Do It: One Professional Development Activity in the Lives of Librarians from Around the World” is a new series from the IFLA Continuing Professional Development and Workplace Learning Section to highlight our standing committee members, who they are and what they do!

In this post, we highlight Carmen Ka Man Lei, CPDWL standing committee member!

Why are you a standing committee member of CPDWL and what are you working on for CPDWL Section at the moment? 
Carmen: I would like to learn more about the best practice and work with library professionals around the world to advocate the importance of PD in library profession. At the moment, I’m busy working with the online coaching initiative that will take place from 14-25 Nov. I need to assist in coordinating with coaches, setting up calendars, and later on promotion of the project to seek for coachee, I also assist in sending the monthly poster to members and remind SC members to write for blog posts, I recently volunteer to work in one of the project run under CPDWL and LTR, the members already created a doc in basecamp on a project called’ IFLA Scholarly Communication Project’.
What is one advice you have for new librarians interested in getting involved in IFLA or in their library associations for professional development? 
Carmen: I would suggest them to say YES to opportunities, find time to volunteer to work with these organizations, with the COVID 19, most of the seminars and projects are done online, so, this provide more opportunities to take part in online projects, some of the online sharing are short, start with those, for instance, 5 mins lighting talks on new trends and development, librarian networking program, etc. These will surely widen your horizons and experiences.
We are going to run a Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong and Macao (GHMULA) Academic Library Alliance Youth Forum in Nov probably in Guangzhou (hybrid) . Young library professionals can make use of the platform to share their ideas on new trends and development. Follows by another GHMULA Library Directors meeting held in Macao late Nov. This allow library directors in the region to meet face to face after years of online meetings, to learn from one another about new development, PD opportunities etc. Would happy to share more afterwards.