Richard Reyes-Gavilan

Richard Reyes-Gavilan is the Executive Director of the DC Public Library. He oversees a campus of 26 libraries and a staff of 600. More than 4.2 million people visited public libraries in the District, a number that exceeds the combined home attendance of Washington D.C.’s professional baseball, hockey, and men’s basketball teams. He is responsible for oversight of an ambitious capital improvement plan that includes almost $300M budgeted over the next six years for branches designed by renowned architects Bing Thom, TEN Arquitectos, and others.

Most important among the projects for which he is responsible is the full modernization of the landmarked Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the District of Columbia’s only building designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Mies’s only realized library in the world. The building also represents the city’s first memorial to the slain civil rights leader.

Mr. Reyes-Gavilan has over twenty years of professional public library experience. Before coming to the District, he served as the Chief Librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library, the nation’s fifth largest public library as measured by population served. Richard Reyes-Gavilan holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the State University of New York at Albany and a master’s in library and information science from the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a proud graduate of Coro, New York City’s premier leadership training program and Stuyvesant High School, one of the country’s most prestigious high schools. The son of Cuban immigrants, he lives in D.C.’s diverse Mount Pleasant neighborhood with his wife Liz and two young daughters Louise and Margretta.