Customer Services Librarian, Winnipeg Public Library

Monique Woroniak is the 2008 recipient of the Louis Vagianos Medal, awarded to an MLIS graduating student who combines the capacity for blending originality with practical thinking and the courage to seek solutions to professional problems outside the mainstream. Monique has worked in the Winnipeg Public Library system since 2007. In Outreach Services, she was focused on developing and delivering services to Indigenous peoples, particularly in community-based sites. In 2013, she spent a year coordinating system-wide children’s programming and early literacy training for staff. Monique continues to play a leading role in supporting Indigenous-focused services. In 2016, she received the Honouring Our Allies Award from the Aboriginal Circle of Educators and a Manitoba Library Service Award from the Manitoba Library Association for her volunteer work with it’s Prison Libraries Committee. She also received a CBC Manitoba Future 40 Award, which recognizes “the province’s next generation of leaders, builders, and change-makers under the age of 40.”