Dr. Anthony W. Marx

Since 2011, Anthony W. Marx has led The New York Public Library, the nation’s largest public library system with 18 million visits per year. At NYPL, he has expanded the Library’s role as an education provider, creating new after-school programs for children and teens, expanding English language, citizenship, computer and coding classes, partnering with Coursera, and improving programming for all ages at NYPL’s 88 neighborhood branches. Under his leadership, the Library has increased access to e-books, partnered with the City's public schools to enable millions of books to circulate directly to teachers and students, and launched a pilot to provide internet access in low income homes to redress the digital divide. From 2003 to 2011, Marx served as president of Amherst College in Massachusetts, where low-income student enrollment more than tripled during his tenure. Before Amherst, Marx was a political science professor and director of undergraduate studies at Columbia University, and had worked on education in South Africa in the 1980s. Marx has a BA from Yale, an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and a PhD, also from Princeton.