Three Residents Elected to Friends of Greenwich Library Board

Three local residents have been elected to The Friends of Greenwich Library board of trustees.

Candice Bednar, Michael Freitag and Barbara Richards will serve three-year terms. 

“We are thrilled to welcome such an extraordinarily talented group of new trustees to the Board. We believe they will make a valuable contribution to the Library’s future,” said Haley Rockwell Elmlinger, president of the Board of Trustees.

Bednar is a community volunteer who has served on several committees of both the Brunswick Parents Association and Greenwich Academy Parents Association. She previously worked for Deloitte Consulting and Morgan Stanley. Bednar said of her joining the board, “Since we moved to Greenwich in 2007, I have been impressed with the depth of resources and programming that the Greenwich Library provides to our community.  Free access to information, literature, technology, arts and culture enriches lives and provides the opportunity for continued learning.”

Freitag is a partner at Joele Frank, Wilkinson, Brimmer, Katcher, a strategic communications firm, who previously was a partner at Kekst and Company and the editorial staff of The New York Times. Freitag said, “One of my first jobs as a teenager was shelving books and helping out around my local public library. That experience not only reinforced a lifelong love of reading and learning, but also instilled a strong and lasting respect for the role that libraries play as a community’s connective tissue. Greenwich Library provides physical and virtual access to a vast trove of educational and cultural materials, programs and services.”

Richards is a longtime Greenwich Library volunteer who recently served as co-chair of the Gallery’s Selection Committee. She is part of Women Together at Christ Church and previously served as a Greenwich Library trustee from 2004-2010 and played an active role on the Buildings and Grounds committee as well as the Policy committee. She also previously worked as an attorney. Richards said, “I have been connected with Greenwich Library since 1985 in several capacities starting with the Flinn Gallery, the Friends Board, Buildings and Grounds and the Policy Committees. I have always felt that my work with the library was stimulating, important, and satisfying."