American running Parisian library to lead Tampa's history museum

The Tampa Bay History Center has named a scholar working in Paris as its new president and CEO.

Audrey Chapuis, currently the executive director of The American Library in Paris, was unanimously approved this week by the center’s board of trustees after a national executive search.

She is replacing C.J. Roberts, who left in April after 20 years at the organization for a job in North Carolina

The board’s chairman, Chris Alvarez, says in statement that in the past few months “we received absolutely stunning interest from candidates around the world” but that Chapuis “stood out as exemplifying everything we would want in our next leader — with exceptional academic and nonprofit credentials, as well as a proven track record of fundraising and innovative program development.”

Chapuis, 46, comes to Tampa after serving at The American Library since 2015, the past seven years as its executive director. In that role, she led a project called Vision 2027, which expanded public programming and outreach, oversaw a centennial campaign and helped secure funding to strengthen the organization’s long-term sustainability.

Photo by Stehlik Foto

“Under Chapuis’ leadership, the library entered a new era of cultural relevance and international visibility,” The American Library says in statement announcing her departure.

Her last day at the Paris institution will be Nov. 25 and she will she will be sworn in Dec. 1 in Tampa.

The American Library was founded in 1920 after World War I to provide books and periodicals donated by libraries stateside to soldiers. Today it is the largest English language lending library on the European continent with a print collection of more than 100,000 volumes.

Before heading to Paris, Chapuis worked at the Widener Library in the Harvard College Library system and the Pritzker Legal Research Center at Northwestern University School of Law.

She has a bachelor’s degree in English and American Literature from Harvard University and a master’s degree in library and information sciences from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She also earned an executive MBA from HEC Paris, a business school.

Chapuis’ biography on The American Library’s website describes her as “a passionate advocate for digital literacy, intellectual freedom, open access in scholarly publishing and community building through cultural programming.”

In Tampa, she “will guide the museum into its next chapter” according to the statement from the center.

The Tampa Bay History Center is on the downtown Riverwalk and “serves as the official caretaker of Hillsborough County’s historic records (telling) the 12,000-year history of the region that now encompasses eight regional counties.”

The center, while far from the Champs-Élysées, is a cultural hub which, along with exhibits and programing, has an extensive collection of maps of Florida and the Caribbean. Among them, the center says are “some of the rarest and earliest maps to show settlements in continental America and Mexico.”

The Tampa Bay History Center, according to its 2024 IRS Form 990 posted on the nonprofit research company Candid GuideStar’s website, has $20.87 million in assets.