Angie Myers spent more than a decade balancing Charlotte Mecklenburg Library's books before the system handed her its top job outright. After 15 months running things on an interim basis, Myers has been named the library system's first female chief executive officer, taking permanent command just as construction crews push forward on a $137 million Main Library rebuild in Uptown Charlotte.
The appointment, reported by the Charlotte Observer, caps a nationwide search that stretched more than a year, according to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Board of Trustees. Myers is an accountant by trade with more than 25 years of professional experience, including about 15 years at the library system itself, where she held roles as finance director and later chief finance and administration officer. She also worked for Mecklenburg County government for roughly five years and earned her MBA about 15 years ago, according to the Observer's reporting.
Myers takes over an organization that employs more than 500 people, operates more than 20 branches across the county, and counts more than 70 percent of its workforce as female, per the Observer. She has lived in Mecklenburg County for more than two decades, in the same house for 21 years, and has two children enrolled in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools — a detail that puts her personal life squarely inside the community the library serves.
A Finance Background Steering a Historic Project
Myers has said her background in numbers is exactly what the moment calls for. According to the Observer, she described her finance training as equipping her to be “a strong, stable leader focused on organizational sustainability” — a framing that matters given the scale of what she inherits. Charlotte Mecklenburg Library's adopted operating budget for fiscal year 2027 runs approximately $62.9 million, with roughly $57 million of that flowing directly from Mecklenburg County funding, according to Tony Karak.
The centerpiece of her tenure is the new Main Library going up on North Tryon Street, on the same site where Charlotte's central library has stood since 1903, when it opened as a Carnegie public library backed by a $25,000 grant from industrialist Andrew Carnegie, per Wikipedia. The new building, designed by Snøhetta and Clark Nexsen, spans roughly 108,000 to 115,000 square feet across five to six levels and will include two outdoor terraces, meeting spaces, a cafe, and an expanded Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room genealogy center, according to Clark Nexsen. Axios reports the $137 million project is now slated to open in spring 2027, with construction timeline shifts having pushed the date back from earlier targets. Myers has been involved with the project since its beginning and has called it a once-in-a-generation undertaking, per the Observer.
Public Money and Private Dollars Fund the Rebuild
The Main Library's price tag is being covered through a mix of $72 million in public funds from Mecklenburg County and $65 million in private donations funneled through the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation's CommonSpark capital campaign, Hoodline previously reported. That private fundraising push has included major corporate commitments, such as a $1 million grant from PNC Financial Services, per the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Foundation.
Myers succeeds Marcellus “MT” Turner, who departed as CEO in May 2025 after leading the system since July 2021, when he arrived following a ten-year tenure as executive director of the Seattle Public Library. Turner is credited with eliminating library overdue fines during his time in Charlotte, according to the South Seattle Emerald's earlier coverage of his career. Myers served as interim CEO in the gap between his departure and her own permanent hiring.
Digital Costs and a Damaged Branch Add Pressure
Myers steps into the role as North Carolina public libraries statewide contend with rising digital content costs. Publishers are charging libraries upwards of $55 for temporary two-year e-book licenses, compared with average consumer retail prices of $13, consuming half or more of some local library collection budgets, according to Carolina Public Press. It's the kind of budget squeeze that puts Myers' accounting background to a real-world test.
Closer to home, the system is still working through fallout from the Pineville branch's forced closure in late April 2026, after a car crashed through the shared Town Hall building and caused severe structural damage. As Hoodline reported this July, Town Hall reopened for municipal business, but the ground-floor library space required ongoing structural repairs, keeping it off-limits to patrons for months.
What Myers Says Comes Next
Looking ahead, Myers said she plans to fill two vacancies on her leadership team, which will be roughly 50 percent librarians once fully staffed, per the Observer's interview. She also said she intends to spend more time with library staff, branches, the outreach team and the community — a priority she frames as central to her leadership style even as she manages the system's largest capital project in its history.
The library is currently about halfway through a three-year strategic planning initiative launched roughly two years ago, with pillars including welcome and access, learn and engage, and prepare and excel — plans that also encompass the new Main Library itself. The system says it plans to begin planning its next strategic cycle once the current plan concludes. Beyond books, Charlotte Mecklenburg Library provides internet access, electronic and online resources, and workforce development partnerships, and it works with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools on early education efforts, according to the Observer's reporting.
Asked for a book recommendation, Myers pointed to “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi, a novel she said focuses on community, kindness and empathy — themes she suggested resonate with the library's broader mission. It's a fitting note for a CEO who, after 15 years inside the system's finance office, now finds herself, in her own words, aiming to be one of the library's constants during a period of dramatic change.
