Many Library and Information Science program students state that they are not interested in management positions. Many would prefer to focus on a subject specialty or technical services. When students are interested in management, there is no clear course of study. To understand what motivated some librarians to choose to become managers, and what motivates them to keep being managers, I used a narrative inquiry approach to collect the experiences and stories of librarians who are currently managers at academic libraries in the southeastern United States. The research question I used as a framework for my study was: What experiences motivate academic librarians to become managers?Six librarians participated in my study. The participants were purposefully selected because they were current managers below the rank of dean at an academic library in the southeastern United States. The data were collected using a semi-structured interview process designed to gather experiences that could be shaped into a narrative that conveyed each participant's stories in a meaningful way to the teller and the reader. The analysis of the data resulted in four themes: (1) parental influence, (2) management/leadership, (3) management education, professional development, and (4) managerial motivation. These findings have implications for current and future managers, those tasked with educating managers, and those who need to hire and support managers at academic libraries.