Associate Professor, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, NB, Canada

AGU embraces the global community and welcomes leaders representing various identities, voices and perspectives. List any identities, voices and perspectives you would bring, including but not limited to nationality, regional representations, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and anything else you feel comfortable sharing.

I am a woman from Atlantic Canada, and much of my research takes place in the North Atlantic ocean. I am both a biological oceanographer and a conservation biologist in fairly equal measure. I bring perspectives on bridging these disciplines to translate fundamental ocean science and technology into conservation applications. I work directly with fishermen, marine transport industries, governments and policymakers to help improve sustainable global trade and fisheries. I have no special perspectives to bring from a racial or ethnic standpoint; my racial background is typical for my region of the world.

Volunteer experience that you feel relates to this position:

I sat on the board of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium for two 3-year terms. The board organizes an annual conference (~400 virtual and in person attendees), reviews conference abstracts, and reviews database access requests. I sat on the Scientific Program Committee, and organized/chaired a 2,500 attendee poster session, for the 2017 Society of Marine Mammalogy meeting. I regularly attend and chair a session at the biennial Ocean Sciences Meeting.

The section secretary role is determined by individual sections. If needed, the secretary might be asked to serve as an alternate to the president or president-elect at a Council meeting.

As part of the section leadership team, how will you work in partnership with your president, president-elect, other leaders, and staff to communicate with and engage your members to achieve AGU’s vision, values, mission, and goals?

The President-elect of the Ocean Sciences section would like to work on fostering greater collaboration among the major oceanographic societies with additional joint meetings (beyond the biennial Ocean Sciences Meeting), joint publication efforts, joint awards, etc. This is important because there are several major oceanography societies in North America alone that each have different visions and missions, but often scientists only belong to a subset of them (or can only afford to participate in a subset, which could be an equity issue). I envision supporting the President-elect with communications to our membership, and the membership of other societies (I also belong to the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography), to find concrete ways in which the members can benefit from greater inter-society collaborations.

I would like to work with AGU leaders and members to represent membership values to policymakers, particularly around valuing and celebrating ocean science's role in society. I am personally committed to advancing ocean science for the benefit of humanity. Anti-evidence decision making in public policy remains common, highlighting the continued need for consistent representation and engagement from the science community in this domain.