CEO, Metadata Game Changers, Boulder, CO, USA

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'm a white, settler woman based in Boulder, CO. I use the term settler because I work with place-based communities, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and want to indicate that I am not from the places that I live and work. I am an ally to minoritized people. I use my voice and the position of relative power afforded by my identities to create space for others. I believe data sovereignty is important, and build systems that give people the authority to control their data. I fight for climate justice through my work operationalizing FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) and CARE (collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, and ethics) principles at biological field stations.

I also bring a non-traditional career perspective. I led Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) as executive director from 2014 to 2020, before returning to graduate school for a doctorate in Information Science later in my career. I work as an independent researcher and am the CEO and co-founder of Metadata Game Changers, a woman-owned small business. I work internationally at field stations, including the Gump South Pacific Research Station in Mo'orea, French Polynesia. These experiences give me a view of AGU's community from outside the tenure-track academic default that shapes much of our leadership.

Volunteer experience that you feel relates to this position:

I am on the board of OpenAQ and serve as the treasurer. I am the inaugural chair of the Local Contexts Biocultural Sciences Working Group. I served as the chair of the AGU Data Management Advisory Board from 2017 to 2020. Each of these roles requires strategic vision, organizational skills, and follow-through to help nonprofit organizations deliver on their missions. These roles also demonstrate my involvement in the broader informatics community.

Section presidents and presidents-elect serve as members of the AGU Council and lead their sections. The AGU Council is a diverse forum of perspectives that meets throughout the year to provide input to the AGU Board, staff, and other parts of the organization. Three communities within the Council - committee chairs, section leaders, and students and early career scientists - serve different roles in AGU and bring unique viewpoints to ongoing discussions.

This role aims to catalyze community and build AGU as envisioned by the strategic plan. This leadership position is a dual role: helping to advance AGU’s strategic plan as a member of Council; and leading your section. How would you support the Board, staff and other sections to achieve AGU’s vision, values, mission, and goals? How will you engage with members of your section to execute AGU’s strategic plan?

The Informatics section president-elect position brings together three threads of my career: governance experience from leading ESIP and serving on nonprofit boards, my research in informatics, and a long-standing commitment to serving the AGU Informatics community. The Informatics section sits at a unique intersection within AGU, presenting an opportunity to both support the Board, staff, and other sections and to engage the section. I would support AGU leadership and the section as a bidirectional connector.

As ESIP's Executive Director (2014-2020), I collaborated with AGU leadership to launch the Data Help Desk at the Fall Meeting. This program is an example of designing activities that support AGU goals and the community, and it has grown in ways I could not have imagined. Fostering partnerships between informatics and other sections catalyzes discovery (goal 1) and addresses societal challenges (goal 3).

I recently completed a doctorate in Information Science. My research focuses on the social side of sociotechnical challenges. I currently study how scientists and communities work together. This work prepares me to support goal 2, which requires new ways of working together to build kinder science and include multiple ways of knowing. Informatics is a natural place for new ways of scientific practice to emerge. I would partner with other sections to host sessions that include Indigenous knowledge infrastructure. Early in my career, Informatics members welcomed me to participate at Fall Meeting. I will work to make those pathways clear to newcomers and support informatics section engagement efforts like the newsletter.