Associate Director, Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network, Goleta, CA, USA

AGU embraces the global community and welcomes diverse leaders from around the world, 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 any other identity you feel comfortable sharing.

My disciplinary background is in public and environmental anthropology. I've worked from the local to international level, primarily focused on climate and environmental justice; climate adaptation; disaster recovery, risk reduction, and mitigation; and community-led resettlement. My community engagement is grounded in participatory action research, guided by the communities, in which I work to facilitate intercultural collaborations and partnerships, and focus on knowledge sharing for policy-relevant research and actions toward post-carbon livelihoods and communities.

Volunteer experience that relates to this position:

Co-Director, Culture and Disaster Action Network, which works to build and integrate cultural comprehension into the work of disaster risk reduction and disaster recovery (2021-present); Co-Founder, Disaster Justice Network, a volunteer network lending support for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery processes (2020-present); Author, 3rd, 4th, and 5th U.S. National Climate Assessments (2014-present); American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Conference Committee member (2020-present); Executive Planning Committee Member, American Anthropological Association (2018-2019)

This leadership position is a liaison role; it is one that aims to catalyze community and build AGU as envisioned by the strategic plan. How will you engage with members of your section to advance AGU’s strategic plan? How will you facilitate engagement with other sections and people outside AGU to support our mission?

My engagement with members of the Science and Society section will focus on asking them to first consider what they bring to the table to share and contribute and what they aim to learn in terms of collaborative work to address scientific and societal challenges. We will look at the strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results we will work to achieve, and focus on how to work collectively, across a diversity of disciplines, geographies, identities, cultures, and knowledge systems to address some of our most wicked scientific and societal problems, including the climate crisis. This work will expand out to reach across the AGU sectors, in asking their leadership to consider socially mapping their organizational partnerships that can contribute to addressing these challenges and how they can work together to reduce the boundaries and sticking points separating science and society. This will help to facilitate developing a more complete look at the constellation of action-pathways and partnerships to advance Earth and space sciences and increase the benefit for humanity and the environment.

Section affiliations:

Global Environmental Change; Science and Society