Janice Lachance, JD, FASAE, is the Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union, the world's largest association of Earth and space scientists. She brings a career spanning policy, law, and public service and leads AGU at a critical moment, ensuring that science remains a trusted, independent, and consequential force in discovery and in addressing challenges facing humanity and the environment.

Born and raised in Biddeford, Maine, and the first in her extended family to attend college, Lachance earned her law degree from Tulane University before rising to become a trusted advisor to U.S. Presidents. Nominated by President Clinton and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, from 1997 to 2001 she served as the Cabinet-ranked Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, overseeing policy and programs for 2.1 million members of the nation’s civil service.

Lachance pioneered ground-breaking advances at OPM: expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act to support caregiving; launching affordable long-term care insurance for millions of federal employees, service members, and retirees; modernizing health and retirement programs; expanding recruitment from underrepresented communities; revitalizing the Presidential Management Fellows Program; and creating USAJOBS.gov—the federal government’s primary hiring platform. President Biden later appointed her to chair the Federal Prevailing Rate Advisory Committee and serve on the Federal Salary Council.

At AGU, where she has served for eight years, first as Interim Chief Operating Officer and later as Executive Vice President of Strategic Leadership and Global Outreach before assuming the Executive Director and CEO role in 2025, Lachance has transformed the organization from the inside out. She led the reconstruction of its Washington, D.C., headquarters into the city's first net-zero energy renovation of a commercial building; has forged partnerships across international science societies and the United Nations; and continues to advance a strategic vision that positions science as central to solving humanity's most pressing challenges.

Lachance’s other leadership roles in the nonprofit sector include the Special Libraries Association, the Better Business Bureau Institute for Marketplace Trust, and the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals.

Among her honors, Lachance is a Fellow of the American Society of Association Executives, an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, and a past president of the American Society for Public Administration. Lachance is admitted to practice law in the state of Maine, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Supreme Court.