Professor / Chief Academic Officer, University of Arizona / Arizona Board of Regents, Tucson, AZ, 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 bring an international identity and perspectives to this position. I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, in a spectacular natural environment but under the horrendous apartheid regime. As a student I had colleagues who were detained without trial, I witnessed police brutality, and I experienced the realities of near civil war with car bombs, violence, extreme poverty and an entrenched racist government. Although relatively privileged, I was nonetheless exposed to the challenges of living, studying and doing academic work in a developing and isolated country.

That background was in stark contrast to life in a quiet college town as an international graduate student at Penn State. Still, I quickly learned that we struggle with many of the same underlying social issues here in the U.S.

As I gained experience in my career and learned administration, I collaborated internationally and had opportunities for reviewing science as well as institutions and policies in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. I came to appreciate the range of international higher education and research structures, who has access to those resources, as well as the many ways different countries use to advance the practice of science and the solutions it offers.

Volunteer experience that relates to this position:

My volunteer experience in professional organizations spans a wide range, including journal editor and many council and committee roles. Most relevant to this position was my service as elected and executive board member of the Council of Graduate Schools, overseeing governance, finances and personnel of that national organization. I have also gained extensive experience, including financial oversight, serving on the boards of several community musical, cultural, fundraising and educational organizations.

AGU continues to be financially healthy with a strong base of assets that have been and can continue to be used to support new program initiatives of value to the members. What could be the biggest challenges in linking AGU’s values, vision, mission, and goals to sustainable financial strategies? What are some ways they could be addressed?

As I learned from leading the academic and associated financial aspects of a large research university, “no margin, no mission.” To maintain and grow AGU’s financial health, we should pay attention to our largest revenues and expenses, because unattended problems there can quickly threaten our whole mission. Among the biggest variable elements of AGU’s budget are science meetings and publications. While striving to make our conferences accessible to wider audiences, we must face the reality that hybrid meetings can be more costly even while online participation decreases fossil fuel use. Likewise, we must manage the shift from legacy science publishing to open access with developing financial models. We can address these challenges through excellence in management while collaborating and conversing to understand membership priorities and communicating about tough choices.
We must invest in ambitious and well-thought-out goals as articulated in AGU’s strategic plan, and yet we must avoid overextending scope or adding too many activities that end up diluting our efforts. Focus is essential. We can address it by monitoring program effectiveness, making sure AGU’s resources are efficiently deployed.

We should work to counteract the expanding intrusion of political polarization into science funding for AGU and its members. We should likewise support AGU’s diversity goals and guard against possible negative funding consequences, noting how diversity, equity and inclusion have been weaponized to threaten support at universities. The solution is to lead with our values, including respect, integrity and excellence, to demonstrate that our science is best when AGU is welcoming and diverse.

Section affiliations:
Atmospheric Sciences; Biogeosciences; GeoHealth; Global Environmental Change; Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology; Science and Society