Dr. Rocío Caballero-Gill is a pioneering advocate for Latina, disabled and minoritized scientists. Although she is still early in her career, she has given more than 15 years of service that have had lasting impacts on the well-being of diverse scientists globally.

Dr. Caballero-Gill is a co-founder of the GeoLatinas and served as its first president. GeoLatinas was founded in 2018 as an inclusive, international, member-driven global organization that centers on Latinas and promotes the mentoring and retention of all minoritized geoscientists. She is a trailblazer in fostering leadership via professional and personal development initiatives, increasing the visibility of Latinas in geoscience, and promoting retention of geoscientists across ranks. She has an uncanny ability to build community, centering and empowering Latinas while uplifting and making room for other minoritized individuals. The sense of community seen in GeoLatinas is one of her lasting impacts on the group, allowing the organization to have reach well beyond the Earth and planetary science community. She is attentive to every detail that creates an inclusive community — from making sure her community members don't have to eat alone at conferences to ensuring that all voices are heard in organizational decisions and everything in between. Her leadership style has been likened to a career coach cheering for you, always seeing the potential in GeoLatinas' members.

Dr. Caballero-Gill's activities extend well beyond the GeoLatinas. She is the principal investigator of the CycloCohort Program, an early-career springboard for inclusion, diversity, equity and justice focused leadership in geoscience and astronomy. She designed a transformative model for equitable recruitment and selection of diverse graduate students and postdoctoral researchers for the CycloAstro Project, making room for diverse people who might have been overlooked by the traditional recruitment processes. In addition, she is a team lead of professional development for Climatematch Academy, an international project to democratize climate science through the empowerment of people from all backgrounds by strategically increasing access to computational science, education and networking. Beyond these formal initiatives, she uses social media to raise awareness about living and doing science with an invisible chronic disorder, sharing her personal story and welcoming others to imagine themselves doing science and pursuing their dream career.

Through all her efforts, Dr. Caballero-Gill is transforming the Earth and planetary sciences to be a place where people from gender and sexual minoritized groups and different racial, ethnic, cultural and national backgrounds and first-generation, immigrant and disabled scientists can thrive.

— Nicole M. Gasparini
Tulane University
New Orleans, Louisiana

The teams who created the “Call for a Robust Anti-Racism Plan for the Geosciences,” led by Dr. Hendratta Ali and “No Time for Silence,” led by Dr. Vernon Morris. These two teams created an important dialogue and a framework for being anti-racist in geosciences that is being used by organizations around the world to make our community more diverse and inclusive. Their work served as the foundation to AGU’s eight deliberate steps that we committed to taking to support our Black and Brown family, friends, colleagues and students.