Amber Budden Candidate Statement 2021

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Amber Budden, Director of Learning and Outreach at National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Candidate for Data Stewardship Committee Chair

Thank you for considering my nomination for a second term as the Chair of the ESIP Data Stewardship Committee.

2020 has been an unusual year with our regular opportunities for in-person workshops and committee activities limited to remote participation. Nonetheless, I have sought to build an integrative, cross program, collaborative environment to support advancement on project goals defined during the 2019 term, in addition to fostering new activity. This cross committee approach was exemplified during the summer meeting where I co-organized a series of workshops on “Structured Data on the Web: Putting Best Practice to Work” with the Semantic Technologies Committee, Science on Schema.org cluster and Information Technology and Interoperability Committee. I also co-led a workshop focussed on repository discovery resulting in a Funding Friday award.

I am an open science advocate, community manager and data stewardship educator that has worked within the Earth Science community for the last ten years as Director for Community Engagement and Outreach and co-lead of DataONE, a federated network of data repositories serving the environmental and Earth science communities. I am also co-PI of the Arctic Data Center, a NSF-funded repository providing curation and preservation services for Arctic research data, and collaborate on Make Data Count in elevating and exposing data level metrics, promoting transparency, credit, and data citation best practices. Across these initiatives I lead working group activities, coordinate outreach, develop documentation and best practices around data management, provide focused trainings, and generate learning and informational resources designed to support the researcher, libraries and infrastructure communities. In addition to my recent position as Chair of the Data Stewardship Committee I have worked closely with ESIP over the last several years to deliver a co-located user’s meeting focused on DataONE developments and infrastructure, and to foster collaboration and connection during ESIP workshop activities. I have also been actively engaged in the development of the ESIP Data Management Training Clearinghouse, originating from a collaboration between ESIP, USGS and DataONE. In my position as Director of Learning and Outreach at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), I continue to serve the DataONE and Arctic communities, in addition to the broader ecological community, leveraging the expertise NCEAS holds in ecological synthesis and data reuse. As chair of the Data Stewardship Committee I will continue to build upon my experience and draw from my practice as an ecological research scientist, community builder, and repository manager to support the development and promotion of data stewardship best practices and to foster broader connections across communities for increased awareness, collaboration and data literacy. I have gained huge value in being a part of the ESIP community and look forward to the continued opportunity to give back.