Denise Hills Candidate Statement 2022
Denise Hills, Program Director, Energy Investigations at Geological Survey of Alabama, Candidate for Vice President
I would be honored to continue to serve the ESIP community as Vice President for 2022. The ESIP community has accomplished a lot in the past year and continues to thrive in a changing world. I feel privileged to give back to a community that has given me so much.
My involvement with ESIP goes back to 2012, when I virtually attended my first meeting and immediately felt welcomed into a community that truly is about Making Data Matter. Being "new" was no barrier to getting involved, as I was able to engage right away in various committees and clusters. Since the Geological Survey of Alabama became an ESIP member in 2013, I have been involved in several committees and collaboration areas, including Data Stewardship (member, co-chair); Partnership (member); Governance (member, chair); Nominations (chair); Community Data (member); and many others. I’ve served in a variety of leadership positions outside of ESIP as well, including Geological Society of America (Chair, Geoinformatics Division; Secretary-Treasurer, Geology and Society Division); American Geophysical Union (President, Earth and Space Science Informations; Chair, Position Statement Committee; Member, Falkenberg Awards Committee); Parent Teacher Association (PTA) (Local unit (school) officer; State Secretary; State VP of Programs); and Scouting USA (local unit leader; Black Warrior Council VP of Membership).
Being a part of ESIP has allowed me to grow in my career. I am an "accidental" informaticist, with little formal training. I am constantly learning more things that I don't know but I know that I can rely on ESIP to help me find the people I need to learn from and collaborate with in order to move geoscience data forward. ESIP is a community that embraces the value of Earth and space science data and works to make it more findable and accessible, more readily usable (e.g., interoperable) and reusable, while maintaining high ethical standards around privacy, openness, and giving appropriate credit.
A unique aspect of ESIP is just how much of the work is from the ground up. ESIP is very much a community, but one reason it functions so well is the light-weight and flexible governance in place. The past year has presented unique challenges to the world at large and ESIP in particular, and the flexibility of ESIP’s governance has allowed us, as a community, to continue to thrive.
My role this past year as ESIP VP has been to help implement the decisions of ESIP’s Board, to represent ESIP to the broader Earth and space science community, to support the ESIP President, and to serve as Chair of the Program Committee and Meetings Committee. Along with ESIP staff, I have helped lead discussions with the Program Committee about how it should evolve to best serve the larger ESIP community. The Meetings Committee was busy this year assisting ESIP staff and the broader community make the best of virtual-only offerings, and has been instrumental in discussions about what ESIP meetings could look like moving forward.
Thank you for your consideration. There is always work to do in ESIP; I hope that you allow me to further the work I’ve begun as VP this past year so that we all continue to make ESIP the most rewarding community to participate in. If you want more detail on my career and professional experience, please check out my CV. You can always reach out to me if you have any questions about my vision for the ESIP VP or about ESIP in general.
