 Welcome to the autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Earth Resources. We have an engaging and hopefully thought-provoking meeting planned for today. My name is Jim Slutes and I serve as chair of the committee. Before we get started I'd like to acknowledge that while today we are gathered virtually the National Academy's is physically housed on the traditional land of the nuk-kutch-tunk and Piscataway peoples past and present. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who steward it throughout the generations. We honor and respect the enduring relationships that exist between these peoples and nations of this land. We thank them for the resilience in protecting this land and aspire to uphold our responsibilities to their example. We hope this meeting will provide an opportunity for participants and attendees to reflect on colonialism and its ongoing effects and to center the communities that are affected in our work. We also want to acknowledge that the expertise held by different Native communities is crucial to this work. The Committee on Earth Resources is a standing committee of the Board on Earth Sciences and Resources and serves the community by monitoring and engaging on issues relevant to energy and non-fuel mineral resources. The committee examines issues related to the availability, supply, delivery, and impacts of energy and mineral resources. The health and safety of the workforce engaged in resource exploration and production and the management and stewardship of the lands on which they are located. The committee serves stakeholders with objective evidence-based scientific and engineering information to help support decision and policymaking. And I will add committee members serve as volunteers in this effort. On the screen before you see a list of our committee members and before we get underway, we'll quickly introduce the committee. The committee bios are available on the National Academy's website. We have an exciting program, so we won't do long extended introductions. I'm just going to just let you know everybody's name. Hi. Again, I'm Jim Slutes. I work for the National Petroleum Council at Federal Advisory Committee. Joining me on the committee are Bridget Ailing from the University of Nevada, Dan Connell from Consol Energy Incorporated, Doug Hollett, who's with Melroy-Hollett Technology Partners, and John Marsden with Metallurgeum, Deborah Peacock with Peacock Law, and Roberson Tate from Geothermex, Tamika Searcy, BP America, and David Spears with the Virginia Department of Energy. I also want to acknowledge and express our appreciation for the long-standing and continuing support of our sponsors, which are the Department of Energy, both the Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Office, and the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, specifically the Geothermal Technologies Group, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and again, specifically their mining group. Again, thank you to our sponsors and thank you to our committee members, and you'll be seeing them throughout the meeting as we move along. Over the past year, the committee has been exploring aspects of the energy transition within our mission of Earth Resources. A fundamental premise that has evolved is that all future energy scenarios will require Earth Resources. These Earth Resource needs are likely to have greater breadth in science and technology than past demands. This will include technology for carbon storage, expanded opportunities for geothermal energy, and growing demand for critical minerals. In our Spring 2021 meeting, which we, you know, a few months ago, we explored in detail the role of critical minerals and materials in the energy transition. If you weren't able to join us, then we invite you to review the video webinars of those sessions available on the committee website at the National Academy. In 2022, we'll be continuing Earth Resources emerging issues, opportunities, and challenging. So please stay tuned to our future meetings. But one component common among all the Earth Resource communities is the evolving workforce needed to support Earth Resources for the energy transition. The issue of developing new talent for the coming decades remains a relevant and possibly growing challenge. In part, this is because a new generation of potential of scientists and engineers are not necessarily seeing the critical role and breadth of Earth Resources will play in both for future energy and environmental stewardship. Furthermore, it is in an environment where the Earth Resources science and technology community is less diverse than other STEM fields. There's data to show that Earth Resource STEM fields have made little progress and diversity over the past few decades. The committee's autumn 2020 meeting titled Pathways Toward the Future Just, Equitable, Diverse, and Inclusive Energy Workforce addressed this issue. The objective of the 2020 meeting was not just to highlight the issue but to position the committee to be a part of the solution and future activities. Today's meeting is the direct outgrowth of the work last December. Today's meeting on Earth Resources Career Fair is the follow-on action steps from last year's meeting. First, let me acknowledge that today's event is a pilot project. We are hopeful that this pilot will lead to an ongoing National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Earth Resources career event. Everyone who is participating is part of the pilot project and we appreciate all of your contributions to make this a success and we also value your feedback as we move forward. So with that, we're going to get underway but I'll mention a couple housekeeping items before we get started. An important part of our meeting today is for our committee and audience to have the opportunity to engage with our speaker and panelists. You see on the agenda that we have a couple points for that to take place. For committee members, school participants, and agency representatives who would like to ask a question of our panelists, please use the raise the hand feature in Zoom so we can unmute you. For the public attendees watching the webcast, please contribute your ideas into Slido and we'll work to bring those into the conversation. So with that, let me get it moved to get us started and I'm pleased to introduce our keynote speaker. I'm sorry, I had a little technical glitch there, Tanya. Let me just do your introduction. Tanya Trujillo, the assistant secretary of water and science is a water lawyer with more than 20 years of experience working on complex natural resources management issues and interstate and transboundary water agreements. She most recently worked as a project director with the Colorado River Sustainability Campaign. Before then, she served as the executive director of the Colorado River Board of California. She has served as senior counsel to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and as counselor to the assistant secretary of water for water and science at Interior. A native New Mexican, Tanya attended Stanford University and the University of Iowa College of Law. Tanya, I'll turn the floor over to you. Sorry about that little glitch there. No problem. Thank you very much and thank you to the National Academies for hosting the event today and for including me in this discussion. My office at the Department of the Interior is located very close to the National Academy building there on the Mall in Washington and I have been able to walk over there frequently and one of my favorite stops is to say hello to the great statue that you have of Albert Einstein sitting sitting on the Mall. I appreciate being being here with you all today. I am a native New Mexican. I am a lawyer by background and have have had a variety of experiences in my career always working very closely with technical experts from a variety of fields whether it be geologists or hydrologists or economists or social scientists. It's great to have a lot of different expertise areas of expertise that have fed into my career and enabled me to really have some incredible experiences and that's probably the biggest recommendation I would have just going into this type of a career discussion is that I recommend to all of the young people who are listening in to be able to be very open and to be able to say yes to the opportunities that are available. I know that the mindset of yes I can is something that has benefited me and I really appreciate just now that I'm working as an assistant secretary at the Department of the Interior. I get to work very closely with the USGS science teams and the Bureau of Reclamation as the two bureaus that I work most closely with but I work also with the other secretaries offices whether it be Fish and Wildlife and Park Service or the Energy Minerals groups or the Native American offices. We have a great team at Interior and I encourage all of the young people who are looking to start their careers to check us out for opportunities. I of course am also honored to be able to work very closely with our secretary Deb Holland. She is the first Native American Secretary of the Department of the Interior and has been a great role model and colleague for all of us as we've started with our administration this year. I know that this presentation in the forum is designed to provide some background information to undergraduates who are studying in the earth and environmental sciences areas and I would say you are absolutely at the right place at the right time. The challenges that we are seeing and facing in our world on climate change on energy issues on sustainability and response to increasing hazards that we're seeing as a result of that changing climate those challenges are very daunting that will require not only a good basis in technical science and technical capabilities but also good people and so I appreciate the ability to highlight and emphasize the need to approach these challenges from a variety of backgrounds from a variety of cultures and traditional ecological knowledge as well to help bring a well balanced approach to how we are putting our solutions together. There is no doubt that climate change is real and it is affecting us throughout all of our communities in a lot of different ways not only from the drought conditions that I work closely with in the western united states but also increased situations relating to flooding the extreme heat circumstances the extended wildfire situations that we're seeing in many places all of those types of conditions really emphasize the need to have that strong technical basis for how we're approaching the response efforts and our mitigation efforts as well. We want to continue to make strides in those response efforts utilize the best available science as we do our work it is it has really been an absolute honor to be able to work very closely with the teams at the USGS and I've also had the opportunity to work as the chairperson for the department's science bureaus in general we have a science advisory council that includes representatives from all of our bureaus and all of our missionaries and it really emphasizes the need for us to be coordinating among the different mission areas that we have in the different bureaus but also to coordinate with our federal sister agencies and I know we have representatives from the department of energy here as as we work closely together on some of the minerals issues that we have been carefully tracking but we also work closely with other agencies such as the EPA and the department of agriculture and the core of engineers all of our missions contain overlapping areas and we have a common need to utilize this the science foundations that we have available to be able to build build on our expertise and solve solve those problems at USGS and DOI we have been taking efforts to emphasize the need to include a wide variety of our constituents in our discussions we have tried been working hard to build communities and and affinities and emphasize the equity and conditions that we want to encourage and we have USGS has started some support groups and in collegial efforts among black scientists among Hispanic professionals among women in science and early career scientists those are grassroots efforts that are available to help our our communities and help our workforce be integrated and be successful in in their missions we are working on incorporating those types of priorities into our strategic plans and are committed to emphasizing the diversity equity inclusion and accessibility goals for our workforces I've been very fortunate to be able to work closely with the teams at interior that are prioritizing the STEM programs and emphasizing the need to reach out to young people in our communities and help encourage them to be involved in the science technology and math areas and I look forward to continuing that throughout my tenure I have a couple of great examples that would be I think are are interesting and again I'm honored to be able to be participating in some of these efforts one of my favorite programs or groups that I've been able to connect with so far is the is known as the ladies of Landsat program and that is a group that is involved with our earth observation program and they do the many different types of technical work to support the earth observation programs that we have available the Landsat program has been in place for 50 years it has provided a continuous record of observations of from from the satellites to to us here on earth to help us make decisions about our land management practices to help us document the continuing changes we see in in our various communities whether it be in our oceans and coastal regions or our desert southwest areas and that is a it is a global program so we have teams from all over all over the world who are connected and coordinating on these issues but the the ladies of Landsat was a group that I had come across in connection with tracking activities at USGS and the Landsat program and I first saw them on Twitter and I wasn't really sure what what to make of it but when I was able to participate recently just in September of this past a month ago we were part of the effort to successfully launch the Landsat 9 satellite so the Department of the Interior and USGS was a coordinating entity with our partners at NASA for the successful launch of that satellite and it was great to be actually able to meet some of the founding members of the Ladies of Landsat group and to realize that they are actually incredibly talented and great scientists who are working on these programs from across the nation and in other countries as well so it it is something that I know one of the panels will feature our our colleague Nikki Tully from the Navajo nation in my home state in New Mexico and who she is has been using the Landsat data to communicate back with her communities and to help on the water supply issues that we are so critical in our areas. The the other good example I have again to to just highlight my home state of New Mexico is there is a research chemist and engineer from who works at USGS who grew up in a small town in New Mexico where her father was an underground uranium miner and she was able has been able to earn a phd environmental engineering work and came to the USGS on a Mendenhall post doctoral fellowship she is now working at USGS and is studying the impact of energy and minerals resources development on the on the environment and I look forward to to meeting her at some time she's also named Tanya Tanya Gallegos so I look forward to seeking her out and getting to say hello sometime. I know we have many other examples of colleagues that have grown up in our USGS system and who have prioritized the idea of mentoring and encouraging the next generation of science experts. I am aware of one example a man named Bill Bromery who was the first Black geophysicist at USGS and he started as an undergraduate at Howard University in DC and began a tradition of mentoring at USGS that has continued today. He is again one of many examples that has had that type of an influence on on our communities. One one of the areas that I wanted to focus on was the fact that USGS does offer several different types of internships across its science areas its its various mission areas for undergraduate students and recent graduates. There are three particular programs that I would like to highlight that there was a cooperative summer fellowship program a pipeline program for internships and a pathways internship program so I encourage all of you to look into those opportunities. We also have programs from some of our various bureaus at Interior the National Park Service offers geoscientists in the park program internships and those are administered through a partnership with the Geological Society of America. In addition the Bureau of Land Management sponsors the GeoCores which is a geoscience internship through the geological again through the Geological Society of America. All of our land management agencies have partnerships and programs that are available to to young people to help encourage a greater involvement in the in the earth sciences area. I know from the Bureau of Reclamation there is also significant interest in trying to encourage the STEM programs and expand the interest in in those areas. We have various educational opportunities at our centers in places like California in the Great Basin area which is in the border between California and Nevada and Idaho and that in that region. We have model bridge building competitions and tours of facilities really to help encourage the the accessibility of of the information that we have available. We have Bureau of Reclamation has internship programs for people that can be coordinated with the American conservation experience and the Great Basin Institute just as two examples of what's available. Those programs are part of what we're doing on a daily basis to try to encourage that keep those capabilities. I am very happy to be a cheerleader for all of these programs and happy to be available for for questions or or any any additional feedback that folks might have for our programs. Thank you very much to the academies for sponsoring this day and I'm happy to stay connected with your work. Thanks Tanya. We appreciate you joining us and giving a great kickoff with some great examples and what I'm going to do is just remind folks that that that if there's any of the folks that are on Zoom you can raise your hand and and and we'll we'll call upon you and if there's a and and we'll figure out and if if you're on the public version enter your questions on slido and and that will that'll be placed into the chat so we can see them so we can ask those questions as well. So let me just look quick I don't want to I'll I'm going to ask you if while we're waiting and people are thinking and sometimes there's just a slight delay on the on the written questions but but Tanya one of the things I commonly get asked when I'm talking with students they you know you you know for those of us that have been in our careers for a couple a few decades we tend to we you know people look at our our our LinkedIn or our resumes and they're like oh my god how do you get all that experience and and so sometimes it's helpful for people to understand that we didn't we didn't start running agencies. We started like everybody else with an internship or or that first job and and I think if you don't mind sharing some of your your history on that and how you you know what was way back before you envisioned being an assistant secretary. Absolutely and I think I've been so fortunate to have a series of really great mentors throughout my career and have been able to have jobs that have really built upon each other in some in some ways I I do reflect back what I said originally of just having the ability to say yes to opportunities when they come in. I did I went to law school out of college and went went to law school with the hope of being able to work in natural resources areas and coming from New Mexico I I have a strong appreciation for just how precious water resources in particular are and how important it is to to understand how to navigate around those type those types of issues so I was able to work in private practice firm with some incredible lawyers that helped me you know get my feet on the ground but then was also open to transitioning from you know a law firm environment in private practice to to the public sector and working directly with the state of New Mexico on behalf of the interstate issues that that the state deals with and that was an incredible opportunity to work with with many colleagues and technical experts from the other states from the federal government from the Republic of Mexico and really understanding that some of our issues from my perspective there's a great benefit to having a lot of different input and feedback and looking at problems from a lot of different perspectives which helps us reach agreements and some pretty complicated scenarios that that we're involved with so I've been able I've been able to do a lot of different things and have experience in the federal federal government and some of the other state backgrounds and in nonprofit and NGO capacity so I encourage that that type of of broad-ranging perspectives which is great. I think there's a lot to be said and something that you mentioned Tanya that that I just want to emphasize is the role of mentors and finding people to work with as you go through the career and it's it's quite when you think back and sometimes you don't even think of them as they were your friends that you worked with but you realize in hindsight they were incredible mentors and and and helping guide you and and we did have a question that comes comes in that that I want to ask you I'm particularly want to see how you answer this having having in a you know many years ago served as in a different aging as an assistant secretary so so um so we have someone that's asked what what your average what is your average day-to-day job like? Well one of the one of the great pleasures I have is that no no day has been the same and it is it is really it is really fun and I'll just highlight the fact that I get to work with USGS which is involved in everything within the Department of the Interior but also so many different types of programs in within each of the states and in other countries in highlighting things from the satellite launching efforts the and the earth observation efforts from outer space to investigations really the the core of the planet and the geological foundations that we um we have available to us so it's it's a broad-ranging amount of work and I I love it it's a tremendous experience I'm very grateful for. Thanks so we have one additional question. These days I do I do a lot of zoom calls like everyone else and I know we're all looking forward to to uh transitioning to the uh the pandemic free environment that that we had before. Yeah the um so what you didn't mention and just for everybody knows is is that that Tanya is doing a lot of zoom calls and they probably there's probably scheduled every 30 minutes and they go more than six hours a day plus plus and then then for the evening get time to do your email. That's right I started I started today I actually started today with a congressional hearing I was a I was a witness on behalf of the Department of the Interior and the Administration and the House Natural Resources Committee providing testimony on four different pieces of legislation I'll be presenting in this this conference uh today now and then later tonight later this afternoon I'm making remarks at a Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation conference so that's part of my work as well and then interspaced in between our discussions relating to Columbia River basin issues and California issues and Colorado River basin issues so lots of lots of interesting work that's that's uh we have going on at the department. Yeah Tanya we have one of our committee members who has has raised our hand from New Mexico. Hello. And and so let me call on Debra have one real quick question after Debra gets done and I know we only have a few minutes left in the session so Debra let me let me go to you. Tanya thank you from New Mexico for all you've done for our state and now in the federal government and it's great that you're talking about your background because with careers as a lawyer you're doing many different things so people don't have to be engineers or scientists they can have all sorts of careers in order to be involved in natural resources and I'm really happy that you pointed out all of your different background experiences so anyway thank you from New Mexico and we're really happy to have you here. Thank you very much and I want to emphasize the important role of of communications and just really encourage anyone who's listening to follow any of the Twitter accounts or the Instagram accounts that the Department of Interior has we put out a tremendous amount of information about our issues the USGS alone has some really really really fun things to to watch whether it be from volcano tracking to stream gauging stories and they do try to highlight the human side of what of what we are working on emphasize the tremendous human resources that we have available there's a great federal workforce that we have and I compliment all of them for their many contributions. Tanya there was one question would be a real quick one to get to wrap up and it was just one of our universities has asked if you could could re-mention the three internships that USGS has and and just for our university folks there is going to be a breakout session with USGS so I'm sure they can delve into that a little bit more but but Tanya if you could just re re-mention those again. You bet and I'll just pull up my notes again because I didn't have a memorized we have cooperative summer fellowship program which and these are these are online I have I don't have the link up in front of me but I checked them out before I came as part of this presentation we have a pipeline program internship and then the pathways internships which is broader it's not USGS specific but some of these are great examples for for how to build you know come into the workforce and get a get a wide variety of experiences so please please check them out. And we'll let our well this will be a that'll be a heads up for our USGS colleagues for the breakout to be prepared to answer questions on this. Yep exactly. Well Tanya thanks so much for helping kick you know for kicking us off today and best wishes for your tenure in the federal government have having having done that that role in the past I want to thank you for your service and it is it really is a public service and and we all around the country should appreciate everyone that that steps up to do that so thank you and thank you very much it's great it's great to have partners there at the national academies. So with that we're going to we're going to transition now to our our panel discussion and and so to get us underway on that I'm going to introduce one of my fellow committee members who will be moderating that session and that's Tamika Searcy and Tamika serves as the petroleum systems analyst community of practice lead at BP America and Tanya is she's had a 16 year career at BP has been oriented towards petroleum exploration and production work in various basins within Wyoming the North Sea Gulf of Mexico Latin America she's originally from Georgia and she was part of the Fort Valley State University's Mathematics Science and Engineering Academy while still in high school she in she went to school at Fort Valley State University and the University of Oklahoma and so there's there's more on her bio in the in the meeting and on the website and in the interest of getting her underway in her our our panel uh Tamika I'm just going to turn it over to you. Thanks Jim as mentioned I'm Tamika Searcy I'll be the moderator for the panel discussion over this next hour this diverse panel will illustrate how to build a STEM oriented career within government agencies having spent nearly 17 years as a geoscientist in the petroleum industry solely with one company I'm excited about the panel each panelists will take two or three minutes to share his or her path with you let's begin discovering Mamadou Diallo Dr. Diallo is a program director of the division of chemical, bio, engineering, environmental and transport systems at the National Science Foundation. Dr. Diallo. Thank you very much Tamika thank you everybody thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my background and path so I'm going to actually build upon what assistant secretary Tanya through here I believe said about follow the opportunity say yes to the opportunity I am actually the perfect illustration of that so I grew up in Senegal West Africa and my first opportunity was a scholarship to go to Morocco to study mineral engineering so I went to a school of mines and to study metallurgical and mineral processing so I came back to Senegal the second opportunity was I had a scholarship to come to the United States to study English and go to graduate school at Colorado School of Mines and at Colorado School of Mines I studied chemical engineering and I graduated and left came to Washington DC because most of African student and Senegal is there was a vibrant community there so there I had an opportunity at Howard University to serve as a research associate in civil and environmental engineering so you see here I'm a mineral engineer so why would I do environmental engineering so they explained to me the job which is which involves understanding how to clean up the environment using surfactants so surfactants are like soap molecules so I'm like well maybe I don't know much about this but I accepted the job and in the process I learned a lot about colloidal chemistry and orders while I was at Howard a group of professors from University of Michigan came in environmental engineering and they were working with Howard University to build a center called Center for Hazardous Substance Research they're like well you know we want to include surfactant research are you interested in coming to Michigan for graduate school to work on this I'm like yes so I actually went to Michigan had a full research assistant to do my PhD in environmental engineering again I just followed the opportunity while at Michigan I was working on my thesis and I realized well I really don't understand enough of colloidal chemistry to really do my work so then my advisor said you know Michigan has this opportunity where you could earn a master's in physical chemistry or any chemistry while you're doing your PhD in environmental engineering I'm like yes I like to do that so anyway to cut the story short I earned my master's in physical chemistry and PhD in environmental engineering so I was doing my graduate studies again opportunity a Caltech professor came at Michigan to give a talk in environment in chemistry so I attended the talk it's like you know we got the chance to talk to professor Harry Gray like I have these Caltech faculty who's really interested in petroleum chemistry colloidal science and orders I think maybe your background much and since you interested in physical computational chemistry why don't I connect to you guys so one thing left to another after my PhD at Michigan I got a essentially postdoc to go to Caltech to do chemistry so at Caltech I developed essentially computational chemistry skill to fast forward right now at NSF I am an environmental engineering program director and my background enabled me to work with program director from chemistry from geoscience orders and this is something that I never planned so follow the opportunity thank you excellent Dr. Diallo next up we'll have Jordan Marie Dudley a project manager and planetary geochemist under a Jacob Jets contract Jordan Marie Hi Tamika thank you hello everyone my name is Jordan Marie Dudley I currently work as a project manager and a planetary geochemist for Jacobs technology on the the Jets contract at Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas so I've been in Houston for about three years now and the first two and a half years I worked primarily as a scientist doing research and then I recently started working as a as a project manager this past May and so the project management part of my job looks like managing the contract budget and finances or a team of 29 research scientists in order to complete our research projects for our NASA customer and so the other side of the work that I do the actual science part of my job allows me to partake in that research studying astro materials samples from space and mostly looking at hydrogen in normally in hydrous minerals in martian meteorites and other differentiated meteorites and then working on some method development for analysis of winter samples as far as my background prior to this so I grew up in a very small city in meridian Connecticut on the east coast and I was the the first in my family to to venture out leave the city and get a college degree and so after high school I went to boston university to study chemistry and visual art and then once I finished my undergraduate career I realized I didn't actually know what I wanted to do with my chemistry degree but I was interested in earth science so I took a year off and I decided to explore different careers specifically in earth sciences that I could apply my chemistry background to so I took some classes at a local state school I did an internship in the mining industry with three port macparan in Arizona I worked some other jobs selling coffees trying to pay pay tuition and then the the pivotal decision that I made that is what led me to my job today was that I decided I wanted research experience to see if I wanted to go to graduate school so I I made a list of professors in geology departments in Connecticut and I reached out to them and I asked them if I could volunteer in their labs I explained that I had a chemistry background and that I was interested in figuring out what I could do with that and so the one professor that responded to me what actually ran a solar system geochemistry laboratory at Wesleyan University and so I ended up volunteering there for a full year and I absolutely loved it and I was amazed that I could use this small-scale lab chemistry and apply it to these very large solar system phenomena and so I ended up doing my masters there and working with the professor that I had volunteered with as my thesis advisor and then landing a NASA fellowship writing a thesis on water anomaly and hydrous minerals and meteorites and then through networking presenting my work at the lunar and planetary science conference here in Houston Texas I eventually ended up getting this position and moved to Houston so that's just a little bit about me in my background thank you Tamika thanks Jordan Marie what a solar experience you've had thank we'll move on to someone closer to the student's journey Elizabeth Smith is a PhD student at the University of Delaware studying plant and soil sciences Elizabeth yes hello I am a closer to the student experience I'm a 2018 graduate of Spelman College so hello to my Spelman siblings and my former advisor Dr. DeCalle I saw he was on the call and also a graduate of the MC program at Fort Valley State so hello to my Wildcats as you said I'm a PhD student in plant and soil science at the University of Delaware my work focuses on using digital soil mapping and machine learning techniques to look at soil characteristics currently looking at the spatial variability of nitrogen and moving towards model sensitivity and soil respiration um so yes so I got into the geosciences like I said through the CEDA program my freshman year we went to the USGS headquarters and I just fell in love and I was like I have to do this um and also reiterating the importance of internships my going into my senior year at Spelman I did an internship again at USGS but it was whole and fell in love with research and knew that that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life so I applied to graduate school um got a fully funded position at the University of Delaware worked on my grant writing and also a NSF graduate research fellow so I'm in it for the long call how excellent Elizabeth especially being an HBCU graduate well done next up is Crystal Tolikadova who serves as a principal hydrologist for the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources over to you Dr. Tolikadova so I just shared my introduction in the Navajo language I am Crystal Tolikadova I am of the bitter water clan born for the tangled people clan my maternal grandfather's clan is the yucca fruit strung on a line and my paternal grandfather's clan is the water that flows together so naturally I would go into water I am a principal hydrologist at the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources Water Management Branch and I've had a great opportunity to be able to you know not necessarily have a knowledge about what I wanted to do early on I've always been an explorer and scientist early in my life growing up around magnificent features like my virtual background and as in places like Monument Valley Canyon Deshaix Grand Canyon naturally that beauty also it encouraged me to learn more and so I went to the University of New Mexico I initially was a double E major unfortunately I wasn't very good at programming and so had the hard thought process of you know really having a reflection of what I wanted to do in my life and from that point forward knew that I had a lot of connection to having knowledge about where I am from and where water is stored so in the southwestern United States we rely upon ground water with securing our water rights we've had the opportunity to do water development associated with surface water so my degree is in bachelors of earth and planetary scientists from the University of New Mexico a master's in water resources also from the University of New Mexico intermittently throughout my undergrad and masters I did a lot of internships I recommend internships highly it tells you what you like and what you don't like and what you'd want to do for the rest of your life or maybe what you don't want to do the rest of your life and it also provides you an opportunity to be able to have an understanding of what skills you may need to strengthen as you progress toward a career so I work instead of doing work study I work at Los Alamos National Lab I commuted by train and by bus two hours each way from Albuquerque to Los Alamos to be able to gain research understanding and from that point forward realize I wanted to do a PhD I got my PhD from the University of Utah in geology and then I also got a interdisciplinary graduate certificate in sustainability and now I have the great opportunity to be able to use all of that I've learned throughout the years to help my tribal nation thank you wow thank you so much crystal that opened my eyes to so many things so thank you now I have the pleasure to introduce a former member of National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine Committee on seismology and geodynamics Sherilyn Williams Stroud a research scientist and structural geologist at the Illinois State Geological Survey Dr. Williams Stroud thank you Tamika um first I want to say how proud I am of where you've come because I met you when you were just still I think you were still in high school when we first met and I I um just want to make a plug for uh I crumbly's program because I think that program is doing a lot to help increase diversity in geosciences um my background I guess I'll start as as um from when I was a kid and I'll try to go through this very quickly um I'm a second generation college graduate I the first to get a PhD um all my aunts and my mom everybody's an educator so they all taught elementary school or high school and my father worked at the defense mapping agency as a cartographer um I didn't know what he did because in those days what everything he was doing was secret but it wasn't the reason that I went into geoscience I went to Oberlin college as an undergraduate because I was going to be a musician and I fell in I discovered geology like so many of us do once we get into college and um get exposed to it and I thought well that's what I want to do and um I got my bachelor's degree from Oberlin college my PhD from Johns Hopkins University and um while I was working at my PhD I had the opportunity to work at the US Geological Survey um in one of the labs there I had lots of college jobs part-time jobs at the USGS and that was to me sort of my determined um predetermined pathway so I started my career working at the USGS as a research geologist I worked there for 10 years and then I went to oil and gas industry so um most of my career has been in oil and gas looking for large operators Texaco, Chevron, Occidental Oil and Gas or for um consulting our service companies and um and so I've seen both sides of the industry in terms of of um sort of development technology development within the industry are actually operating oil and gas fields but now I'm back in government working for this Illinois State Geological Survey doing research on CO2 sequestration and induced seismicity. Thanks. Thank you Dr. William Stroud. Lastly we have Amanda Labrado who is a Geological Society of America US Geological Survey Congressional Science Fellow and a biogeochemist with a broad background in Earth Environmental Sciences. Dr. Amanda Labrado. Hey there. It's really great to have to meet you all and to be part of this panel and so thank you for that and thank you to make it for the introduction. Like she said my name is Amanda Lafalo and I am born and raised from El Paso, Texas so hey there all of my fellow El Pasoans it's really great to have you all. I received my PhD this past May in the Geological Sciences from the University of Texas El Paso so Go Miners. I um also received my bachelor's from there in environmental science with a focus on geology and then went to Penn State to get my master's in geoscience and so during my undergrad I also participated in several internships and it is a huge huge bonus to do so during your undergrad and graduate degrees if you can. My first one was at the Sevilletta National Fish and Wildlife Refuge where they had a long-term ecological research project going on and had research experiences for undergrads and my second one was at Penn State through Africa Array which is how I was introduced to my advisor at that point. The last one that I did was during a gap year between my undergraduate degree and my master's and it was actually the one that really helped me realize what I wanted to do and what I wanted to focus on. It was with UNAPCO recess and I was able to look at the intersection between living and non-living things and that's how I entered the world of biogeochemistry and astrobiology and so if you have the chance to participate in programs like that do it. I also started at a community college and then worked my way up so there is no issue with that. I know a lot of people see that as a negative. I thought as a bonus or positive and so yeah that's me. Excellent Amanda thank you so much excellent panel ran on time with 30 minutes left to take questions and answers. For the committee members, school participants and agency representatives who would like to ask a question or with our panelists please raise the hand function in the feature of Zoom so that we can unmute you. For the public attendees watching the webcast please contribute your ideas into Slido and we'll work to bring those into the conversation. To get us organized a bit on the online questions I will start. My key to success has been having role models not just mentors but role models someone that looks like me in the science world. One of those roles and models is Williams Dr. Williams Stroud. From your experience Dr. Williams Stroud can you highlight key variations from geoscience roles within private sector such as petroleum versus government agencies? So when I worked at the USGS I was in the office of I don't remember what they called it but it was energy resources so we did a lot of research related to oil and gas and to me the biggest difference was that when you're working in working in government you're doing science in the public interest and when I joined the USGS the model was earth science in the public interest and I really that really resonated with me. Going to industry it's the earth science what you're doing there is basically you know to business so you're developing science or doing science to help the bottom line for the business. It's applied in both cases one is for public the public interest and the other one is for the the profit of the the big business. So so those are the main the main the two main differences. Thank you. Anyone else would like to add into that? Well let me add also in terms of the the workplace the environment I guess in government I went from government accessibility to open data and then in the private sector there's there was so much gorgeous high quality expensive data available so there's I think you have to decide what you want to do and whether you want to work with this great data and have it be a lot of it be proprietary but you still know you're advancing in science some of it comes out eventually anyway or work with data that's publicly available not maybe not as large datasets or as comprehensive datasets but I think that that's one of the one of the main one of the differences in the work environment but I also wanted to point out that the teams are pretty much the same right you have collaborative teams people work together and share to develop whatever your goal is together the same way with the same like now I'm at the at the Illinois State Geological Survey some of what we're doing is working with operators so that would be business but what we want to do is is create things that are applied that help the business but also help the environment so with the co2 projects excellent thank you we have a few questions oh would you like to add on to that dr. dello go for it yes I just want to add that you know my background is boss I'm currently at the National Science Foundation but I am what's called IPA inter-government personal agency that means I work with the university but I'm currently at the National Science Foundation I'm at Caltech so what I'm trying to get at is at the university I have to build bridges between my colleague from several disciplines to get work together I have to work with people that are bioengineering so you got to get to a point where you feel comfortable about really reaching out to people that are not necessarily trained the same way you are but that's quickly solving our big problem and that's the same thing my job at NSF is I got to build a bridge across different disciplines and most importantly you have to work with people yeah excellent thank you since you just spoke Dr. William Stroud I just I think it's more of a comment uh that you may be more familiar with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency says that the Defense Mapping Agency is one of our predecessor organizations so they wanted to give you a shout out there all right so the first hand that I saw saw raised was Dr. Carr so Dr. Carr can you from Fort Valley State University can you come off mute hello I'm going to come a little bit forward so I am here from Fort Valley State University I'm a professor here and the U.S. line says I have three students and one I can claim Amanda I can claim as my student but Tamika and Elizabeth I have the opportunity to teach there at some point and so we are in my geology lab we are going from here it's so great to see all of your stories and really Dr. Stroud is a role model for me you know people near everybody's stories so great the students here you have a question there are a lot of M.C. students here also who have come to the same pathway that Tamika and Elizabeth has and so they are referring to your story I just wanted to comment that this is a great thing that you guys have done and I'll pick up enough science so thank you fantastic thank you Dr. Carr thank you oh wow cats go ahead go ahead with your question I know my question for those who went through the M.C. program I was wondering did the M.C. program prepare you for your first graduates now or was it some other benefits affected Elizabeth I will go to you to answer that question on how well M.C. the high school program prepared you for your roles I would say that the because I didn't do the C.D. program for undergraduate but for high school it really prepared me for college and helped me open my mind to a field that I hadn't thought about before and even open my network I talked to Dr. Crumbly all the time and still keep up with the people that were in my class the ones that went into geoscience so I would say that it helps me in learning how to network and how to do research or initially how to do research that was something that I wasn't prepared for before so I would say yes it got involved absolutely second that I will say that we're not on a panel but two things it introduced me to the energy industry you know it expanded me outside of you know textile industry it brought me to energy industry so whether it was oil and gas whether it was wind whether it was solar I really expanded it in high school on what how do we bring energy to the homes of the world and so for me M.C. was fantastic the second was communications I was rich fair I was always shy in school so here I am leading and moderating today so that's the two things so those skits that you do during the summer perfect for talking all righty one of the following questions was for Dr. Labrado Amanda would would you be able to elaborate a bit on your start at the community college that you have geosciences in mind when you started what got you interested in geosciences yeah so I started doing dual credit in high school and just knew that I really love science period and so when I went to college I was doing the dual program with EPCC and UTEP that lets you take classes at both and be a student of both at once and so it was really helpful because we all know college is very expensive and so I was able to afford my classes more easily but I didn't know I wanted to go into geology initially I love science I wanted to actually do biology but when I went to orientation the sign-up table was really long for biology teachers so I went over to the environmental science table because there were less people and it seemed a little bit broader and like it had different opportunities to not only engage with biology but also geology and chemistry and so I really liked that it brought everything together and that's why I ended up doing geology to begin with um and I always collected rocks were from I'm from up past the Texas like I said and so we have the Franklin mountains right there in our backyard and I was always hiking I was always outside I was always picking up rocks and so when somebody told me I could do that for my career I thought well I mean this is perfect so um I fell into it accidentally but it has been the best thing that has ever happened so thank god for long lines right thanks Amanda next we have an online can raise from Paulina raise Paulina can you come off mute and ask your question hello good morning I wanted to ask a question to Dr. Tilly Cordova about how um she came upon that decision for her career thank you thank you for that question um for my career it's always been about a passion of what I enjoyed and so if you're going to do something the rest of your life I recommend that it's something that you enjoy and not something that you regret in the morning like oh I have to get up and work like have that type of attitude but instead you know for me it started with a fourth grade science project really my introduction with water and it was a water filtration project I won the school science fair went to a bigger city Albuquerque, New Mexico and presented there unfortunately I didn't win there but what I did realize is that you know I really enjoyed the scientific process making hypotheses trying to determine if I was right or wrong and in my work I have an opportunity to still use those problem-solving skills to be able to help with water development securing water rights oftentimes with geosciences sometimes people think the only career is with energy or other industries but in fact with geosciences there's a number of opportunities within the geosciences you can be a scientist you can study volcanoes you can work with water like I do I mean there's a plethora of job opportunities out there and geosciences are greatly needed especially geosciences from diverse backgrounds excellent yeah I love their journey thanks Crystal write it so I will direct this question to Jordan Marie starting out then someone can chime in if you like please indicate if networking and attending local and regional professional meetings help you find internships yes so I'll say that networking is probably one of the most important things for the advancement of my career so I mentioned that I took that year off after undergraduate school and I met a few different people one of them was in environmental consulting actually and they were at the time they they were a mentor even though I didn't realize that they were a mentor but they steered me in the direction of various internships and put things in my my field of view that I wouldn't have known about otherwise and so that's also part of the reason why I ended up doing that internship in Arizona with Freeport McMorrin was because this person had suggested that I try something like that just to see if that would be a route that would work for me so networking has definitely definitely been a very big proponent of my of my career so my answer to that is yes thank you and if I yeah sorry I just wanted to chime in really quickly so Dr. Carr who is from at the SU knows that one of the reasons I ever see the shift on internship during my doctoral degree was because I was part of Africa Array during my undergrad and attended one of the Africa Rays annual meetings and so networking has been huge the only reason I was part of Africa Array was because I did the Sevilla R.E. my first year in college and the only reason that I did that was because I grew very close to my advisor my undergraduate advisor in the department so networking opens so many doors and people just want to know that you're interested and that you'll make the effort to go above and beyond sometimes absolutely absolutely and I think you know Dr. Diello's career path really was highlighted by his networking and his attendance at different conferences and yeah yes I mean attending conference were critical like my Caltech postdoc was like the connection was made at an American chemical society meeting the Caltech professor that came to give a talk in chemistry at University of Michigan and say by the way are you attending the ACS in August it was August 2000 I mean one yeah 1994 right before I graduated I'm like yes he's like why don't you come and I will introduce you to you know a few Caltech professor and one of them was my fifth year advisor and mentor of like probably 20 years and I got introduced to that person at that conference so by all mean networking is critical and go to these conferences when you get the opportunity. Good thank you. Is this a bit? I can imagine you have a couple of mentors you know kind of through from Fort Valley's East program, Spelment program, how can you find and maintain mentors as you move through your studies and early career? It is very important but I think they also find you as I still talk to Dr. Crumbly he's also the reason that I'm on this panel I still reach out to people that I know at Spelment and the internship that I mentioned that I did at USGS has been the most monumental my mentor there Dr. John Pullman wrote one of my recommendation letters for graduate school he encouraged it we were just talking about going to meetings and things he encouraged me to present at the American Geophysical Union meeting which is where I met my PhD advisor so it's just important to one tell these people thank you and that you're grateful for what they have done for you and then just keep them updated on what you're doing because they'll continue to write two letters of recommendation and then you can also feed them back information that helps them help other students and it's just important that you can ask them really anything I usually ask them questions about science but also you know if I'm not sure if I want to apply for one position over the other or if I'm having trouble navigating school graduate school is difficult especially when you are the only person in your family in Geo Sciences and you're trying to figure out something you're just like I can't figure out this art code for anything they're helpful for that and that's what they're there for so I would say one thanking them for what they've done for you and just keeping the channel of communication open whether it's something small or something big I just want to know what you're doing great yeah thanks for highlighting one of the functional roles of a mentor is recommendation letters I mean it's really key to ensure that whatever project or interaction that you've had on them highlight what your strengths are so they can you know support you in your next position or your upcoming you know role or posting so really really thank you for that right is there anything this question would be uh direct it to uh crystal is there anything you might have done differently with your career if you had known where you are today would you do something different and I might how I not disturb William Stroud out there yeah I think one of the things is just to embrace who you are and what your natural desires were so I from place-based knowledge of the place that I grew up was a lot of geology and a lot of water and I already knew I was interested in that but when you're 18 and you're wanting to be this cool new person that is has new freedom that you haven't had before you kind of want to push you what you think you want to be and what I wanted to do why I went into double E is in all honesty is because I wanted to make more money and now thinking back now that was you know pretty immature to think about money when you can think about happiness and the job that I'm in now I have the great opportunity to be able to not only help myself and you know make money and make a living but then to help a larger community of indigenous people and the largest tribe in the United States so it's really a great opportunity to you know sometimes we just need to embrace who we are and embrace that individual duality especially because when you go out there I mean you see that you're I mean at my institution that I ended my PhD at like a minority of the minority and that brings challenges in itself imposter syndrome you know you began to question are you really where you need to be but if you embrace that individuality and stand up and accept you know hey I'm here because of the ancestors before me and I'm going to be here because the future generation is depending on me. Yeah great Dr. William Stroud will there be something different you've done so in your career? I just want to say Crystal thank you for mentioning that imposter syndrome thing and and that's something that I wish I didn't have in my early days right because I grew up I started in the era of affirmative action where everybody was acting like the reason actually had some classmates that told me the reason I was there was because I was black right not because I deserve to be there I could do the work and that kind of you know stuck in the back of my mind a lot of times and I didn't always take the opportunities that are our chances that were in front of me. I but other than that I don't think I would have done anything different because what I did was whenever something new interesting came I was willing to try it right and it was kind of like Dr. Diallo like if you have some some other thing that another opportunity that looks interesting and it and you want to try it and you are able to take advantage of that opportunity I encourage people to do that if you have that kind of spirit because I got exposed to a lot of different things in a lot of different countries because of that so that in that way I wouldn't change it at all but I would try to have more confidence that I had a right to be there right in my early career days I always kind of questioned or listened to the voices that were implying that maybe I wasn't as good as they were. Just chime in here I actually did not have that problem because I grew up in Dakar, Senegal, I wanted to do science nobody would tell me that I could not go ask questions because I look a certain way I I mean it was like when I came in the US I realized sometimes when I hear people say that I look at them like this is nonsense. Anyway for me I spent seven years as a professor in South Korea at KAIST. KAIST is like you know the MIT Caltech of South Korea I represented Korea in international conference and people were looking at me like are you Korean I'm like no I'm adopted Korean so so my point is like follow your science and science will prevail so I realized that I did not have the same background because I came here and I did not have those really the things that hold me back I realized those are important the sense of belonging you just have to work through that and follow the opportunity. Fantastic absolutely right my apologies Paulina would you come off mute and ask your second question I was worried that it was just from previous but yes please please answer ask a question. Thank you um good morning Dr. William Stroud I wanted to ask you if you could please tell me explain um does your work involves traveling a lot and if you do what equipment do you constantly use thank you. So um most of my travel in oil and gas was um my equipment was my computer right but um I did some um I did a lot of core analysis which you don't you know you don't take equipment with you for that you're just you know looking at the cores and and making a log of what you see. I did do at the USGS um when in that case travel was when I worked on the Yucca Mountain project every other week we go out to Nevada and map so that's just your basic geological mapping equipment but because most of my career has been in the oil and gas industry uh people at you know one point we're calling it Nintendo geology most of since your your field is in the subsurface you can't go out to see it except for when you get to go to a field trip to look at an analog you're just working um in your office when you're um to build your geological models using the computer so in that case the travel um was to meet with other people that you're working with in the business environment or when I was working for the consulting and service companies the travel was to go and meet with people that you wanted to recruit for as clients or to build or to um buy your software so it was more in that case meeting with people and collaborating in person. Tamika you're muted. Almost we have a question from Navajo Tech. Come off mute and ask your question please. Good afternoon. We are here from uh we are a tribal university from New Mexico and uh Crystal thank you for everything you do. You are a great role model for our students and uh we know that how important like you know tying up culture with science is and how like you know all our students are really motivated to do uh to able to do something for their community so and thank you everyone for sharing your story and I just wanted to ask you guys to share with our students that failure is a part of the success right so how you guys have overcome failure because from a cultural background and from a like you know diverse student body that's something we face every day and I want our student to know that they should not stop they should carry on and they will be successful so if you guys can share and thank you uh National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine for like you know giving us the opportunity to be part of this um India work thank you. Great so I'll start that question off with Jordan Marie round up with Crystal um to to how do you approach challenges or failures in your career and we'll probably just take everyone to close out with yeah Jordan. Thanks Tamika um so I can actually start this one with an example um so uh when I was an undergraduate student um and I think because of my background because I didn't have um too many people to look at that were in STEM careers I went to school thinking I'm going to study STEM so I'm going to become a doctor I'm going to go to medical school um and that just because that was that was all that I knew that's what I thought was available to me and so um I went through undergraduate school um I enjoyed my chemistry coursework um but I I realized that I didn't actually want to be a doctor um and I wasn't actually able to admit that until it was ready to it was ready to I was ready to apply to two different medical school programs and I was talking with an advisor um and they had informed me that um my transcript might not be as strong as I thought it was to get into medical school and at that time I remember feeling like completely defeated right because I came in here thinking that that was what I was going to do and that was the only thing that I could do with this degree um and so in order to to get over that um it kind of forced me to just take a step back to uh to think about what was going on to think about what it was that I you know I actually wanted to do um and um that's what ultimately led me to that decision where I took a year off from school and ended up exploring these other opportunities so for me um my first approach to failure is to kind of just take a back seat to kind of you know pull down um think about what went wrong and then figure out what's the best way to approach this moving forward um and then through doing that and through giving myself that time I was able to realize that this wasn't actually something that I wanted to do anyway um and that there were other options out there um that fit my skill set um and that fit my interests better great thank you Christam I might just start out with you know I'm the first person in my family to get a PhD so that's like looking at my parents' um family and beyond not just like my family with my siblings but my cousins and my aunts and uncles and so I didn't know what a PhD really meant um and I guess you know what I thought was you get under an advisor and then you have a project that's handed to you and then like you have to stick with that your whole PhD career but I started working on urban streams in Salt Lake City and I knew I didn't want to go into urban streams like I really wasn't involved like motivated to do the research so I had that conversation with my advisor um first things first like my advisor was like the doogie howzer of his field had I known that I probably would have never like asked to be his student because the bar was set super high um but that the hard part was telling him you're like hey I don't know a lot about stable isotopes and I don't even like urban waters so it came to the point of you know well what do you like and unfortunately there was no funding in that right so it it was this toss of like do I take a chance and do the research that I love and have no money to do it or do I continue on this path that's more secure what I ended up doing and I'm not a gambler um is that I chose to do something that I would love and do a research in an area that I loved more and that was where I'm from so there you know sometimes it seemed like a black hole the Navajo Nation is over 27,000 square miles similar to size as West Virginia or the country of Ireland and I saw that there was a need to quantify precipitation variability across this large region but also to be able to find out more about the North American monsoon where which is a major contributor to precipitation in this region and use stable isotopes to know what my grandmother knew all along she always taught me that all water is connected and through deuterium and oxygen 18 I was able to prove what we've known for centuries thank you thank you if hopefully the committee will give me a little room if you guys could be one sentence to leave with the students in the panel for each Amanda Mamadou Elizabeth and Dr. Stroud Amanda I suppose my closing sentence is just to believe in yourself no matter what anybody else will tell you you are worthy you are intelligent and your experiences do not detract from you as a person they only add to you so failure will happen it's not about if it's about when and just keep traveling along thank you Dr. Diallo follow the opportunity and don't give up and every problem there will be challenges like you get to a point where you feel like you're going to walk through the challenge and you're going to solve it and believe that I actually believe that myself beautiful Elizabeth a career in science isn't about instant gratification um so the results won't be there always but there's always another method that you can try Dr. Williams Stroud I would say um if you find someone who's supportive of you and believes in you make sure you um use that person as a mentor I don't mean use but you know stick with that person because those are the people that help you get navigate your career so and there are there was a lot of them out there so keep your eyes open for those people because those are the ones that are going to help you build your confidence and build your network beautiful panel for guys this was I could wish I could just package you up and see you out to all of underrepresented groups around there you have really open eyes and gave great advice and shared your stories they can lead to success for everyone within government agencies or whatever path they choose so thank you so much this marks the end of the public session webinar for those schools and uh another big thank you sorry backup a big thanks to each panelist the ones who take questions thank you so much thank you thank you thank you this marks the end of the public session webinar for those schools and agencies that were invited to the private session please stay on the call thanks again everyone have a good day