 My name is Ed Carr. I'm the U.S. Center Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute, where I'm also a senior scientist. I'm joining the Stockholm Environment Institute after a more than two decade career in academia, really because of the urgency of the moment. While I've always intellectually known about the urgency of dealing with global change, whether that be climate change, economic change, the ways in which these also drive issues like land degradation and biodiversity loss, I didn't feel these things viscerally until my time as a lead author on the sixth assessment cycle of the IPCC. Leaving that assessment cycle and now serving as a coordinating lead author of Ibbess's Transformative Change Assessment, I more and more feel each and every day how utterly critical it is to go fast and act transformationally. In joining SEI, I'm joining an organization that shares those values. I'm joining a network of globally recognized experts that can help identify and define the solutions to the biggest challenges facing us today. I have the chance to lead an outstanding center and staff charting a pathway toward new and greater impact in the world at a time when such things are incredibly important. I look forward to working with everybody at SEI and building new partnerships while maintaining some of my old relationships to drive us toward the solutions for the challenges that face us today.