2024 Candidate Kiona Ogle
Kiona Ogle
Professor
Northern Arizona University
Candidate for: ESA Secretary (incumbent)
My educational background and interests integrate across (1) plant and ecosystem ecology and (2) data science and statistics. I consider ESA my professional home, and I have contributed to the Society in a variety of ways for the past 20+ years. I served as the Program Chair for the 2020 ESA annual meeting, which was scheduled to occur in Salt Lake City, but transitioned to a virtual meeting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I assumed a leading role in developing the virtual program, the first of its kind for ESA. I subsequently served as the Meetings Committee Chair. Through both roles, I served on the Program Committee and Meetings Committee and worked to improve upon the annual meeting format and experience, and I helped to streamline the proposal and abstract submission and review processes. Earlier in my career, I served as the Secretary for the Physiological Ecology Section, during which, I also took on many of the responsibilities of the Section’s President. I highly value ESA, its vision, its membership, and all aspect of ecology that it supports, from research, to education, to outreach, to supporting diversity and inclusion within the Society, and to creating an outlet for ecologists to share ideas, knowledge, and expertise.
What interests, experiences or skills would you bring to this position?
I maintain a strong interest in training the next generation of ecologists. For example, I co-organized applied statistics-focused (Bayesian) workshops for several past ESA meetings. I am the Program Director for an NSF-funded graduate training program (NRT) in Ecological and Environmental Informatics (the “T3 program”) at Northern Arizona University (NAU). The T3 program provides interdisciplinary training in ecology and environmental science, informatics and data science, and science communication and collaboration. I served as the Assistant Chair of Informatics in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems at NAU, where I led the development and refinement of our interdisciplinary PhD program in Informatics and Computing. Outside of my institution, and in addition to my service to ESA, I am serving on the Advisory Board for another NRT graduate training program, and I was previously a member of the Advisory Board for the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS). I aim to function as an effective and compassionate leader and have participated in numerous training and workshop opportunities to improve my leadership, mentorship, and collaboration skills. I will bring all of these skills to the position of ESA Secretary.
How would you support ESA’s mission? How would you plan to promote DEIJ in ESA membership and activities if elected?
Again, ESA is my professional home, and I highly value opportunities to contribute to the Society. I invested significant effort into my roles as Program Chair and Meetings Chair, with the goal of improving the meeting experience for our membership and enhancing accessibility of meeting content. In these roles, I interacted with multiple ESA groups, including the Governing Board (GB), ESA staff, and various sections, chapters, and committees. My leadership experiences at NAU have also provided me with the skills to assume a leading role within ESA. I believe I will bring valuable insights to the GB, while also being able to listen, balance, and apply input from the GB, ESA staff, and the membership at large. I have developed effective leadership and teamwork skills though, for example, participation in the Mindful Leader Summit, a multi-day workshop on team science (and subsequently teaching a course in “team-based interdisciplinary research”), workshops on effective mentor-mentee communication, the ESA-sponsored workshop on Gatekeeping to Grounds Keeping: Inclusive Facilitation for Diverse Groups, among others. As Program Chair and Meetings Chair, I actively engaged in DEIJ-related discussions and policies, and I will continue to support efforts to promote DEIJ within ESA and its membership