Honorary Board
The WAN Honorary Board was established to recognize outstanding women in the marine, aquatic, and coastal sectors and provide greater visibility of their contributions to the field. These esteemed leaders energize our network, help grow a diverse membership and attract exceptional leaders to both the Executive and Advisory Boards. Honorary Board members advise on WAN’s strategic direction and provide access to senior-level professionals within the rising network of marine and aquatic science and policy fields.
Individuals are invited to join the Honorary Board through a rigorous internal process. Candidates may be nominated by members of the Executive, Advisory, and/or Honorary Boards. Candidates must be highly accomplished individuals and meet the minimum criteria of the WAN Woman of the Year Award.
The Honorary Board was established in 2018 with founding members Christy Goldfuss, Dr. Marcia McNutt, and Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan. It has since expanded to also include Dr. Nancy Knowlton, WAN’s 2018 Woman of the Year, and Dr. Rita Colwell, our 2019 Woman of the Year.
Dr. Kathy Sullivan
Dr. Sullivan is a distinguished scientist, astronaut, and executive. She was one of the first six women to join the NASA astronaut corps in 1978 and holds the distinction of being the first American woman to walk in space. She flew on three space shuttle missions during her 15-year NASA tenure, including the mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Sullivan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Earth Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in Geology from Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and numerous other professional associations.
Christy Goldfuss
Christy Goldfuss, former managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), rejoined American Progress as the organization’s senior vice president for Energy and Environment Policy. As managing director, Goldfuss helped develop and implement the Obama administration’s environmental and energy policies, including the Climate Action Plan, then-President Barack Obama’s major initiative to combat climate change. She co-chaired the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience and identified priorities for protecting the country against the worst impacts of climate change.
Dr. Marcia McNutt
Dr. McNutt is a geophysicist and president of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2013 to 2016, she served as editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals. Prior to joining Science, she was director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from 2009 to 2013. During her tenure, the USGS responded to a number of major disasters, including earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and Japan, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. McNutt led a team of government scientists and engineers at BP headquarters in Houston who helped contain the oil and cap the well. She directed the flow rate technical group that estimated the rate of oil discharge during the spill’s active phase. For her contributions, she was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard’s Meritorious Service Medal.
Dr. Nancy Knowlton
Dr. Nancy Knowlton has been a scientist with the Smithsonian since 1984, first in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and now at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. She has also been a professor at Yale and at the University of California in San Diego, where she founded the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is the author of Citizens of the Sea, former Editor-in-Chief of the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal, and contributes regularly to the global ocean conversation via @seacitizens. She is a winner of the Peter Benchley Prize and the Heinz Award, and in 2013 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Rita Colwell
Dr. Rita Colwell is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and President of CosmosID, Inc. Her interests are focused on global infectious diseases, water, and health. She has authored or co-authored 17 books and more than 800 scientific publications.
Dr. Colwell served as 11th Director of the National Science Foundation and Co-chair of the Committee on Science, National Science and Technology Council.