Brown prof. helps launch Earth Science Women’s Network

The Earth Science Women’s Network, a nonprofit that already has built a global reach and reputation, launched this past week, led by co-founders from Brown University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The network has spent more than a decade operating as an informal network of scientists coordinated by a women’s eight-person leadership board, addressing the fields of oceanography, atmospheric science, geology, and other branches of the earth sciences, said Tracey Holloway, a UWM professor and co-founder.
As a nonprofit, the expanded mission is to help advance the careers of women in the Earth sciences.
“The ESWN is about making women in the Earth sciences feel supported and add to their ability to be successful and stay in science,” said Meredith Hastings, assistant professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown and cofounder. “As a nonprofit, we’ll be able to raise the money we need to maintain our network and to develop new programs.”
The group already has 2,000 members, Holloway said. Core activities include online discussions, peer mentoring, and networking events organized by members from Honolulu, Hawaii to Kiel, Germany.
“It is amazing all the things we were able to do as a grassroots organization – until now, we never even had a group bank account,” Holloway said.
The ESWN began over an informal dinner at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in 2002. The six women involved had been running into each other at conferences and enjoyed the opportunity to share their experiences in the workplace, the co-founders said.
“We found that peer mentoring to be really valuable,” said Hastings, who was at that first dinner. “We would go back to our work situations inspired and reinvigorated. So, at dinner that night we decided to keep in touch more often.”
For the past decade, ESWN has received support from organizations and universities that include the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Despite having a wide range of in-kind support, the group was limited in its activities since, without a standing budget, it could not reserve event spaces, pay to maintain a website or cover the cost of a conference call.
“Now,” Holloway says, “we can do basic things like host meetings and maintain our website, as well as launch exciting new initiatives.”
Those include broadening access to professional development workshops, reaching out to include college and high school students in activities, and providing small grants to overcome barriers to career success.

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