CSCCE staff Archives

Welcome to Emily Lescak – Project and Community Manager for the POSE Training Program

This week, Emily Lescak joined the CSCCE staff team. She is taking on the role of Project and Community Manager for the POSE Training Program, working to support program participants and ensure smooth operations behind the scenes. We’re so happy to have Emily join our team! Please read on for a little more about her work, past and future.

About Emily

Emily Lescak, a white woman with dark hair tied back. She is wearing a black top patterned with white birds.

Emily comes to CSCCE from the Wikimedia Foundation, where, as Senior Research Community Officer, she developed a multi-year strategy for growing, diversifying, and supporting the global community of researchers working on Wikimedia projects, co-organized an annual virtual research workshop, and co-developed a new funding program to support international cohorts of researchers. Previously, she developed and managed Code for Science and Society’s Event Fund. She took CSCCE’s Community Engagement Fundamentals course in 2021 and has been an active member of the community for more than three years.

Welcome to Cat Dayger – CSCCE’s new Director of Operations and Technology

In 2023 we’ll be adding several new staff members to our team, the first of whom is our new Director of Operations and Technology, Cat Dayger! We’re so excited that Cat is here, and in this blog post we’ll tell you a bit more about her and her newly created role at CSCCE.

About Cat

A photo of Cat Dayger, who has brown hair, light blue eyes, and is wearing blue rectangular earrings.

Cat is based in Portland, Oregon, where she previously worked as the assistant director of team science and strategy at the Knight Cancer Early Detection Advanced Research (CEDAR) center. Her work at CEDAR included overseeing team development, creating new processes for reviews and promotions, developing diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, and implementing center-wide leadership initiatives and trainings. While in this role, she took part in CSCCE’s Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals course, and has been a member of our community of practice for almost two years.

Image credit: Rebecca Benoit

Welcome to Jenny East – CSCCE’s newest trainer!

We’re excited that the CSCCE team continues to grow, and this week we welcome Jenny East onboard as CSCCE’s newest trainer. Jenny will join lead trainer Camille Santistevan, along with center director Lou Woodley, in developing and facilitating CSCCE’s modular, online trainings and client-facing support.

About Jenny

Before joining the CSCCE team, Jenny spent over five years as an outreach coordinator for Oregon Sea Grant at Oregon State University, USA. In this role, she worked to educate recreational boaters about preventing water pollution and how to reduce their impact on the local ecosystem, a mission she undertook through the development of materials and events to engage boating communities within Oregon. Her position also included training staff at local marinas so that they had the skills and resources they needed, as they also had a role in supporting healthy waterways.

Welcome to Camille Santistevan – CSCCE’s Lead Trainer and Curriculum Development Specialist

Our team is growing! This week we welcomed Camille Santistevan to CSCCE, who, as our new Lead Trainer and Curriculum Development Specialist, will work with center Director Lou Woodley to consolidate and expand our suite of trainings and associated materials.

She will also co-lead the fall training modules that we’re piloting with members of our community of practice, and work with the team as we plan out the next steps for our flagship training, the Community Engagement Fellowship Program.

About Camille

Camille comes to CSCCE from The City University of New York, where she has worked as Associate Director of Public Relations for the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) since 2014. In her time there, she helped build a community of researchers from across the University and at a variety of career stages who used ASRC’s facilities and equipment. She was also instrumental in developing and delivering a science education curriculum for the center, while overseeing numerous outreach and engagement programs and events.

Welcome to Katie Pratt – CSCCE’s Communications Director and Content Archivist

This week, we’re thrilled to welcome Katie Pratt to the CSCCE Team! Katie joins us as our new Communications Director and Content Archivist, a role in which she will work with our Director, Lou Woodley, to catalog and share more resources for scientific community engagement managers.

She will also support our community of practice, providing updates to our flourishing community of scientific community managers.

About Katie

Katie spent the last seven years working as Communications Director for the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO), a decade-long Earth and life sciences program with core support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She co-led DCO’s Engagement Team, overseeing a variety of internal and external communications activities, and managed a community of more than 1200 scientists from a variety of disciplines around the world. She was heavily involved in programming for DCO’s early career scientists and co-organized three workshops and two summer schools specifically for this sub-community.