Lisa Johnston, DCN’s Director, has accepted a new position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Office of Data Management and Analytics Services as the Director of Data Governance. While her leadership style and strong advocacy for those around her will be missed, she has agreed to continue serving on the Governance Board– she will bring a valuable perspective to the DCN from her new role in Institutional Data Governance.
Mikala Narlock, DCN’s Assistant Director, will transition to the role of Director. As the Director of the DCN, she will continue to foster community, outreach, and inclusion efforts, and will expand her role to include budget management and other administrative efforts. She will continue to work closely with the Executive Team, Governance Board, Advisory Board, and the entire DCN community to sustain the critical work of advocating for data curation and curators broadly.
This transition provides an opportunity to assess our current commitments and identify new projects and undertakings. The DCN will continue to evaluate our work to ensure we are best serving the needs of data curators in the research data management community.
It’s always an adjustment when a founding member moves away from the organization they helped to create. But the DCN is more than just one person. It is a group of skilled data curators from 14 different institutions joined by a common desire to support access to high quality research data. To quote Lisa Johnston, from an internal departure email: How to handle the data curation unknown? That’s an easy one. Together.