As the weather, water, and climate (WWC) enterprise faces unprecedented change, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) has a unique opportunity to strengthen its leadership and ensure that science continues to serve society. Rapid shifts in federal policy, evolving public-private partnerships, emerging technologies, and changing stakeholder expectations underscore the need for a strategic framework that positions AMS to lead the enterprise into the future.

We invite you to join us at the 2026 Dr. Keith Seitter Roundtable on the Role of Societies in the Scientific Enterprise for a discussion of AMS’s ongoing strategic planning efforts. This planning process provides an opportunity for our community to identify strategic investments that will position the WWC enterprise for success over the next decade. The discussion will focus on three areas emerging from previous discussions where AMS is well-positioned to support the enterprise:

• Ensuring the decision makers and the public strongly value and routinely use highly credible WWC information.
• Building a WWC workforce is highly skilled, adaptive, and encompasses a broad range of expertise and perspectives.
• Enabling the WWC enterprise to effectively bring together the capacities of public, private, and academic sectors to achieve shared societal goals.

We invite your feedback on these goals and your ideas of how AMS programs can best support the broader enterprise in making progress towards them. How do these goals resonate with respect to your work and the work of your home organization? How might they be improved? Do they provide a foundation for the WWC enterprise to meet the challenges and opportunities of the next decade? How can AMS ensure that its meetings, publications, policy and community engagement programs, education and workforce initiatives, and member services advance these goals? What additional partnerships, programs, or activities might AMS use to be proactive in helping to enhance the success of our enterprise?

About the Dr. Keith Seitter Roundtable Series

The Roundtable on the Role of Societies in the Scientific Enterprise was established with two purposes: 1) to enable the development and sharing of innovative ideas for the advancement of science and the benefits of science to the public, and 2) to honor Dr. Keith Seitter's commitment and ongoing service to the AMS community and the broader public. 

The Roundtable offers a yearly opportunity to brainstorm and discuss provocative ideas and approaches for ways societies might better support the scientific community or help the public better understand science. The themes we focus on will change each year but will always be aimed at providing new ways to think about our changing world and the role scientific societies play in it.