The availability of new AI tools, unprecedented budget challenges, and extreme weather events threaten our community's livelihoods, resource availability, and safety. We are feeling the pressure from these challenges and changes in our personal and professional lives. To navigate these rough waters, our AMS community must rise together to harness new technologies, support each other as the roles of private, government, academic sectors shift, and boldly move forward, focusing on the opportunities and actions that ensure science, our members, and society not only survive, but thrive. 

As a federal and academic employee for 30 years, I’ve experienced life-changing technological advancements, swings in funding, and life-threatening disasters, like the devastating May 31, 2013, El Reno tornado, which killed 8 people, including scientists in our field. I’ve also experienced the power of our combined efforts as we’ve weathered these storms. 

If elected to the AMS Council, I will focus on three things: 1) prioritize education opportunities and career guidance to ensure our continued relevance, 2) identify new funding resources to strengthen our mission, and 3) leverage our diverse expertise to empower community resilience to extreme weather threats.  

The success of our Society, the trusted source for weather, water, and climate science information that serves society, depends on us. My commitment is to work with you to identify and walk the paths forward to ensure AMS leadership in science and service to society thrives.

Dr. Pam Heinselman works at the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL), where she serves as the Deputy Director for Science, leading and championing NSSL’s collaborative science portfolio. She is also an AMS Fellow (2024) and co-chair for the 2025 AMS Annual Meeting Overall Planning Committee. Her love for the NOAA and AMS missions, meteorology, and for people drives her dedication to advancing science in service to society. Throughout her career, she has a rich history of collecting weather observations, developing new forecast tools, and conducting user-focused research to revolutionize forecast capabilities.

Heinselman’s career spans academic and government sectors, working first as a Research Scientist at the University of Oklahoma, Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies and then at NSSL, where she has served as Warn-on-Forecast Program Lead and Forecast Research and Development Division Chief. She also enjoys working with students as an Affiliate Associate Professor of the University of Oklahoma’s School of Meteorology. She is a recipient of the DOC Gold Medal for Science and Engineering (2024) and the National Weather Association’s Dr. T. Theodore Fujita Research Achievement Award (2021). Currently, she is a committee member at large of the AMS Publications Commission and member of the AMS Annual Meeting Oversight Committee. Driven by a childhood fear of thunderstorms and a commitment to providing forecasters with more precise and timely data, she is passionate about severe storms research and the creation of innovative technologies and prediction systems designed to bridge existing forecast information gaps.