Public Lab Nonprofit Team
Public Lab is open for anyone to join -- please sign up! However, 12 team members run the Public Lab non-profit organization, which supports the open research community with digital infrastructure, building organizational partnerships, community development, planning and executing organization-wide events such as barnraisings and conferences, fundraising, and facilitating open source publication of the community's work, along with a variety of other tasks. The staff includes:
Liz Barry
Director of Community Development
Location: New York City, NY
Contact: liz@publiclab.org
Director of Community Development at Public Lab and co-founder of TreeKIT, Liz develops geographic tools and civic science methods for collaborative cities. Her background is in urban landscape design, and she teaches at Columbia University and Parsons the New School for Design. Previously, she worked at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill planning international new cities and campuses, at Durham Inner-city Gardeners (DIG) coordinating youth urban horticulture enterprise, and has travelled around the country catalyzing interaction among strangers with a “Talk To Me” sign – a project that received international press including the New York Times, AP, CNN, Oprah and NPR’s This American Life. She likes to play outside.
Becki Chall
Development Director
Location: Portland, OR
Contact: becki@publiclab.org
Development Director Becki Chall comes to Public Lab after three years leading development efforts for Global Green USA’s Gulf Coast programs. In a past life, she worked as an environmental consultant in Washington, DC for a variety of government clients. Becki holds an MA in International Development and Natural Resource Management from The George Washington University and a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of Michigan. While earning her degrees, she completed fieldwork in Australia, Mexico, Cuba, and South Africa. She is a native of Michigan and spends her free time planning her next travel adventure, eating her way around Portland, tending her garden, and hanging out with her adorable mutt, Bean.
Tony Chiotti
Kits Program Manager
Location: Portland, OR
Contact tony@publiclab.org ,
Tony recently completed his MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Portland State University. Prior to that, he worked in Internal Communications at Intel, working as part of the Haswell/Broadwell design teams. He worked at the Free Geek Community Technology Center as Sales Coordinator, and running the Computer Thrift Store. Before that he was the Project Coordinator at the North Portland Tool Library. His cat is named Vim after the text editor, because she is good at manipulating strings and is hard to quit.
Shannon Dosemagen
Executive Director
Location: Cambridge, MA and New Orleans, LA
Contact: shannon@publiclab.org or 504.239.4642
A founder of Public Lab, Shannon is based in New Orleans and Cambridge (MA) as Executive Director of the non-profit. With a background in community organizing and education, Shannon held positions with the Anthropology and Geography Department at Louisiana State University as a Community Researcher and Ethnographer for a study about the social impacts of the BP oil spill in coastal Louisiana. She also worked at the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, conducting the first on-the-ground health and economic impact surveying in Louisiana post-spill. Shannon seeks to infuse traditional organizing methods of the environmental sector with new media technologies and tools.
She has an MS in Anthropology and Nonprofit Management and has worked with nonprofits for over fifteen years. She is an Ashoka Fellow, a 2015-16 Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society Fellow, a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program and a 2012 Loyola University Institute for Environmental Communications Fellow. Shannon serves on advisory boards, councils or committees for the National Parks Conservation Association, Global Community Monitor, the Louisiana Public Health Institute Healthy Communities Coalition and the Citizen Science Association. She also is a member of the Louisiana Bar Association technology committee and is a past reviewer for the National Science Foundation DRL.
Gretchen Gehrke
Data Ambassador
Location: Raleigh-Durham, NC
contact: gretchen@publiclab.org
As Data Ambassador, Gretchen works with Public Lab and partner communities to validate, interpret, and communicate environmental data. With a PhD in Geochemistry, Gretchen has designed and implemented regional-scale domestic and international field studies assessing transport and transformations of toxic trace metals. She has also developed laboratory methods to evaluate transformations of organic contaminants and engineered nanoparticles. Gretchen previously held postdoctoral research scientist positions in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University and the National Exposure Research Laboratory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She earned her doctorate in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Michigan, and dual bachelor’s degrees in the Department of Chemistry and Department of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College. In Durham, North Carolina, Gretchen serves on the Board of Directors of Schoolhouse of Wonder and the Durham Crisis Response Center, and volunteers in organizations committed to education, food-security, and sustainable agriculture. On the weekends, Gretchen can most likely be found riding her bicycle through rolling farmlands, running on forested trails, or swimming in sun-warmed lakes.
R. Kliebert
Administrative Coordinator
Location: New Orleans, LA
contact: klie@publiclab.org
Klie serves as Public Lab's Administrative Coordinator, keeping our five office, remote team organized and running smoothly. In addition to their current enrollment at the University of New Orleans for a degree in Biological Sciences, Klie's background includes several internships through the School of Social Work at the University of Southern Mississippi. In this time, Klie interned with Volunteers of America to provide case management for individuals living with HIV/AIDS, as advocating for others is something they feel very passionate about. Klie's combined passion for science, social advocacy, and non-profits has fostered a special interest in using civic science as a platform to build stronger communities. In their spare time, Klie enjoys brunch, playing and listening to music, being on boats, water-skiing, soccer, and reading way too many science and advocacy blogs.
Maria del Carmen Lamadrid
Design Editor
Location: Los Angeles, CA
María del Carmen Lamadrid is a media designer and tinkerer from Puerto Rico currently based in Los Angeles.
María holds a BFA in Image and Design from Escuela de Artes Plasticas de Puerto Rico and completed her MFA in Media Design from Media Design Practices/Field program at Art Center College of Design. Her main project Tools for Stalling Eviction focused on vibrant data for alternate modes of land tenure evidence, activism for women empowerment against paternalistic values, and public participation in Uganda.
Currently, she wears many hats. María splits her time as Adjunct Faculty of the School of Media, Culture & Design at Woodbury University, her role as Senior User Experience Designer for Civic Resource Group, and lead of Super Community, initiative to create and support collaborative design methods for civic and community engagement.
In her spare time, María enjoys biking with friends and yarn-bombing unsuspecting train riders and office mates.
Hope LeBlanc
Bookkeeper
Location: New Orleans, LA
Stevie Lewis
Outreach Manager
Location: New Orleans, LA
Contact: stevie@publiclab.org
Stevie Lewis comes to Public Lab with a background in environmental studies and community development. She has held positions as Volunteer Coordinator for the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve in Mississippi, Resource Advisor for the National Park Service in response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, and as Watershed Coordinator for the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring, a non-profit focused on promoting citizen science in aquatics. Stevie’s interest in building community resilience through environmental initiatives includes community and environmental work in far reaching corners of Kenya, Thailand, Botswana and Scotland.
Stevie holds a BA in Environmental Studies from Dickinson College. As a 2012 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, Stevie completed a MSc in Environment and Development from the University of Edinburgh. In her spare time, Stevie enjoys outdoor actives including canoeing, fishing and above all, hiking.
Mathew Lippincott
Director of Production
Location: Portland, OR
Contact: mathew@publiclab.org
A founding member of Public Lab, Mathew is an artist and designer whose work has been exhibited internationally. As Public Lab’s Director of Production, Mathew coordinates the design, manufacturing, and distribution of Public Lab kits, and has expertise in open hardware design, and technology and arts education, with a focus on involving and training non-technical participants in technology deployment. Mathew has worked on technology education for eight years, both with youth programs and arts education. He became involved in Grassroots Mapping through materials testing and the design of low-cost balloons and kites.
Sebastian Silva
Systems Administrator
Location: Madre de Dios, Peru
Contact: sebastian@fuentelibre.org
Our sysadmin, Sebastian, learned to program at age five using a turtle (LOGO). Since his teenage years, a self-learning path in informatics was enlightened by being involved in Free Software communities. This gave him a chance to earn a living early on as a Software Developer and Systems Administrator. Featuring insatiable curiosity, and a holistic approach, he received his formation in Psychology at the Catholic University in Chile.
Sebastian first heard about Public Lab in 2010 when they helped a group of indigenous people from the Shippibo tribe to map their settlement in downtown Lima city. Impressed at the time, he was himself leading volunteering efforts around improving free educational software on OLPC laptops in rural Peru. He is co-founder of the SomosAzucar R&D team, whose mission is to bring libre technology to public classrooms in Latin America.
Sebastian enjoys gardening servers and keeping them running smoothly and orderly. Having worked before in the industry as SysAdmin, since 2012 he has been a core member of the Sugar Labs Infrastructure Team, and has assumed responsibility of Public Lab servers in 2015. Being a Karate instructor, loving husband and father of two homeschooled children, Sebastian also enjoys nature and tranquility.
Jeffrey Warren
Research Coordinator
Location: Somerville, MA
Contact: jeff@publiclab.org
Founder of Grassroots Mapping and co-founder of Public Lab, Jeff now serves as Public Lab’s Director of Research. He is a fellow at MIT's Center for Civic Media, on the board of the Open Source Hardware Association, on the advisory board of Personal Democracy Media's WeGov, and an advocate of open source software, hardware, and data. With 10 years of experience in project management and software architecture in open source code, he has founded and contributed to dozens of widely used software projects, from data visualization to geospatial applications. His expertise in user experience, interface and graphic design have guided his work both in industry, consulting and designing for GE and Intel, as well as in the academic and open source space.
Public Lab was co-founded in 2011 by Liz Barry, Shannon Dosemagen, Adam Griffith, Mathew Lippincott, Stewart Long, Jeff Warren and Sara Wylie.