The staff members below run the Public Lab nonprofit 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 the open-source publication of the community's work, along with a variety of other tasks.

Want to join the Public Lab staff? Check out our open roles and our Fellows program.

Staff

🎈Liz Barry (she/her)
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.

🎈Rebecca Funk (she/her)
Education Manager
Location: Berkley Springs, WV
Contact: rebecca@publiclab.org

Rebecca was born and raised in the Chesapeake Bay region. She has a lifelong passion for fieldwork and community education. Rebecca has several years of experience working in both the classroom as well as informal education centers. She taught in the Maryland School systems before working as the Director of STEM Education and outreach for the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, MD. Additionally, she has also worked with the US Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the Maryland Department of Natural Resources on a research study assessing the impacts of climate change on the Chesapeake Bay and barrier islands.

Rebecca has a B.S. in Wildlife and Fisheries Resources from West Virginia University and is currently completing her M.Ed in Instructional Design and Technology from Western Governors University. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her dog (Dolly Parton), cooking, playing rugby, and trail running.

🎈Stevie Lewis Klass (she/her)
Senior Program Director
Location: New York, NY
Contact: stevie@publiclab.org

As Senior Program Director, Stevie is responsible for overseeing the program work of the nonprofit team. She came to Public Lab in 2014 with a background in environmental science, community engagement, and resource management. Stevie has over 10 years of experience working with community groups, nonprofits, and state and federal government. Her past work experience includes positions with Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, the National Park Service in response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, and the Alliance for Aquatic Resource Monitoring.

Stevie holds a BA in Environmental Studies from Dickinson College and a MSc in Environment and Development from the University of Edinburgh. She is a 2012 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar and a 2014 Loyola University Institute for Environmental Communications Fellow. In her spare time, Stevie enjoys doing pottery, spending time with her dog, and all things outdoors.

🎈Jeanette Lim (she/her)
Research Manager
Location: Bellingham, WA
Contact: jeanette@publiclab.org

Jeanette is a biologist with experience in research, education, and science communication. She has studied and written about how hagfish slime clogs fish gills, how lobsters use their paddling appendages like tiny jet packs, and how robots can help us learn about swimming fish. Her favorite part of science is sharing it. Prior to joining the Public Lab team, Jeanette managed content for an open online library about nature and nature-inspired technologies. Jeanette has a PhD in biology from Harvard University and earned previous degrees from St. Francis Xavier University and the University of British Columbia. In her spare time, she enjoys sewing, food tours in new cities, and exploring the outdoors with her family.

🎈Jordan Macha (she/her)
Executive Director
Location: Houston, TX
Contact: jordan@publiclab.org

Jordan is Public Lab's Executive Director. A Gulf Coast native, Jordan brings deep experience in community building and leadership to advance climate and environmental justice. With a background in coastal & urban water management and policy, she helmed restoration and resiliency efforts across the Gulf region. Through her previous work with Bayou City Waterkeeper in Houston, Healthy Gulf, and the Sierra Club, Jordan worked to further just recovery and equitable resiliency models, coastal restoration initiatives, and clean energy policies across the Gulf region. She is currently a member of the Texas Water Development Board's Regional Flood Planning Group for the Trinity Watershed, and served as the Harris County representative for H-GAC's Natural Resources Advisory Committee. Jordan is a previous Fellow with the Women's Earth Alliance Accelerator, Oak Spring Environmental Leadership Program, and the Loyola University Institute for Environmental Communications. Residing in the Lower Galveston Bay Watershed along White Oak Bayou, Jordan enjoys exploring her backyard bayous, consuming culinary delights, and traveling locally and abroad.

🎈Alahna Moore (she/her)
Kits Fulfilment Manager
Location: New Orleans, LA
Contact: alahna@publiclab.org

Alahna was born and raised in coastal Louisiana and the majority of her work focuses on documenting landscape change along the Gulf Coast. She works to develop innovative means of data collection and digital curation to communicate environmental change through spatial, material, and historical frameworks. She has many experiences in this capacity: as a self-employed UAS pilot, as the chairperson of the Communications Committee for the Louisiana Master Naturalists, as an archaeologist in New Orleans, as a GIS researcher with NASA DEVELOP, and as a photogrammetrist for the National Park Service. Alahna earned a M.S. in cultural resource management and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of New Orleans, and is currently working towards her doctorate in environmental communications and citizen participation.

She’s always eager to chat about archaeology, 3D modeling, maps, drones and satellites geomorphology, public history, urban legends, swamps, mushrooms and mycology, environmental education, the National Historic Preservation Act, cultural preservation, and dogs (especially Labradoodles).

🎈Michelle Suarez (she/her they/them)
Community Outreach Associate
Location: Orlando, FL
Contact: michelle@publiclab.org

Michelle is a queer, neurodivergent, immigrant from Muisca territory (Bogotá, Colombia) who grew up in Seminole and Miccosukee occupied lands (Florida, U.S.). For the past 10 years, she has contributed to grassroots and non-profit multi-issue campaigns and struggles, including climate and environmental justice ones. Currently, she is also part of Lantana Collective, a newly-formed language justice cooperative. They are passionate about international solidarity, mutual aid, and cross-cultural organizing with BI&POC APPI communities and causes. She enjoys bridging ideas, people, and resources as a way to serve collective liberation, unlearn systems of oppression and nourish emergent systems.

Michelle holds a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Central Florida. Her areas of study include two concentrations: one in Humanities, Philosophy, Religion & Popular Culture and another one in Music. She has a minor in Environmental Studies with an emphasis on political ecology topics. They enjoy being a cat mama, tending to plants, practicing spirituality, doing artistic projects, and dreaming about decolonial realities.

🎈Jess Wright (they/them)
Business and Operations Director
Location: Remote in the USA
Contact: jess@publiclab.org

With a background in finance, volunteer management, and operations, Jess is deeply connected to finding meaningful ways to engage team members while maintaining efficiency and productivity. They are a lover of systems, a believer in the power of a solid spreadsheet, and an experienced people manager.

Before joining the team at Public Lab, Jess held operations management roles in education nonprofit and human rights nonprofit organizations. They love to travel and spend time outdoors and lives on the road full-time in a custom-built home-on-the-road exploring public lands in the United States.

Additional support:

🎈Sebastian Silva (he/him)
Systems Administrator
Location: Madre de Dios, Peru
Contact: web@publiclab.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 Shipibo 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 (he/him)
Lead Code Community Coordinator
Location: Providence, RI
Contact: web@publiclab.org

The creator of GrassrootsMapping.org and co-founder and Research Director for Public Lab, Jeffrey Warren designs mapping and civic science tools and professionally flies balloons and kites. Notable software he has created include the vector-mapping framework Cartagen and orthorectification tool MapKnitter, as well as open spectral database and toolkit Spectral Workbench.

He served from 2015-17 as Vice President of the board of the Open Source Hardware Association, is on the board of alternative education program Parts and Crafts in Somerville MA, and an advocate of open source software, hardware, and data. He co-founded Vestal Design, a graphic/interaction design firm in 2004, and directed the Cut&Paste Labs project, a year-long series of workshops on open source tools and web design in 2006-7 with Lima designer Diego Rotalde.

Jeff holds an MS from MIT and a BA in Architecture from Yale University and spent much of that time working with artist/technologist Natalie Jeremijenko, building robotic dogs and stuff. To find out more, visit unterbahn.com.