Good Sense, Clearly Articulated Views, Openness
On the WAGES Board, Ann was highly organized, well liked, and extremely effective in both identifying necessary actions and following them through. She also both inherited and enhanced a very participatory, inclusive atmosphere on the Board that made it a wonderful community. She is a natural leader.
As a self-employed technical consultant, Ann both takes on and handles competently an extraordinary array of complex projects with different (and always-overlapping) deadlines. She is extremely organized – and apparently tireless – as I have never known her to drop a ball notwithstanding the large number that are in the air.
Ann is an extremely good teacher, public speaker, discussion facilitator, and listener. She teaches courses in Green Chemistry to nonspecialists through the University of California extension school; she gives presentations to donors at WAGES events; [and] she helps lead multi-hour WAGES strategic planning sessions.
She brings good sense, clearly articulated views, and an openness to new ideas and approaches to all the settings in which she participates.
These self-presentation, communication, and active-listening attributes are rare in any person, but perhaps even more so in a PhD scientist.
Ann has enormous personal integrity. For example, Ann has demonstrated a long-term ideological commitment to the notion of “precautionary” action with respect to toxic chemicals (the idea that once we have a certain quantum of evidence that a chemical is harmful, we should endeavor to reduce its use, even if we don’t have absolute certainty as to how harmful it is, or the mechanism by which it acts), even though the so-called “precautionary principle” is lauded in some fora and ridiculed in others. This is a mark of integrity.
Ann is practical and efficient, yet also idealistic. On the WAGES Board and in her chemicals policy work, I have seen her able to set broad goals, determine how to approach them in manageable steps, and determine metrics by which to judge outcomes.