SETAC North America – 2025 Edition

Mark Johnson, SETAC North America President, and Tamar Schlekat, SETAC North America Executive Director

As in past years, the SETAC North America Board transitioned during the North America annual meeting, introducing its new members for the upcoming year. Please join us in welcoming the SETAC North America Board of Directors for 2024–2025.

The SETAC North America Board is made up of 16 voting members, which include the immediate past president and a student representative, who also serves as the North America Student Advisory Council President. Annually, one third of the board’s memberships changes. The SETAC North America Leadership Development Committee (previously known as the Nominations Committee) works diligently to identify a slate of new board members that will allow the board as a whole to be balanced in sectors (five representatives each from academia, business and government), as well as in other areas, including competency in governance, geographic location of residence, gender and gender expression, ethnic and racial diversity.

SETAC North America’s insistence on the application of the SETAC multi-sector principle in governance is unique among professional societies. SETAC’s multi-sector principle provides a platform for discussion and debate and a basis for consensus building necessary to tackle wicked environmental challenges.

The SETAC North America Board will focus on advancing the strategic and annual plans developed during a planning exercise undertaken several month ago. The SETAC North America Board engaged in work with consultants to support the development of a strategic plan. To kickstart the work, the consultants conducted a general survey and a leadership survey to gather input from the membership.

Those who responded to the survey indicated that their main reason for engaging with SETAC is networking, followed closely by contributing to the field, and then access to scientific content. The programs that were most important to respondents were meetings, journals, groups and other newsletters. Some members though seemed to be unaware of some of their member benefits! To take the most advantage of your membership, please fill your profile in full and opt in to receive notices about things you care about. You can also opt in to the membership directory, accessible to all full members, if you wish to be found by your peers.   

The results of the surveys were analyzed by the consultants and presented to the board. Informed by what the membership noted in the surveys, the board met at a strategy retreat to brainstorm potential goals and metrics to develop the first draft of the SETAC North America Strategic Plan and then a small task force refined it to its present state.

SETAC North America strategic plan is designed to mimic the global SETAC strategic plan, but it is more regionally tailored. As such, SETAC’s vision and mission were kept at the top of everyone’s mind when developing goals for SETAC North America, and the goals were developed to align with Global SETAC’s Priorities, as follows:

SETAC Strategic Priority I: Advance Environmental Science

• Expand number and breadth of scientific offerings to meet the needs of members throughout the course of the year.
• Support the career development of environmental scientists and managers to sustain the needs of North America.

SETAC Strategic Priority II: Promote Science-Informed Decision Making

• Enhance the use of science to inform decision-making leveraging SETAC capabilities. 

SETAC Strategic Priority III: Sustain Organizational Health

• Ensure organizational health with a focus on regional chapters, the volunteer pipeline, finances and continuity of operations.

The board also identified tasks and metrics for each of these goals and has already started tackling them head on. Many of these goals will come to fruition at the SETAC North America 46th Annual Meeting, which will be held from 16–20 November 2025.

The board envisions an invigorating and thought-provoking annual meeting in Portland in 2025. Leading up to the meeting, the board will be working with the SETAC North America Science Committee and SETAC leadership from around the world to deliver technical content through the SETAC Journals and webinars programs. The board will also be working with the Science Committee to identify projects (for example, focus topic meeting, workshops) to develop for 2026. We hope that you will remain engaged with the groups within SETAC, and we trust that you’ll stay tuned in to SETAC activities through SETAC communication outlets (the Globe, the News and LinkedIn).

Author’s contact: [email protected]