By Natalie Raia, AGU Board of Directors
The AGU Board of Directors is charged with the duties of care, loyalty, obedience, and foresight for the organization. It’s not surprising, then, that the theme of resilience — for AGU, for our scientific community, and for the knowledge infrastructure that supports science — has been at the forefront of conversation lately.
Nature provides us with abundant examples of self-regulating, self-strengthening, resilient systems: braided streams, for instance, contain dozens of channels that split and rejoin. There is no single primary channel, and thus, no single point of failure — when one channel is blocked by sediment or debris, water finds another path to the same destination. A braided stream is resilient precisely because of its decentralization: diverse pathways create stability and opportunity.
Our meeting kicked off with expert briefings from AGU’s senior staff on several programmatic “streams.” We discussed innovations in AGU’s global programs, advancing a coherent, regionally differentiated model, tailored to deliver meaningful value-add to the careers and professional networks of AGU’s global community. From our discussion of the fundraising landscape, AGU’s internal fundraising strategy, and the formation of the new AGU Philanthropy Committee, AGU is on a course for continued fiscal resilience through diversified revenue streams, ensuring AGU has the resources to deliver the programs and support its members need.
We closed the morning of the first day with scenario planning for the 2026 and 2028 U.S. elections and updates from AGU’s policy team. The ever-growing braided network of AGU community members engaging with their elected officials through AGU to advocate for science funding, integrity, and peer review is inspiring.
The phrase “punctuated equilibrium” emerged early in the meeting to describe sharp jumps of change for the organization. Rivers experience “punctuated equilibrium” through avulsion, when a perturbation pushes water out of its channel and the water cuts a new channel. AGU has responded to gaps and needs through several avulsions, as evidenced through recent efforts in ensuring the publication of the 2026 Arctic Report Card, through the publication of the first article in the U.S. Climate Collection in our partnership with the American Meteorological Society, and the launch of the Initiative for Science Assessments, which is developing a new ecosystem for how research gets translated into solutions for society’s biggest challenges.
Our discussions on honing the position statement portfolio and streamlining the writing and revision process, along with discussion on initial drafts of the 2027 objectives and key results showed another mechanism of work — moving from reactive avulsion to strategic stream capture, harnessing greater internal integration so the organization can identify and respond to opportunities together, all driven by the strategic plan.
The meeting concluded with forward-looking discussions and planning, starting with the evolving publication landscape, where AI is permeating all aspects of scholarly publishing. Through its partnership with Wiley, AGU continues to innovate, experiment, pilot, and adapt throughout its journal portfolio, leaning into the cutting edge, continually reflecting on how peer review and scholarly communication is evolving.
Our foresight discussion on higher education and the U.S. talent drought asked us to consider where external channels are reorganizing and how AGU can respond to serve the next generation of scientists and AGU community members. We closed with an overview of preparations for the AGU 2026 annual meeting in San Francisco.
Through the lens of a river, AGU is a mature, graded stream that continues to evolve to meet the needs of its community. In partnership with staff experts, the Board continues its charge to look downstream, and to continue asking which channels to nurture as we navigate a rapidly evolving external landscape.