Barbara Ryan

Barbara J. Ryan is Secretariat Director of the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) located in Geneva, Switzerland. In this capacity, she leads the Secretariat in coordinating the activities of 100 Member States and 89 Participating Organizations who are striving to integrate Earth observations so that informed decisions can be made across nine Societal Benefit Areas including agriculture, biodiversity, climate, ecosystems, energy, disasters, health, water and weather. Before assuming this position in July 2012, she was the Director of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Space Programme where she had responsibility for coordinating space-based observations to meet the needs of WMO Members in the topical areas of weather, water, climate and related natural disasters. She also served as the technical focal point for WMO’s activities with GEO. Before joining WMO in October 2008, she was the Associate Director for Geography at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Reston, Virginia where she had responsibility for the Landsat, remote sensing, geography and civilian mapping programs of the agency. It was under her leadership that implementation of the Landsat data policy was reformed to release all data over the internet at no additional cost to the user -- an action that has resulted in the release of more than 25 million Landsat scenes to date