Liesl Chatman

Liesl has served in significant leadership positions in university, school district, and museum settings. She is currently the director of the IDEAL Center at the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) where she has served since 2005. 

Prior to her work with SMM, she oversaw science for the Saint Paul Public Schools (SPPS) from 2003–2005 and served as the Executive Director of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Science & Health Education Partnership (SEP) from 1994–2003. She has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on major awards addressing professional development, partnership, and diversity issues from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the California Science Project, 3M, and the Medtronic Foundation.  

Currently she is the PI on iPAGE, an NSF-funded research and program effort on organizational change in the Informal STEM Education sector to support diversity, promoting inclusion, increasing access, and achieving equity (NSF Awards #1612640 and #2011859). The Obama administration named her a White House Champion of Change for her work on equity in STEM education.