Lindy Elkins-Tanton - Recognizing flourishing, leading teams, and an education for living

Lindy Elkins-Tanton is one of the world's foremost scientists. Couple that with an unprecedented understanding of how teams work and a sense of care that is exceedingly rare in our world and you recognize her for what she is: altogether unexampled. Her's is a story of exploration, of universe, of planet, of society, and of self.

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Professor Elkins-Tanton is a Foundation and Regents Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, where she is also the vice president of the Interplanetary Initiative - a place envisioning an interplanetary future built upon cooperative and inclusive new structures, systems, and perspectives.

She brings those perspectives to her role as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Psyche mission, selected in 2017 as the 14th in NASA’s Discovery program. She is only the second woman chosen to lead a competitive planetary science mission.

She has led four field expeditions in Siberia, as well as participated in fieldwork in the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.

She’s a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and has far too many awards and recognitions to mention.

She holds bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees from MIT, spent five years on the faculty there before directing the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Science.

She is author of six books, including a new memoir A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman. Oh and she has an asteroid named after her: Asteroid (8252) Elkins-Tanton.

She is an explorer in the broadest, most wonderful sense, and a guide for each of us.