Richard Lawford

Richard (Rick) Lawford started his professional career as a weather forecaster with the Canadian Meteorological Services of Canada (now Environment and Climate Change Canada).  After serving the Canadian government  in various capacities, including training meteorologists, developing applications of climate data, planning and evaluating Inland Water programs, science policy development in the Ministry of State for Science and Technology, and as a research manager in hydrometeorology at the National Hydrology Research Center in Saskatoon, he moved to NOAA in Silver Spring MD to become the Program manager for GCIP (GEWEX Continental-Scale International Project) and GAPP. He then served as the Director of the International GEWEX Program Office before moving back to Canada where he was the Network Manager for a drought research project in western Canada; a contractor to JAXA and NASA on GEO water-related activities, and a WHO contractor exploring options for using EO in the Water SDG.  He has played a number of roles in GEO since 2005, including supporting the development of GEOGloWS, and preparing the GEOSS Water Strategy.  More recently he has been co-lead for a Future Earth project on the role of governance, observations and information in the W-E-F Nexus.