Dawn Wright is currently the Chief Scientist of ESRI, and has a long list of accomplishments and accolades. These include Oregon Professor of the Year while at Oregon State University, the first African American woman to dive to the ocean floor in deep submersible ALVIN, the first Black person to dive to Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth and operate a portable sidescan sonar at full-ocean depth, as well as the key player in creating the first GIS data model for the oceans. Dawn has a BS in Geology from Wheaton College, a MS in oceanography from Texas A&M, and a PhD in Physical Geography and Marine Geology from the University of CA, Santa Barbara.