Director, NEON, Inc. Board of Directors: Dr. Margaret Leinen

Margaret Leinen is the Chief Science Officer at Climos, a company dedicated to using natural processes to remove carbon from the atmosphere, assisting companies in reducing their carbon footprints and becoming carbon neutral. Prior to joining Climos, Dr. Leinen was the Director of the Geosciences Directorate of the NSF from 2000 - 2006, the second largest directorate at the Foundation with an annual budget of $700 million. During her tenure at NSF, Dr. Leinen oversaw the development of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and NSF’s Biocomplexity in the Environment Priority Area. She aggressively sought to attract more women and minorities to the geosciences. Before her tenure at NSF, Dr. Leinen served in academia as Dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography and Vice Provost for Marine and Environmental Programs at the University of Rhode Island, and as a research scientist with a focus on paleooceanography and paleoclimatology. She received a B.S. from the University of Illinois; M.S. from Oregon State University, and a Ph.D. in Geological Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island.