Libby Hepburn

Bachelor Education – Leicester University, Master of Business Administration – Heriot Watt University Edinburgh. Libby has worked as a teacher, established and run a fishermen’s co-op of 60 boats in England, and a business with 70 people, and been a national advisor on organisational development and strategy in Scotland. Since her retirement she has dedicated her life to developing and promoting citizen science for sustainability – locally, nationally and globally. After 8 years running the community-led project to build the Sapphire Coast Marine Discovery Centre, Libby has spent the last 12 years leading the Atlas of Life Far South Coast NSW (https://atlasoflife.org.au) a regional biodiversity monitoring project. The Atlas now has over 2,629 contributors, 104,300+ records, 7 Bioblitzes, many diverse projects and a long-term community of interest with expertise in many aspects of local ecology and biodiversity. Libby’s continuing quest is to encourage more scientists and policy-makers to work with communities in place-based science and evidence based actions towards sustainable practices. Libby is a founder and continuing advocate for the Australian Citizen Science Association (https://citizenscience.org.au) and the Citizen Science Global Partnership(CSGP, https://citizenscienceglobal.org). She is working globally to leverage citizen science into its rightful place as a mainstream science process by advocating for Open Science and co-chairing the CSGP “Scaling-up citizen science Air Quality monitoring” Community of Practice.