Rear Admiral William Stubblefield was born and raised in Medina, Tennessee.  He attended Memphis State University and graduated in 1962 with a major in secondary education and a minor in chemistry.  After graduation, Stubblefield was commissioned in the United States Navy and attended Naval Officer Candidate School in Rhode Island.  He served on a minesweeper and ice breaker at sea, operating all over the globe.

Dr. W. Paul Menzel grew up in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland-College Park.  He attended The University of Wisconsin - Madison for his master's and PhD in Theoretical Solid State Physics.  Since 1967, Paul has worked as a scientist for the Space Science and Engineering Center in Madison.  He also started working as a adjunct professor in 1986 at UW, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in physics and satellite meteorology.  In 1999, Dr. Menzel became the Chief Scientist for the Center for Satellite Applications and Research in NOAA/NESDIS.

Vito Giacalone was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1959.  Vito is a third-generation fisherman in Gloucester, and started in the fishing industry as a youth.  In the late 1980's, Giacalone took a break from fishing to work in construction, until he came back to commercial fishing in 2000.  He serves as the Policy Director for the Northeast Seafood Coalition and President of the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund.  He and his wife Jenny own the fishing vessel Jenny G. and Fishermen's Wharf Gloucester.  

"I had made partnerships [with] people you would not traditionally expect to be partners, I knew the power of collaboration, partnership with all people, all groups with odd interests, and that actually, if you don't speak the same language, you may learn new words."  

Tom Karl was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1951 and grew up in the suburbs, observing and predicting the weather using homemade instruments with his father.  He attended Northern Illinois University and graduated in 1973 with a major in meteorology and a minor in mathematics.  He attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin and studied under Werner Schwerdtfeger.  After a brief TV/Radio weather forecasting position at the beginning of his career Tom joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1975.

Timothy Schmit was born in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, in 1962. He earned a B.S. and M.S. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After graduating, he worked as a researcher for the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies. From 1996 to the present, Mr. Schmit has worked as a meteorologist for NOAA/NESDIS and is based in Madison, Wisconsin.  

Scope and Content Note

Tim is a native of Tampa, Florida and the son of school teachers. He graduated from Florida State University in Marine Biology. Earning two graduate degrees at Louisiana State University, he was awarded a Fellowship in the NOAA Sea Grant Program and worked as a staffer in the U.S. Senate.

Since 1980, Tom Wrublewski has been a physical scientist with the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS).

Tom Balf is an environmental professional with diverse experience in regulatory policy, environmental management, and sustainability in the corporate, consulting, and non-profit sectors. His current consulting work, as founder of Oceanvest, LLC, focuses on projects that support sustainable fishing communities, maritime technology applications, and 21st century working waterfronts. He is the former executive director of Maritime Gloucester.

Scope and Content Note

Suzanne Tully McCarthy was born in 1936 in Roanoke, Virginia. She is of English, Scottish, Northern European, Scandinavian, and Germanic descent, with her maternal grandparents, Emma Row Arbenz and Herman Leonard Arbenz, hailing from Wheeling, West Virginia. Her paternal grandparents were Mary Clarcia Jarrell and Richard Grant Tully, with roots in West Virginia and Virginia. Suzanne pursued her education in mathematics, earning a B.A. from the College of William and Mary in 1957. She furthered her studies with an M.S. in numerical analysis from Johns Hopkins University in 1975.