Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is the cofounder and executive director of Project Exploration, a Chicago-based nonprofit science education organization which works to ensure communities traditionally overlooked by science—particularly minority youth and girls—have access to personalized experiences with science and scientists.
Lyon leads Project Exploration to fulfill its mission and champions the beliefs that science can and should be accessible to everyone, especially to those to whom it traditionally has been closed. Lyon developed and implemented Project Exploration’s original youth, teacher and online programs and continues to spearhead new strategic initiatives. She has led two strategic planning processes and established the organization’s innovative earned revenue business plan. Prior to founding Project Exploration, Lyon served as the director of the School Change Institute at the Small Schools Workshop at the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a Fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project. Lyon has represented the International Association of Educators for World Peace as a delegate to the United Nations and addressed the U.N. Subcommittee on Human Rights. In 2009 Lyon was named a Leadership Fellow with the Chicago Community Trust. She has participated in seven international paleontology expeditions and discovered the African dinosaur Deltadromeus.
For more information about how Project Exploration is changing the face of science, visit www.projectexploration.org. Lyon’s blog, Schooling Science, can be found at www.schoolingscience.org.
