Jennifer Lacey has been selected as regional director (RD) for the Midcontinent Region, effective April 23, 2023. 

Sources/Usage: Public Domain. View Media Details

In this role, Lacey will provide leadership to 11 USGS centers across Interior Regions 3 and 5, and she will represent the Midcontinent Region on the Executive Leadership Team at the bureau level.  

Lacey joined the Midcontinent Region in 2020 as the deputy regional director for science. In 2021, she served as the acting regional director for the Southwest Region. Since returning to the Midcontinent Region last year, she has been assisting and acting in the RD position.   

Lacey has been with the USGS since 1999. In 2003, Lacey became the project manager of the NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center at EROS, where she managed the archive and distribution of the NASA EOS land data products. She was selected as the branch chief of the Observing Systems Branch in 2009. In this role, she was responsible for the operations of the Landsat satellites, development of the ground system for future missions, international partnerships for satellite imagery, calibration, and validation of satellite data, as well as the National Land Imaging Requirements effort. Lacey has also served on a detail to NOAA, working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on the GOES-R mission.  

Lacey has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of South Dakota and has worked toward her doctorate in geospatial science and engineering at South Dakota State University.