Author Biographies
Lisa Crane
Western Americana Manuscripts Librarian
The Claremont Colleges Library
Lisa Crane is the Project Director for the Digitizing Southern California Water Resources project funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives grant. Starting as the Special Collections Digital Projects Coordinator in 2007, Lisa managed digital production for the Claremont Colleges Digital Library from 2008 to 2010, when she became the Western Americana Manuscripts Librarian. She holds an MLIS with an emphasis in Archival Studies from San Jose State University.
Dr. Jeanine Finn
Data Science & Digital Scholarship Coordinator
The Claremont Colleges Library
Dr. Finn is the project lead for the Bending Water project and has been working with data and digital scholarship at the Claremont Colleges Library since the beginning of her CLIR postdoctoral fellowship in 2017. Her work at the library includes extensive outreach across the seven-college campus offering support for data management planning, collaborating on data-intensive student and faculty research, and serving as a key point of contact for the library’s expanding data science and digital scholarship resources.
Catalina Lopez
Project Manager, The Bending Water Project
The Claremont Colleges Library
Catalina Lopez began working at the Claremont Colleges Library as a digital production student assistant and digitized materials in the California Water Documents collection until taking on the role as project manager in February 2020. Her current role involves engaging with water data and indigenous history experts at other California institutions and developing workflows to enhance the digitized materials in the collection. She is also a reference librarian at Chapman University and has worked in university libraries for over 8 years.
Dr. Sami Maalouf
Professor of Engineering
California State University, Northridge
Dr. Maalouf’s areas of expertise are centered on environmental fluid mechanics (water quality models, turbulence, transport phenomena, stratified flow, surface and groundwater flow and contamination) and sustainable development (heat disposal, alternative energy systems, hydro-electric power and energy conservation). Current research focuses on modeling of the fate and transport of contaminants in groundwater and around coastal zones.
Char Miller
W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History
Pomona College
Char Miller is an environmental historian whose most recent books include Westside Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement (2021), Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena (2020), Hetch Hetchy: A History in Documents (2020), The Nature of Hope: Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Political Change (2019), Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land (2018), and Where There’s Smoke: The Environmental Science, Public Policy, and Politics of Marijuana.
Teri Red Owl
Executive Director
Owens Valley Indian Water Commission
Teri Red Owl is an enrolled member of the Bishop Paiute Tribe and has served as the Executive Director of the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission, a Tribal Consortium that provides water, environmental, and agricultural services to its member Tribes, for the past 22 years. She is at the forefront of efforts to negotiate tribal land and water for the Bishop, Big Pine, and Lone Pine tribes and advocates for environmental protection and policy change in Payahuunadü, in Los Angeles, and at the state and federal levels. She has served on countless boards and commissions, including the Bishop Paiute Gaming Corporation, Inyo County Water Commission, California Indian Manpower Consortium, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 Regional Tribal Operations Committee, California Department of Water Resources – Water Plan Update Committee, and the Bishop Paiute Development Corporation.
Dr. Heather Williams
Professor of Politics
Pomona College
Dr. Williams is the author of Social Movements and Economic Transition: Markets and Distributive Policy in Mexico and Planting Trouble: The Barzon Debtors’ Movement in Mexico, various book chapters and articles in journals, including Politics & Society, Social Science History, Latin American Perspectives, Environment and Society (Sao Paolo), and Sustainability. Currently, she is working on a book project for the University of California Press on water and the built environment in Southern California entitled River Underground: The Secret Life of the Santa Ana.
