Mariama Dryák-Vallies (she/her) is the Director for the Polar Science Early Career Community Office (PSECCO) and co-PI for the FieldSafe program hosted by CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder. Mariama grew up on a farm in west-central Wisconsin before heading east to earn her B.A. in physical geography and archaeology at Durham University (UK)—where her passion for studying, researching, and teaching about glaciers, climate change, and the natural environment was born. She went on to complete her M.S. in Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine, studying Antarctic glaciology and ice-ocean interactions. During graduate school she was actively involved in advocating for polar early career scientists as a board member and co-chair of the United States Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (USAPECS), and as a project group member and national committee representative for APECS international. Mariama is passionate about working towards building accessible, welcoming, and safe Earth and polar sciences spaces for all—and strives to center that in all the work that she does.