Pam Bjornson

Director General, NRC-CISTI

Pam Bjornson was appointed NRC-CISTI's Director General in 2007. Pat Mortimer, NRC Vice President of Technology and Industry Support, noted that "With her solid management experience, her strong links to the library and publishing communities and her existing in-depth knowledge of NRC-CISTI and its programs, Pam is well equipped to build on NRC-CISTI's strong foundation and lead it towards a future that will be both challenging and exciting."

In addition to her duties as Director General of NRC-CISTI, she is also the Chair of the Research Data Strategy Working Group, a former member of the Advisory Board for the Canadian Research Knowledge Network and holds board and committee roles with other Canadian library-related organizations. Ms. Bjornson has worked with the library community for nearly 20 years and has focused on providing desktop access to Canadian and global information for the Canadian research community as well as managing the changes resulting from technology shifts within libraries and e-research.

At the international level, Ms. Bjornson is Deputy Chair of the WorldWideScience Alliance, Deputy President of DataCite International, Treasurer and past Conference Chair (2009) of the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI), and a member of the ARL e-Science Working Group.

Ms. Bjornson has an MBA from the University of Ottawa and brings 25 years of private and public sector management experience to this position. Prior to her appointment as CISTI's Director General, she was responsible for client and stakeholder communications, marketing, and partnership development as Director of Business Affairs for CISTI. She also managed the particularly critical challenges of financial planning, risk management and overall business strategy development.

Prior to coming to NRC-CISTI, Ms. Bjornson was the Executive Director of Canadiana.org, a not-for-profit organization established by the major Canadian university libraries and the National Library of Canada to preserve Canada's printed heritage and make the resulting collection accessible to research libraries in Canada and around the world.