Chief Innovation Officer at the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States

Pamela Wright

In 2012, Pamela Wright was selected by the Archivist of the United States to be the first Chief Innovation Officer at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Since then, she has focused on projects that combine NARA’s values to collaborate, innovate, and learn, with the exploration and use of emerging technologies. In support of NARA's strategic goals to make access happen, connect with customers and maximize NARA’s value to the nation, she launched NARA's firstsocial media program, andCitizen Archivist program. She developed the agency’sdigitization program, which has resulted in making more than 200 million records available through NARA's onlineCatalog. The Catalognewsletter reaches more than 350,000 subscribers. She led NARA’s successful launch of the 1950 Census website in April 2022. She opened the Innovation Hub at NARA’s flagship location in Washington, D.C., as a place for the public and staff to collaborate on digital projects. She established the agency’s first digital reference platform, History Hub, which allows the public to ask a question and receive answers not just from NARA staff, but also from expert researchers and staff from other agencies. She has been NARA’s liaison to the inter-agency Open Government Working Group and has led the development of NARA’s Open Government Plans.Her focus on making the records shareable has resulted in substantial numbers of digital copies of NARA's records on platforms across the internet, includingWikipedia, Wikidata,Giphy, andmore. She and her staff of archives specialists, community and project managers, user experience designers, and IT specialists run the agency’sweb, description,next-generation finding aids, anddigital reference programs. She has been a member of advisory boards to theDigital Public Library of America and the Library and Archives of Canada. Ms. Wright chaired the description subgroup of the Archivist’s Task Force on Racismand currently chairs NARA’s Reparative Description and Digitization Working Group. The group is working to build trusting relationships through collaborative projects between NARA and underserved and under-represented communities. Prior to joining the National Archives, Ms. Wright worked as a research historian on Native American water and land rights issues for a private consulting firm in Montana. She holds degrees in English and history from the University of Montana.