ASA Connect

Dear ASA members,

With great sorrow I pass along the news that Katherine Wallman died on Wednesday. Katherine was a giant in our community and a good friend. She cared deeply about the ASA. We will miss her leadership and wisdom, and I will miss her friendship, her candor, and her delightfully offbeat sense of humor.

A lovely remembrance of Katherine, written by the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), is attached.

Ron

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Ron Wasserstein
Executive Director
The American Statistical Association
Promoting the Practice and Profession of Statistics
Striving to be an antiracist
732 N. Washington St.
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-684-1221
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Dear ASA Members, 

A memoriam to Katherine Wallman has been posted to the ASA website: https://www.amstat.org/news-listing/2024/01/24/in-memoriam-1992-asa-president-katherine-wallman. 

As I wrote today on a LinkedIn post, I had the great honor to know Katherine and benefit from her wisdom, guidance, and kindness. Especially after her retirement, she was generous with her time, expertise, and insights, not to mention her editing prowess and rolodex. After leaving government, she felt freer to express her personal views and so sometimes referred to herself as "Wallman Unleashed". The memoriam linked here touches upon some of her many contributions to ASA science policy work as Wallman Unleashed but they can't begin to capture the hundreds of emails I have from her, the scores of documents she edited and contributed to, or the hundreds of hours of phone and Zoom calls I had with her.

2024 marks for me an end of the Wallman era at least for the ASA if not the federal statistical community, an era which extends back to at least 1983 when she was elected a fellow of the ASA.

My condolences to her family, colleagues and friends.

Steve

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Stephen Pierson
Director of Science Policy
American Statistical Association
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