What’s the Story? Making Science Funding Meaningful to the Public [Fall 2025 Members Meeting]
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In today’s rapidly shifting federal funding landscape, it is critical to be able to clearly articulate the importance of the need to fund innovative and transformative research, from basic science to translational and clinical research. Building public trust is one tool that may help enable more support for scientific research and ultimately lead to an increase in federal funding.
This session explores how strategic storytelling can humanize research, highlight results, and connect with patients, caregivers, and the general public. Attendees will hear from a science journalist and a foundation representative on how to craft and share compelling narratives, and how to approach social media and public relations in a way that is most effective in our current climate.
Moderator
David Leyden, MPA, CRA, Vice President, Finance and Administration, SFARI, Neuroscience, and Informatics, Simons Foundation
David Leyden serves as vice president of finance and administration for SFARI, neuroscience and informatics at the Simons Foundation. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing all aspects of finance, operations, program and research administration for the division of Autism of Neuroscience.
David earned an undergraduate degree in international relations from Syracuse University and an M.P.A. from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He is also a certified research administrator and certified telehealth facilitator. He has expertise in finance, administrative and clinical operations, graduate program education, research administration and strategic planning. Previous appointments include serving as the administrative director for Telemedicine and director of planning and development in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, department administrator for Healthcare Policy and Research also at Weill Cornell Medicine and department administrator for Neuroscience at Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
Speakers
Siri Carpenter, PhD, Executive Director & Editor-in-Chief, The Open Notebook
Siri Carpenter is an award-winning journalist and is co-founder, executive director, and editor-in-chief of the non-profit organization The Open Notebook, a leading source of training, mentoring, and community support for journalists who cover science. She is also the editor of the books The Craft of Science Writing and The Best Science Stories and How They Work (forthcoming Spring 2026 from the University of Chicago Press). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Science, Scientific American, and other publications. She is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers, serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication, and was the 2023 winner of the Online News Association’s Community Award. She has a Ph.D. in social psychology from Yale University and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Ekemini Riley, PhD, Founder and CEO, Coalition for Aligning Science
Dr. Ekemini A. U. Riley is the Founder and CEO of the Coalition for Aligning Science (CAS), an organization she founded in 2020 to design and implement large-scale research programs across multiple disease areas. A molecular biologist by training, she is energized by devising creative ways to tackle scientific challenges and facilitating productive collaboration. She has designed and facilitated several multi-sector think tank sessions to inform the strategic deployment of philanthropic capital, crafted research programs, and seeded multi-funder collaboration. As President of CAS, Dr. Riley sets overall strategy across major philanthropic portfolios focused on accelerating discovery and therapeutic development in biomedicine.
She serves as Managing Director of Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (ASAP), the flagship initiative under the Coalition’s management, which she spearheaded from conception to launch. Dr. Riley is a member of the National Advisory Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council (2020-2024). This body informs institute program planning, concept clearance for NINDS initiatives, policies affecting extramural research programs, and funding decisions of the institute. She led the launch of WastewaterSCAN – a national effort to spread a leading approach for monitoring pathogens through municipal wastewater systems to inform public health responses locally and nationally.
Previously, Dr. Riley was a Director at the Milken Institute Center for Strategic Philanthropy. She helped to shape and co-direct the center’s medical research practice, executing directly on workstreams in oncology, circulatory, and neurodegenerative conditions.
She earned her BA in Natural Sciences from Johns Hopkins University and PhD in Molecular Medicine from the University of Maryland School of Medicine.