Glaciologist · Mountaineer · Speaker
I read ice for a living. I climb the world's cold places to carry instruments up, bring data down — and make sure the next generation of women can picture themselves doing both.
A girl can't become what she's never seen. So let's make women in science impossible to miss.
How it works
Each expedition hauls a research payload — firn cores, snow isotope samples, weather stations — for labs that can't put a team at altitude.
Every dataset goes to a women-led research group, and I name the scientists loudly, everywhere I tell the story. The mountain gets the photo; they get the credit.
Classrooms follow each climb live — the sensors, the storms, the math. Then I show up in person, ice axe in one hand, ice core data in the other.
The short version
I was the only woman in my glaciology cohort and, for a while, the only one at most of my field camps. Somewhere around my hundredth crevasse crossing I realized the two hardest things I'd ever done — becoming a scientist and becoming a mountaineer — were hard for the same reason: nobody expected me there.
Expectation is infrastructure. I'm building it.
Now every peak I climb is a working field site, every dataset lands in a women-led lab, and every classroom that follows along watches a woman do the science at 6,000 meters.
Pressure ice · field season 2024
The expedition log
Fourteen firn cores from the upper mountain — the highest-altitude core set in the lab's twenty-year archive. Six classrooms followed the climb live.
Installed a summit-flank weather station that's been reporting every day since. Students in three countries chart its data in class.
Snowpack isotope sampling on one of the most photographed peaks on Earth — with a woman scientist in every photo.
What it adds up to
23
School visits
4,100
Students reached
9
Datasets delivered
11
Women scientists spotlighted
"Rosa showed my class photos of her lab at 5,900 meters. Three girls asked me about geology degrees that same week."
— 8th grade science teacher · Tacoma, WA
"Field teams can't reach these altitudes. Rosa's cores extended our record by a decade — and she made sure everyone knew whose lab did the work."
— Dr. Amara Osei · Cascade Institute
DISPATCH 12 · DENALI · DAY 9 — Wind pinned us at 14,200 ft for two days. Used the downtime to run the classroom Q&A: 214 students, one question I couldn't answer, three new future glaciologists (their words). Cores are safe. Morale high. —R
✓ You're on the manifest. Next dispatch from 6,000 m.
For sponsors & donors
Puts one instrument on the next climb — and your name in the expedition report every classroom receives.
Funds a full science payload: cores, sampling kit, satellite uplink for the live classroom feed.
Underwrites an entire expedition, logo on the pulk and the payload — plus a keynote for your team when I'm back down.
Prefer a conversation first? rosa@rosabrown.pages.dev — speaking inquiries welcome at the same address.