Robert H. and Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award Recipient Isha M. Renta López
For Isha M. Renta López, mentorship is about more than sharing professional advice. It is about opening doors, recognizing barriers, creating opportunities, and helping others find their place in the atmospheric sciences.
That commitment has earned Renta López the 2027 Robert H. and Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award, recognizing her tireless efforts to mentor early-career scientists and expand STEM access for Hispanic and Latino communities through innovative science communication and impactful community engagement.
“When I first began my career journey, I didn’t really know what a mentor was,” Renta López said. “I learned through the people around me who opened doors, encouraged me, and lifted me along the way.”
Those experiences inspired a philosophy that has guided her career: “Lift as I climb.”
Growing up in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Renta López’s interest in meteorology was shaped by the threat of hurricanes. Hurricane Hugo in 1989 was her first vivid memory of a hurricane, and she recalls watching satellite imagery, press conferences, and local National Weather Service leaders brief the public alongside government officials and emergency managers.
As a teenager, she tracked hurricanes on newspaper maps, waiting for the next coordinates to be announced on television. Hurricane Georges, which directly impacted Puerto Rico in 1998, reinforced her interest.
“I became fascinated not only with understanding weather, but with understanding it well enough to help my community,” she said. “That motivation has stayed with me throughout my career.”
At the time, Puerto Rico did not have meteorology degree programs, so Renta López studied mathematics at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. She later found her way into atmospheric science through NOAA internships, including opportunities at the Environmental Modeling Center and the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory’s (AOML) Hurricane Research Division. She earned her master’s degree in atmospheric sciences from Howard University.
Her career has included positions as a civilian research meteorologist with the Department of the Navy, a meteorologist with NOAA’s National Weather Service forecast office serving the Baltimore-Washington region, and roles within NOAA Research. She managed NOAA Science Council activities and later served as advisor to the NOAA chief scientist.
Today, Renta López is the portfolio analysis and research transitions program manager in NOAA’s Weather Program Office, where she focuses on understanding NOAA’s research portfolio and improving how research and innovation transition into real-world use. She is currently serving a temporary assignment as deputy director of AOML’s Hurricane Research Division, where she helps manage day-to-day operations, strengthen research-to-operations efforts, and align the division’s research with broader NOAA priorities.
Throughout that journey, mentorship has remained central to her work.
Renta López credits countless people with helping shape her career, including Jorge González at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, NOAA’s Jacqueline Rousseau and Chantell Haskins, Vernon Morris, Ada Monzón, John Morales, Russ Wiss, Jim Lee, and former NOAA Chief Scientist Sarah Kapnick.
She also points to AMS as an important part of her professional network. Through AMS Annual Meetings, she met colleagues, friends, and mentors who became part of her career journey.
“My career is a good example of how one opportunity and one person can create a chain reaction,” she said.
That chain reaction is something Renta López now works to create for others. For her, mentoring means helping people navigate not only the scientific and professional aspects of a career, but also the barriers that can stand in their way.
“When I mentor someone, I am not simply sharing my experiences or helping them prepare for a career,” she said. “I also try to recognize the barriers they may encounter, help them navigate those barriers, and sometimes help them create spaces that did not exist before.”
Her greatest source of pride is seeing those she has mentored succeed and then use their own experiences to make an impact.
“As I continue to see Latino and Hispanic representation grow within meteorology, it means a great deal to know that perhaps I helped plant a few of those seeds,” she said. “Their success is my reward.”
That commitment to service extends beyond her professional work. Renta López is the founder and executive director of Semilla Cultural, a Puerto Rican cultural arts nonprofit that teaches and performs Bomba, one of Puerto Rico’s oldest Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance traditions.
Through Semilla Cultural, she teaches Bomba dance, plays percussion, performs, develops children’s programs, and organizes community events. She also uses the arts to teach about Puerto Rican culture, hurricanes, the environment, and resilience.
Renta López is also the author of the children’s book Sofia y su Tambor de Bomba (Sofia and her Bomba Drum). For her, meteorology and Bomba are not separate worlds. Both provide opportunities to connect science, culture, education, and community.
The same philosophy informs her work at NOAA. A central question driving her research-transition work is: How can science better serve communities?
Her work has shown that moving research into practical use often involves challenges beyond the science itself, including coordination, governance, ownership, requirements, and connections between people and organizations.
“We have to continue advancing science while also becoming better at translating it, communicating it, and connecting it to people’s decisions and everyday lives,” she said. “In the end, the measure of our successes isn’t simply how sophisticated our science becomes, but how effectively that science serves our society.”
Renta López sees an important opportunity for the atmospheric sciences in bringing together scientific and technological advances with stronger communication, a diverse workforce, and meaningful connections with communities.
Her advice to students and early-career professionals reflects the lessons she has learned throughout her own journey: Remain open to possibilities, challenge yourself, find your purpose, create spaces where they do not exist, and seek out people who can help you see possibilities when self-doubt gets in the way.
“And as you move forward, lift as you climb,” she said. “Help the people coming behind you while you forge your own path.”
Her personal motto captures the spirit behind that approach: “Cuando las cosas se hacen de corazón, las bendiciones llegan solas” — when you do things from the heart, the blessings will come on their own.
The Simpson Mentorship Award holds particular meaning for Renta López because AMS was the first professional organization she joined as a graduate student. She was especially moved to learn that colleagues had nominated and supported her for the honor.
“I never set out on this path expecting recognition for doing the things I care about,” she said.
About a month after learning she had been selected for the award, Renta López also learned that she had completed the requirements to become a Certified Consulting Meteorologist.
For Renta López, both milestones mark a meaningful chapter in a career defined not simply by scientific achievement, but by a commitment to service and to helping others find opportunities to follow their own paths.
“Even when I am too busy to recognize it myself, I am doing something right,” she said. “I hope this recognition encourages others not only to mentor and support the next generation of scientists, but also to recognize their colleagues through nominations and awards. That, too, is a way of lifting as we climb.”
