Deke Arndt became NCEI's Director in January 2023 after serving as Chief of NCEI's Climatic Science and Services Division (CSSD) for three years. He previously led the CSSD Monitoring Section. Deke’s career began in 1996 at the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. He worked closely with public safety, agriculture, climate monitoring, the energy generation and transmission sectors. In recent years, he served on the Council of the American Meteorological Society, was a co-lead editor of the AMS's annual State of the Climate report, and co-chaired the US Global Change Research Program's Interagency Indicators Working Group.