Staff Highlights: New Powell Center Faces
There are several new faces you may see around the Powell Center.
Here's a brief introduction to some of the new faces you might see on-site at the Powell Center as of the past year (FY 2025).
Walt Sly
Walter (Walt) Sly is a Program Analyst on the Powell Center team.
Walt is a twenty-two-year Coast Guard veteran whose primary roles encompassed finance, supply, and logistics. Since his retirement he has graduated from Colorado State University with a B.S. in Landscape Architecture and joined the USGS family in 2021 at the Fort Collins Science Center. He joined the Powell Center ranks in January of 2025 and really enjoys working with all the groups. Walt considers the things that he is privileged to learn (as a fly on the wall) from our groups as an added bonus.
Walt has been thought of as a “Jack of all trades, master of none”, but believes in the reality that he knows just enough to be dangerous. He enjoys his family, occasional travel, and experiences the outdoors, even if it just means yard work.
Pamela von Plutzner
Pamela von Plutzner is your Powell Center Meeting Coordinator.
When you are onsite, and before you arrive, Pamela is available to support your meeting needs, including arranging travel and restaurant reservations. She has been with the Powell Center since November 2024 but was the conference coordinator at the University of Rhode Island’s W. Alton Jones campus – Whispering Pines Conference Center. At the conference center, she was kept busy planning and coordinating up to 600 meetings annually. A New Englander through and through, she moved to Colorado in 2011 with her family. Although Colorado is now home, she misses the ocean. Sewing and making quilts is her happy place.
Leslie Hsu
Leslie Hsu is Interim Director of the Powell Center since March 2025.
Leslie considers herself an Earth science generalist, knowing just enough about many topics to be pesky. She has been with the USGS since 2015 as a physical scientist coordinating the Community for Data Integration and supporting USGS-wide projects like the Model Catalog and State of the Data. She has spent a lot of time thinking about sediment transport, among other Earth surface processes. Leslie studied Earth Sciences at Harvard University, University of Arizona, and University of California, Berkeley.
She is stationed in Denver, CO but enjoys her trips to the Powell Center in Fort Collins. She’s a New Englander at heart, a fan of basketball played by 5-year olds to professionals, and a girl scout troop co-leader.