This summer, I met Stephan Van Dam, a mapmaker and publisher so well known for his innovative work that twenty-six of his maps are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. We talked about our work, and he connected bioethics to mapping. “After all, ethics is action,” he said.

I’ve thought about that since because I found it a great description for bioethics and my role in it. Being concerned with how things ought to be requires a map of how they are and where we want to go. As director of public affairs and communications at The Hastings Center, my job is to help put the normative and empirical research of our scholars into action via policy-makers, journalists, and the public—to place it on the map.