Callie Weir is a Research Analyst with the AOC’s Office of Research and Data Analysis.
Callie Weir is a lively, friendly, and passionate data wonk. She loves working with numbers because “they explain what people do” – and that’s fascinating to Callie.
Callie is a native Georgian. She grew up in LaGrange, Georgia. “It was an idyllic, close-knit community,” Callie reminisces. She is still friends with folks in her hometown that she met in nursery school.
After graduating from LaGrange High School, Callie moved to Atlanta to study International Relations at Emory University. Her plan was to work with the CIA or cover war zones as a journalist. In pursuit of her dreams, Callie specialized in Eastern European politics. She traces her interest in the law to her studies of war crimes in the Balkans.
Callie next headed to New York for law school. She chose Syracuse University College of Law because the school is well known for The Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT) and has a robust International Law program. Callie loved law school. She loved the intellectual pursuit and the opportunity to work in her fields of interest. During her 1L year, she worked with the Cold Case Justice project researching unsolved civil rights era cases. During her 2L summer, she accepted a fellowship to study counterterrorism in Israel. Returning to law school, Callie began working with professors researching war crimes then, over the next summer, accepted another fellowship to continue her research in Belgium. In her final year of law school, Callie received the Brady K. Howell Fellowship which allowed her to work at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs where she helped organize a high-level interdisciplinary security conference.
On her first day at Syracuse, Callie met the man who would become her husband. She noticed the guy in front of her in the lunch line was wearing an Alabama hat. She had to say something to him. After striking up a conversation she asked him to have lunch with her. By the next week they were dating and have been together ever since. OK, not always together. Her husband works for the federal government so he is in Washington D.C. during half the week. They do spend weekends together, just Callie, her husband, and their two enormous dogs, Asher and Colter. When she talks about Asher, a Chocolate Lab and failed hunting dog, and Colter, a Lab/Pointer rescue dog, you know these dogs are truly Callie’s heart.
After law school, Callie moved to Washington D.C. to pursue her LL.M. in National Security & U.S. Foreign Relations Law at The George Washington University Law School. Her time at George Washington (GW) was her favorite academic experience. She loved the opportunity to immerse herself in national security and international law. Callie is most excited to have studied with Dean Lisa Schenck, the Director of GW’s National Security Law Program and the first female Army Court of Appeals judge.
While in the LL.M. program, Callie began interning at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). There she developed a new passion: analysis work. At the GAO she took on several interesting projects including analyzing the role of military bands and air teams and how they help the public relate to the military. Callie spent so much time at the Pentagon that when she left, her coworkers gifted her a plane made of chocolate from the Pentagon chocolate shop. (Did you know the Pentagon had a chocolate shop?)
After receiving her LL.M, Callie worked with Google doing analytics for the 2016 Presidential election. She then decided to move back to Georgia. She was excited to get the job at the AOC because it was such a natural fit – she had experience with data and the job involved managing data.
As an analysist at the AOC, Callie works primarily with the Council of Accountability Court Judges of Georgia. She loves working with the accountability courts. “I can see how the data I work with has a practical impact on people’s lives.” Working with 159 different accountability courts, she manages data submission and provides recommendations on how to improve data collection. Callie uses the data to look for trends and reports those trends in the courts’ annual reports.
Callie is also the co-chair of the AOC Social Committee. Her boss, Judicial Services Division Director Christopher Hansard, appointed Callie and John Botero to this august post. Stepping out from behind her data, Callie has embraced this new role wholeheartedly. “It’s nice to forge relationships with people.” (“I wouldn’t call it a committee so much as I just asked if she and John wanted to do it since they were the ones complaining about a lack of social things,” explains Christopher.)
When she’s not analyzing data, organizing outings and wrangling her dogs, Callie enjoys running races. She’s currently training for the Fast & Furriest race next month. She also enjoys crocheting. She loves to read John Grisham, Classic Literature, Russian Literature (Fathers & Sons being her favorite) and Anne River Siddons. Callie is a TV junkie and she loves police procedurals (Blue Bloods & NYPD Blue), true crime, spy shows, and, she can’t help herself, Gray’s Anatomy. But her favorite activity is “keeping up with friends scattered near and far,” like those lifelong friends from nursery school.