Her career at NCAR spans several decades and began as a graduate student participating in the former Scientific Computing Division's Fellowship Program in Scientific Computing. After completing her MS in meteorology and MA in mathematics at the Pennsylvania State University, she joined CGD's Oceanography Section, where she provided programming support for individual scientists' research. In the early 1990's, Ms. Norton became the CSM ocean-model software engineering liaison. Presently she is the lead software engineer on the Modeling Ocean Variability and Biogeochemical Cycles (MOBY) project, incorporating the MIT Darwin ecosystem model into CESM.