Dr. Wright is also a professor of Geography & Oceanography at Oregon State University.  She is an elected member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, as well as the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Her research has had a significant impact on the development of GIS for a variety of seafloor mapping, environmental conservation, and terrestrial mapping projects. She has participated in over 20 oceanographic research expeditions worldwide. In 1991, she became the first Black female to dive to the deep ocean floor in a research submersible. In the summer of 2022 she became the first Black person of any gender to dive to the deepest spot on the entire planet, Challenger Deep (western Pacific Ocean), and to successfully operate a sidescan sonar at that full-ocean depth.