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"Sustainability"

Corporate sustainability professional

Alex Michalko has worked in corporate sustainability for more than a decade, helping large companies from the media, retail, and technology sectors drive positive environmental and social change. She also served as a Research Fellow at Project Drawdown, an initiative led by Paul Hawken to measure the expected environmental and financial impact of accelerating the adoption of the 100 most substantive solutions to climate change. Alex received her MBA and Master of Environmental Management degrees from Duke University, where her master’s thesis focused on consumer goods eco-labelling. She also holds a BA in International Relations from Stanford University. She is based in Seattle, where she spends her free time exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

Scuba Diving Instructor and Commercial Diver

Scubaholic working to better the management of marine and coastline sustainability.

AMANDA simply loves the outdoors, growing up North of 60 in Whitehorse, Yukon Canada. Whitehorse was named after the breath taking Rapids that resembled the flowing main of a white horse. The Yukon is mainly known for its rich history from the Klondike gold rush, today mining still remains an important industry. Amanda experienced first hand the world of mining threw her parents family business, and was always surrounded by natures simple beauty.

She is a High School Graduate, Dive master, equestrian rider, and sailing advocate, and developed a need to always be outdoors riding her horse and embrace every opportunity for adventure from a very young age. Her passion for the ocean began on a few family vacations to Maui, Hawaii, where she couldn’t get enough of the salt water and marine life while diving.

Through multiple outdoor and experiential school programs such as Class Afloat: an international school aboard a Traditional Tall Ship. The crew sailed the Great Lakes of Canada followed by two South Atlantic Crossings with many ports of call through the semester.

Amanda understood the great power of the seas and saw first hand the pollutants that were being dumped of the coast of under developed countries that simply could not afford to dispose of it properly. She gained her confidence to expand her goals to having a global impact once realizing the varsity and remoteness of the ocean.

Founder and Director, Asociación PLAYA PATROL

“When young children present me with their first bottle of discarded cigarette butts that they’ve collected at a beach clean up or enthusiastically share a story about why plastic is harmful to the sea, their eyes light up and they get very excited to tell me something important. That’s how I know that what we do with PLAYA PATROL is important at a grassroots level because it inspires people of all ages to change their relationship with single-use plastic. I am both excited to join eXXpedition and fearful to witness first-hand the harm that our relationship with plastic has on our fragile planet.

Ann is originally from Canada and now lives in La Herradura, which is located in Costa Tropical, Spain. In October 2018, she hosted her first beach clean up which attracted 350 volunteers. That propelled her to create a non-profit association which focuses on large scale community beach clean ups in order to educate families, schools and business about the harm that single-use plastic has on our sea and our planet. Ann is looking forward to the challenges and rigor of two weeks at sea and is excited to share her on-board experience when she returns to Spain.

Fashion Activist

Carry is the founder and Global Operations Director of Fashion Revolution, a a global movement calling for greater transparency, sustainability and ethics in the fashion industry. Inspired to act after the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013, Fashion Revolution is now the world’s largest fashion movement with teams in over 100 countries and millions of people participating each year.

Previously, Carry set up her multi-award winning fashion brand Pachacuti in 1992 after a Masters in Native American Studies. Pachacuti pioneered radical supply chain transparency and was the world’s first Fair Trade Certified company. Earlier this year, Lyst named her as one of the 8 Sustainable Icons Revolutionising the Fashion World, alongside names such as Emma Watson, Stella McCartney and Meghan Markle.

Carry learned to sail on the J-Class yacht Velsheda and has sailed square riggers on the Tall Ships Race and a transatlantic voyage. Carry will use her experience to feed into Fashion Revolution’s 2020 campaign which will focus on the unseen impacts of the industry, such as micofibre pollution.

Natural Resources Management Specialist

Celine spends her days exploring ways to protect wildlife, forests and the ocean. Hailing from Singapore, Celine works at the World Bank, supporting the governments of Mozambique and Indonesia to tackle marine plastic pollution and move towards a plastics circular economy through policy, partnerships and local innovations. Her other projects aim to maximize the value of natural resources for local communities for their sustainable management. Previously, Celine lived and worked in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon, advocating for forest conservation and indigenous rights.

Celine loves diving, backcountry camping and learning languages – and she recently picked up the ukelele. She is excited to exchange ideas on eXXpedition with other strong women leaders and changemakers on solving the plastics problem.

Procurement Specialist

Adventurer and Procurement specialist working with manufacturing companies on change management and sustainability within the supply chain.

DEBORAH is a procurement professional working within the manufacturing industry specialising in procurement strategy. Over the past 10 years Deborah has fundraised for Ordinary2extraordinary, travelling all over the world to participate in challenges to raise funds, while taking herself out of her comfort zone and she has a passion for adventure.

Deborah is also passionate about our planet and having seen the impact of plastic in our oceans first hand while trekking along the pristine beaches in the Taman National Ujung Kulon Park in Java, she noticed how much plastic had washed up onto the beaches. She now wants to play a part in raising awareness of this issue and use the experience to discuss the expedition findings and assist companies in making a reduction in the use of plastic and other chemicals. Deborah has some experience on the water with small motor boats and as a passenger on small yachts and is looking forward to gaining a new skill.

Hazardous Waste Management

Raised on the shores of the Mediterrannean and sailing every summer IMOGEN has a wealth of experience in the environmental industry that extends to many worldwide locations. She has relentlessly pursued a career related to waste minimisation and site remediation of hazardous chemicals and other pollutants mainly in Africa and the Middle East. She has a keen interest and involvement in protecting and improving the environment as well as enforcing security for the people that live in proximity to contaminated or high-risk sites.

She is an MSc student in environmental toxicology and pollution control focusing on the behaviour of contaminants in water, air and soil and the evolving legislative controls on environmental contaminants.

Analyst at an Environmental Consultancy

Having grown up in West Yorkshire, Joanna has always had a deep appreciation for the outdoors and our environment. Following this interest through school to studying Geography at university, sustainability, the environment and how we can operate in a more sustainable way has always been of interest.

A former international hockey player for Great Britain and England, Joanna is now transitioning to a career post professional sport and is following her interest in sustainability and passion to better look after our environment. She has just started in a role at an environmental consultancy, in order to start a career journey into this space. With her two key interests being sport and sustainability, she also finds it particularly interesting and exciting to bring those together.

Entrepreneur and Environmental Activist

Juliet is passionate about sustainability and the circular economy, an entrepreneur at heart, and a changemaker keen on reducing our plastic dependencies.

She has successfully managed to decrease Aruba’s plastic footprint for the past six years, and is also working with Sint Maarten to fuel their plastic-free movement. To this end, she established a foundation, namely Impact Blue Foundation, together with private sector partners, to collaboratively research and devise inclusive solutions to puzzle and phase out our plastic reliance.

Mom, Wife, Business Woman - trained as a Bricklayer and Civil/Env Engineer

Katrin is a bricklayer and competitive swimmer from former East Germany. Because in East Germany there were limited resources, she always had to improvise and invent ways to make things work. This mindset shapes her to the day and forces her to be determined, practical, and hands-on. Katrin’s fierce sense of fairness helps build community.

It was much later in Katrin’s professional life that a professor told her that entrepreneurs are very unhappy because they always see things that can be improved. That’s when she realized, “Oh, is that what it is? I must be a very good entrepreneur!”

Her heart beats at the intersection of sustainability, business, innovation & social entrepreneurship. She views the world around her through the lens of strategic sustainability to find ways to decarbonize.

Katrin really loves her work in the business world, helping companies and corporations become more profitable, resilient and competitive by connecting their core business values with environmental sustainability, especially along the water-energy-food nexus.

As an environmental sustainability business woman, Katrin enjoys leading and initiating change, inspiring and empowering people, and engaging in sustainability design thinking and development of inclusive and equitable communities, which she does in her personal and professional life, from Harvard University to the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar, as well as in her volunteering activities as President of SustainableQATAR.

A big motivator, challenge and responsibility for taking part in an eXXpedition round-the-world sailing voyage is to bring back pictures, stories and research results to this diverse array of organizations and communities for which she is grateful for and willing to accept.

Postgraduate Student and Ocean Conservationist

KIRANA has a scientific background in Marine Science which has given her full understanding of Indonesia’s potential for leading the world in environmental issues. Working on marine conservation for nearly seven years and living in Indonesia – the heart of the Coral Triangle, a global epicentre of marine biodiversity, further confirm this. Unfortunately, its maritime potential is grossly neglected, especially with the young generation. And we are currently facing real threats such as marine ‘plastic’ debris that have a severe impact on the marine environment, economic cost and our health.

She just finished her postgraduate program at University College London on Environment, Politics and Society and researched on “Ocean Plastic, Politics of Scale and Indonesia’s National Plan of Action”. She believes through the exploration of environmental problems such as ocean plastic will provide insight related to the scientific, political, economic practices that are shaping the human perspective in their relation to the ocean. Before her postgraduate study, she was doing a United Nations-Nippon Fellowship program in 2018 at Division Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea (DOALOS) in New York City. Also, she worked at a different multilateral organisation, national government, and local conservation NGO focused on environment and ocean conservation.

Kirana is the recipient of a developing nations bursary, supported by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). Having an opportunity to do ocean sailing on the plastic issue with eXXpedition is going to be like a dream come true for her. She hopes to help Indonesia’s Government in the future becomes an ocean advocate in the fight against ocean plastic issues. She is also very excited to learn from other eXXpedition crew how to shift the public’s perspectives on the importance of ocean issues.

Participatory Process Facilitator

LIANE fell in love with sailing in 2004 as a deckhand in the Mediterranean. But she didn’t connect with ocean adventure again until the end of 2015 in The Canaries where she joined the creative and musical crew of a little plywood boat. Together they sailed Moondancer on to The Gambia via the Cape Verde islands. The voyage was a powerful reminder that you can make any dream a reality if you have the longing, and the community. However it was crushing to see plastic washing up on every beach that they anchored in. So Liane intends to use eXXpedition Round Britain to connect our personal stories about plastic with the full lifetime journeys of plastics and encourage positive action.

After gaining an MSc in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability, she worked as a Sustainability Officer at The London School of Economics. Besides working as a Project Manager, she has experience in hosting events that use participatory processes and improvisation practices to collectively respond to complex challenges. Though not a scientist her passion for science has led her to: write blogs for Science Art in America, speak at London LASER (Leonardo Art and Science Evening Rendezvous); and facilitate a session at Subtle Technologies: Participatory Practices in Art & Science. Completing her RYA Day Skipper last year with Girls for Sail, Liane is also excited to be part of a growing community promoting environmental action and women in sailing and STEM.

You can follow Liane now and during her time on board here.

Sustainable Finance Analyst

Lily is a sustainable finance analyst working in London. Her main research areas are the transition to a green economy and sustainable business practices. She studied Earth Science at Trinity College Dublin followed by Environmental Technology at Imperial College London. She has previously worked for the UN World Food Programme researching gender equality in subsistence farming communities.

In her spare time she enjoys books, horses and keeping fit!

CEO at Plaine Products

Lindsey McCoy has a master’s degree in nonprofit management and spent the 10 years working on environmental education in The Bahamas, islands full of single-use plastic.

She and her sister co-founded Plaine Products, which offers premium personal care products in aluminum bottles that can be returned, refilled and reused, an alternative to single-use containers.

LISA is a proud eastern North Carolina native and she sees that with that pride comes responsibility to make sure the coastal community environment is managed in a sustainable way, while making the connection between the local economy and ecology.

Born and raised on the water, she is an avid sailor, surfer, paddleboard yogi, beach sweeper, and scuba diver certified as a PADI divemaster.  She specializes in coastal community environment resource conservation.

Lisa works as a Solid Waste Assistant Director for local government (Onslow County, NC) with a focus on proper resource management at the coast including proper disposal, marine debris prevention and removal, environmental education, waste reduction, and recycling.  Lisa also initiated and coordinates the NC Marine Debris Symposium  and Earth and Surf Fest.  In her spare time, Lisa writes conservation articles for Beach Carolina Magazine, volunteers for the local Surfrider Foundation Chapter, is a volunteer diver for the Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina Aquarium, and fills in as needed as a PADI Divemaster at Olympus Diver Center in Morehead City, NC.

Lisa has received several awards during her career, including the North Carolina Environmental Educator of the Year in 2011 and the Carolina Recycler of the Year in 2014.

You can get involved and become an Ocean Advocate too by supporting Lisa’s GoFundMe Campaign here or keep updated with Lisa’s conservation mission across the world, over on her blog Coastinista – it’s a ‘must-read’ for anyone interested in our oceans.

Community Team Program Manager at Mapbox

Marena is an aquatic soul from Nova Scotia, Canada currently delighting in the wild Pacific coast of northern California where she scuba dives and beachcombs any chance she gets. In her day job at Mapbox, Marena supports non-profits and others to use geospatial technologies for positive social and environmental impact.

Before joining Mapbox, Marena worked to secure customary and indigenous land rights in Africa and Asia with the legal empowerment non-profit Namati, and facilitated participatory planning efforts with indigenous communities in Canada. Marena holds a master’s degree in natural resource management and planning from Simon Fraser University and a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of Guelph.

BU Coordinator

Marita is enthusiastic about becoming a sustainable packaging specialist and contributing to a better future for our planet. Working in the paper and packaging industry enables her to learn about how to make packaging sustainable by design. Her true belief is that action needs to come from within the industry throughout the value chain to make change happen.

For Marita, joining eXXpedition is a great opportunity to reflect on both industry and activist thinking and draw knowledge from new sources while connecting and exchanging with fascinating women to empower female leadership. Coming from a sailing family, the chance of combining all this with an amazing sailing adventure over the Atlantic Ocean is a once-in a lifetime opportunity she would have never dreamed of.

Advocate

Natascha is a sustainability entrepreneur that advocates for zero-waste and is passionate about developing a holistic approach in addressing modern problems around waste management. From an early age, her passion for the environment was instilled by her mother’s approach of living a packaging-free life by attending farmer’s markets, to composting organic waste and eating seasonal products.

Her passion for sustainability became a priority in her life mission after hiking in the Himalayan mountains and witnessing first-hand the vast number of plastic bottles brought by trekkers and discarded within a protected environment. Since then, she has actively engaged in numerous civil-society groups, non-governmental organisations, businesses and governments to cement sustainable initiatives with an impact.

She has created her social entrepreneurship platform to use creative business innovation to solve problems related to sustainability and to create social and environmental sustainability as a strategic objective and purpose. While respecting the boundaries set to maintain the life support systems in the process. She is a big believer in progress over perfection and argues that small changes in everyday life can have a major contribution. Although we may never achieve “zero” in zero-waste, that’s no reason not to try.

Sustainability Business Innovation Lead

Natasha is the Global Sustainability Lead for Innovation Services and Solutions at SAP, helping customers solve some of their biggest environmental, economic and societal challenges through technology and innovation. This is in support of SAP’s vision to accelerate the move towards a restorative and regenerative economy, providing customers, NGOs, governments and partners with the tools, insights and solutions needed to eliminate waste, maximise resource productivity and transition to circular business models.

Natasha is co-leading SAP’s ambition to create a cleaner ocean by 2030, working closely with leading NGOs and producers to better enable cross-industry collaboration and transparency across the supply chain. Born in Australia and now based in London, this will be Natasha’s maiden voyage across the seas. Natasha wants to use the experience of being immersed in the plastics problem first hand to collect knowledge and insights on the accumulation of microplastics in the South Pacific Gyre. She will share this research with business as input into their efforts to tackle plastic pollution at source.

Natasha is also responsible for the execution of SAP’s sustainability strategy in their global innovation services team.

With over 12 years experience in technology, innovation and consulting for some of the world’s biggest brands, Natasha is a BA Philosophy graduate from University of Nottingham and a 2019 WACL Future Leader and alumni for the Marketing Academy.

Plastics Researcher

After spending 14 years in the travel and tourism industry, in 2003, Nicole had a life-changing experience when she left Sydney for a year of travel. After seven months traversing Central and South America, Nicole arrived in the Caribbean island of Barbados. After volunteering for two months at the Barbadian environmental education non-governmental organisation, Future Centre Trust, Nicole was invited to continue her work for two more years. Two years turned into eight, with Nicole eventually leading the organisation, spending much time on solid-waste related projects including recycling.

Nicole has recently graduated with her PhD from the University of Queensland, Brisbane. Her thesis analysed the generation and management of plastic food and beverage packaging material in the context of small island developing states, mapping the packaging value chain to identify innovation.

Based on her unique experience, Nicole joined WasteAid as an Associate in December 2018. WasteAid works in parts of the world where there are no or limited waste management services. Through her eXXpedition experience, Nicole plans to highlight the work of WasteAid to improve plastic management in developing countries, preventing the flow of plastics into the world’s ecosystems. Nicole thanks WasteAid for their support in promoting this journey.

Connecting her travel and sustainability passions, Nicole has also worked part-time with EarthCheck since 2014. EarthCheck is the world’s leading scientific benchmarking certification and advisory group for travel and tourism and is focused on sustainability of the industry. Nicole is grateful to EarthCheck for its support in promoting her role in eXXpedition.

Nicole plans to use her wide-ranging interests, experience, and her eXXpedition experience to change the way we value plastic, by re-designing first, then ensuring collection wherever possible, and to #useplasticbetter.

Travel & Tourism Management

Noelia’s expertise is in sustainability business. She is from southern Chile but currently lives on Easter Island. One of the main professional interests of Noelia is the health of the oceans that arose when she started diving off the coast of Nelson’s Bay, Newcastle, Australia.

Noelia, wants to help people become more aware of the consequences of our plastic consumption and the effect on our oceans and to understand that individual choices can have a positive impact on our planet. She is passionate about communication and she wants to use this expedition to the Pacific Arctic as a platform to encourage positive change in our behavior and interaction with our seas and oceans.

Outside of work, she enjoys biking and hiking, as well as being in the ocean outside enjoying the beauty of lakes and rivers. Noelia loves scuba diving and snorkelling.

Currently, she is developing a business model based on microplastics and marine debris. Noelia believes it is important to understand that today, microplastics are a tremendously useful potential material. There are many companies that are producing objects with this raw material, even producing textiles from the collection of plastic, so it has nothing to do with the plastic itself as a material, but rather on how we manage that plastic once we stop using it, reintegrating it into the economy and production processes.

Psychologist

Paula was born in Santiago Chile and from the age 5 when she discovered a book of sea shells at her home book shelf she was extremely curious about the ocean.

The water was always a magnet for her and she was part of a synchro swimmers team, started sailing and water skiing with her friend in the lakes in the south Chile when she was a teenager and then she managed to get certified as a diver 20 years ago.

From that day on she never left the ocean and she continued exploring it through underwater photography and other diving specialties like dry suit, Nitrox, buoyancy expert until she reached her Rescue Diver certification.

When her kids were growing up she found in sailing a way to keep them connected to the place she loves and she got her license as a skipper to spend more time time close to the ocean.

She currently works as a Global Executive coach for executives for companies in several countries and in Chile helping them achieve sustainability in the workplace through enhancing peoples capabilities of performance and adaptability to change.

She is also currently training with the Chilean Navy towards obtaining enhancing her sailing skills. She enjoys everything that has to do with being in the ocean from diving and sailing to running barefoot on the beach or play with her kids and boards in the cold Pacific waves.

Circular design and systems thinking

Pippa, the Founder of philo & co, a circular design consultancy, has more than 10 years’ experience within the creative industry working with global design agencies and leading FMCG brands. Pip is driven by the power of design to help re-define ‘business as usual’ and create a more resource efficient economy.

“I believe the answer lies within a Circular Economy and closed loop design, we simply cannot continue consuming at our current trajectory. We have seen for too long the grave consequences it is having on the natural world our existence depends upon.”

Pip is a Circulab certified consultant and plays an active role within her community to help educate and inspire change. She is a mentor to openIDEO and recently became a Climate Reality Leader following training by the Climate Reality Corps, led by Al Gore.

“I’m really looking forward to working with my fellow crew virtually to understand how we can utilise our scientific findings to fuel innovation in up stream solutions.”

Manager for music festival Vinjerock and Journalist

Trying to make the festival business cleaner and greener! Compost is her new favourite word.

A fresh-out-of-school journalist, working with climate and weather until eXXpedition Carribean departs from Trinidad. I grew up in a mountain farm in Norway, and have spent a whole lot more time in the mountains than in the ocean.

Finding litter and waste in the nature pisses me off. The past year I have learned that there is a whole lot more of this under water, where we cant see it. Attending eXXpedition I want to learn more about how the way we live our lives impacts not only the climate on the globe above surface, but also under it. And most importantly – I want to help telling the stories of how our plastic pollution affects life in the oceans.

I will be documenting the journey and the results of the research through blogging, articles, photos and video. After the journey I will use the information and stories we collect through the eXXpedition to, hopefully, open an eye or two to what is going on.

I hope to understand how people on the other side of the globe are experiencing plastic pollution in their day to day life. Our lives may seem different, but we all have the oceans in common, right?

I am excited to work with experienced scientists, artists, filmakers and other inspiring women from all over the world, and learn how we together can find solutions on the problem of marine pollution.

Hopefully I can use my profession help open other peoples’ eyes and minds. I have a degree in journalism, and a passion for outdoor life. That will not help me do the scientific research, but I can do my best to convey the information we collect!

Sustainability Professional and eXXpedition Operations Manager

SORAYA is a sustainability professional and advocate for women’s rights, who is passionate about creating a holistic approach to improving our planet. After graduating with a law degree, she worked as an equestrian journalist and then as a marketing manager, before returning to university to achieve her One Planet MBA. This business course with a focus on sustainability cemented her desire to integrate sustainable processes into organisations and demonstrate her values through her own actions. But Soraya believes that there is more to sustainability than the environment, it also encompasses culture and diversity, which is why she focused on women in leadership for her final project.

She joined the eXXpedition team in 2016 and was part of the land-based crew for eXXpedition Round Britain 2017. She sailed on leg two of eXXpedition North Pacific in 2018.

STEPHANIE is an IT professional and currently works at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the UK. Her role involves managing technical change, risk and developing disaster recovery plans. Here, she also chairs the department Green Impact team, which last year won a Gold award for a project they ran to raise awareness of the unsustainability of fast fashion. This year their focus was on raising awareness of technology waste. They ran an event that taught people how to repair their own devices, encouraging people to fix broken devices rather than replace them. They also provided information on the options for proper disposal at the end of their life.

Business Owner / Management Consultant

Susanna is Management Consultant and Executive Coach with over 20 years of experience, working primarily in the manufacturing sector. Many of her clients are Polymer Processors and she is keen to use her experience on eXXpedition / Leg 16 to help inform upstream solutions to reduce the level of plastic content, packaging and improve the closed loop recycling practices.

Susanna has had a lifelong interest in marine life & biology and environmental sciences. Although she has limited offshore sailing experience, she is looking forward to exploring the Indian Ocean Gyre and using her first-hand experience to influence her professional and personal network to find solutions to make the world as plastic free as possible.

Susanna wishes to thank all her personal friends who supported her so generously on her crowd funding page and her Consulting Colleagues at Syngroup GmbH for sponsoring her on this journey!

Kinesiologyst

I was born and raised in the remote island of Rapa Nui, my dad was a native man and he raised me with the Polynesian values of collaboration, empathy and protection for the future generation, our natural and our cultural heritage.

I love surfing and being in nature. As an islander the ocean is part of my every single day and I realise how it is being destroyed. This is something that I just can’t watch with crossed arms. I quit my job (as a Kinesiologist 4 years ago in the local hospital) and started working full time for the ocean in marine conservation in a local community NGO Te Mau O Te Vaikava O Rapa Nui (the richness of the ocean of Rapa Nui). Here I had the chance to learn more about the fragillity of the ocean, participate in national an international congresses, workshops, and programs.

Now, I’m the vice-president of Te Mau and work on a marine debris interception program in partnership with Parley and their network of collaborators.

Non-Profit Management

Taylor is an avid scuba diver, paddler, sailor, and all-around ocean lover with a passion for conservation and science communication. She is currently based in Washington DC and leads the Plastics Initiative at the National Geographic Society, which includes conducting ‘Sea to Source’ expeditions to better understand plastic flow, composition, and load in river systems.

Taylor was born in the US, raised in the UK, and has been lucky to be able to work on ocean science and conservation around the world, including Australia, the Caribbean, South Asia, and the South Pacific. Taylor has a BA in Environmental Science with a focus on Marine Ecology from the University of Virginia and a Masters in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Marine Conservationist

Tharaka is the founder of Ocean Education & Blue Parks Ambassador, Marine Conservation Institute

In 2015 Tharaka Sriram founded the ocean literacy initiative called “Ocean Education”, where she inspires people for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and fights for the establishment of a global network of strongly protected MPAs.

She also was chosen to be Blue Parks Ambassador of the Marine Conservation Institute, the organization that globally spearheads research, implementation and advocacy for strongly protected MPAs.

As a linguist and political scientist, she has lived on six of the seven continents. The six languages that she speaks fluently made it easier for her to work at the UN, NGOs, ministries and institutions that focused on the issues of women’s rights, development cooperation, Youth and marine conservation.

Ex Fish and Seafood Retail Buyer

VANESSA is the a former fish and seafood buyer at British retailer Waitrose and has a strong commercial background in retail, having been in the industry for 30 years. Vanessa lives in Berkshire and is the mother of two sons, the eldest of which graduated in 2016 with a degree in Conservation Biology and Ecology from Exeter University, and the youngest currently studying for a degree in Politics and International Relations at Birmingham University.

Vanessa is looking forward to reaching out of her own comfort zone and challenge herself physically and mentally and working with a diverse group of like-minded women. Her job is highly sustainability focussed and she hopes that she can raise awareness of the damage we are doing to our oceans and wildlife and encourage more people to take action to influence change. Vanessa has some sailing experience, having been a member of sailing club for a short time, and is excited to expand on this during her time on board.