Who We Are

Chuck Fox is the Executive Director of Oceans 5, an international funders’ collaborative dedicated to reducing overfishing and establishing marine reserves. Fox previously served as the Secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the Assistant Administrator for Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Assistant Secretary for the Maryland Department of Environment and the Associate Administrator for EPA’s Office of Reinvention. Fox also worked with several nonprofit conservation organizations including the Pew Charitable Trusts, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Environmental Policy Institute and the Maryland League of Conservation Voters. He resides in Annapolis with his wife, Catherine, and their two sons.

Yuta Masuda is the Director of Science at the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, where he advances strategy development, identification, and cultivation of science priorities in ocean health, climate change mitigation, and conservation.

Prior to joining the Foundation, Yuta was a Senior Sustainable Development and Behavioral Scientist at The Nature Conservancy. His work at the Conservancy examined how policies advancing conservation and sustainable development goals impact human well-being and environmental outcomes. He has investigated topics around community-based conservation, human behavior, institutions, human health, diffusions of innovations, land tenure security, and other topics on the human dimensions of conservation and sustainable development.
He has published over sixty articles on these and other topics in outlets such as Nature Sustainability, Nature Communications, Global Environmental Change, Lancet Planetary Health, Environmental Research Letters, Conservation Letters, Land Use Policy, One Earth, and Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. He holds a PhD in Public Policy and Management from the University of Washington, and was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Georgia.

Ann Colley is Director of Public Relations and Charitable Giving at Moore Capital Management, LP, and Director and Vice President of The Moore Charitable Foundation and its affiliate foundations. For more than two decades, Ms. Colley has guided the foundation’s grantmaking and partnerships with many of the nation’s foremost conservation organizations. She also represents The Moore Charitable Foundation in collaboration with local community organizations.

A native of North Carolina, Ms. Colley joined The Moore Charitable Foundation  in 1994 as its first executive director after working in presidential, congressional and gubernatorial campaigns. She serves on the Board of Trustees of Waterkeeper Alliance, and is on the University of North Carolina's Board of Visitors as well as UNC’s Institute for the Environment Board.  Ann is on the Board of Advisors of Oceans 5 and the Shark Conservation Fund. 

Ms. Colley attended Hollins University and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She lives in New York City and has two sons.

Trevor manages MCF’s Panama and Bahamas marine programs and is responsible for the development and implementation of marine research expeditions and scientific initiatives.

His areas of expertise include fisheries management and the protection of migratory, pelagic shark species. Since 2013, he has been actively involved in studying Oceanic Whitetip Sharks in the Western Atlantic. 

His career in marine conservation stems from his passions for freediving and recreational fishing. Trevor has a strong focus on implementing responsible fishing practices to ensure long term fisheries sustainability and food security. He seeks to help communities better understand the importance of proper fisheries management and the value of maintaining healthy fish populations, as well as full protections for vulnerable marine species. 

Dr. Barney Long is the senior director of species conservation for Re:wild Barney works on the conservation of endangered species and the thematic approaches required to achieve the recovery of their populations. He has worked extensively on Saola, Sumatran and Javan Rhino, Tiger, Gibbons, Doucs, Tamaraw, Red Colobus and a host of other species across the world. A focus of his work is protected area management effectiveness and the prevention of poaching. 

Barney started his career in Southeast Asia exploring the region during baseline biodiversity inventory surveys and searching for presumed extinct primates. Initially using community-based and protected area approaches to conserve species, he expanded to the integration of species conservation within wider landscape and socio-economic development processes on which he conducted his doctoral research. A key interest of Barney’s is how to raise the quality of implementation at scale through developing thematic approaches to improving protected area management effectiveness, the prevention of poaching, and species conservation and recovery planning. Barney is also a strong believer in the power of partnerships for conservation and works extensively with the IUCN Species Survival Commission, Shoal - a partnership on the conversation of freshwater fish, the SMART partnership, and the Universal Ranger Support Alliance.

Prior to joining Re:wild, Barney led the Species Program at WWF-US, ran a landscape program in the Central Annamites of Vietnam for WWF, and was a conservation biologist for Fauna & Flora International in Indochina. He got his Ph.D. in biodiversity management from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology in his native England. 

Andi Pearl is the Executive Director of The Volgenau Foundation. With expertise in ocean conservation, environmental philanthropy, green markets, and hazardous waste enforcement, Andi has worked as a strategic advisor, policy maker, and campaigner. Prior to joining The Volgenau Foundation, Andi worked as a philanthropic consultant with Breakthrough Strategies and Solutions, and before that, she spent over a decade at the Pew Charitable Trusts. At Pew, Andi served as a director for the Global Ocean Legacy project where she worked with local communities, scientists, and governments to create the world’s first generation of fully-protected marine reserves, including in France, Bermuda, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and the U.S.

Earlier in her career, Andi worked as program officer and acting executive director at the Merck Family Fund, and provided strategic guidance to the Town Creek Foundation, the National Environmental Trust, and the Antarctica Project. Andi’s legal experience focused on environmental and public health issues, including maternal health and pediatric AIDS, as well as Superfund.

Andi holds a BA in political science and environmental studies from the University of Vermont and a JD from American University’s Washington College of Law.

James is the chief executive officer of the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF). James gained a first-class Honours degree in biological sciences from the University of Oxford and then volunteered as a shark researcher at the Bimini Biological Field Station. At Bimini he cut his teeth catching, tagging and tracking sharks, and working with them so closely consolidated his passion for marine conservation. James then moved to work as a research scientist for SOSF, before completing a PhD in marine biology at the University of Plymouth in collaboration with the SOSF-D’Arros Research Centre. His primary research focus was a comprehensive tagging programme tracking almost 200 sharks of seven different species in Seychelles, aiming to determine the factors that drive their movement behaviour and use this knowledge to inform effective conservation strategies. James’ research has helped to contribute to the design of marine protected areas and has revealed previously unknown open ocean migrations of tiger and bull sharks, highlighting the challenge of managing shark populations that span ocean basins. He continues his research as part of the Evolutionary Ecology Group at the University of Cambridge.

Emily is responsible for program implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and the strategy for coral conservation for the Bloomberg Ocean Fund.  Previously, Emily worked for New York City’s Department of Administrative Services, where she led programs to improve government operations and oversaw the agency’s performance management and data governance strategy. From 2009 through 2016, she worked on energy efficiency strategy for the city and state of New York. Emily has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Williams College and received a master’s degree in public administration with a focus in environmental science and policy from Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs.

Amanda Nickson is Director of Conservation for the Paul M Angell Family Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation, Amandaserved as Director of International Fisheries at The Pew Charitable Trusts. Amanda joined Pew in 2010, leading on advocacy efforts with regional fisheries management organizations. From there she led Pew’s international work on ending overfishing and securing effective management of commercially fished tunas globally. Her portfolio then expanded to cover all of Pew’s international fisheries work, conservation and management of tunas and sharks, as well as work to end illegal fishing and roll out fisheries reforms in European waters.  Before joining Pew, Amanda worked for WWF for nearly 12 years, including leading international efforts to protect threatened charismatic species including tigers, pandas and marine turtles. She also developed and led WWF’s Bycatch Initiative, a major policy and field program aimed at reducing the incidental catch of non-target species in fisheries in more than 20 countries throughout the world.  Amanda began her career in health promotion policy, serving as the New South Wales state lead for the National Breast Cancer Centre in Australia, and working in HIV/AIDs education and violence prevention.

Lee is responsible for designing and implementing programmatic and grantmaking strategies, managing SCF’s grantmaking portfolio, forming strategic partnerships with NGOs and other funders, fundraising, ensuring strong operations and governance, and representing the SCF to governments, NGOs, philanthropists, and the public.

Prior to joining the SCF, Lee spent 20 years working on fisheries management at the state, interstate, federal and international levels with both the US. Government and the non-profit sector. Most recently, he was the Director of U.S. Oceans for The Pew Charitable Trusts where he led Pew’s efforts to establish policies to end overfishing and promote ecosystem-based fisheries management in the U. S. under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson-Stevens Act), the federal law that governs ocean fish management. As director, Crockett oversaw Pew’s U.S. fisheries campaigns in the Northeast, South Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, U.S. Caribbean, and the Pacific.

Before joining Pew, Crockett was executive director of the Marine Fish Conservation Network, the largest national coalition dedicated exclusively to promoting the sustainable management of ocean fish. Under his leadership, the campaign was instrumental in efforts to reauthorize and strengthen the Magnuson-Stevens Act in 2007. Previously, he was a fishery biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service, leading agency efforts to protect essential fish habitat. He also served as a staff member of the U.S. House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, working on a variety of fisheries, environmental and boating safety issues.

Crockett holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in biological oceanography from the University of Connecticut. Before college, he served in the U.S. Coast Guard. He is also an avid angler who enjoys fishing the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay.

Megan is responsible for the strategy development and implementation of SCF’s Shark Biodiversity Initiative. Megan brings over 10 years of experience managing global programs aimed at securing strong, effective policy changes to better conserve wildlife and habitats.

Prior to joining SCF, Megan served as the Director of International Policy at IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) as well as the role of Sr. Associate with the Global Shark Conservation program at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

She has considerable experience working at the international level to support governments seeking better global management for threatened marine species via the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), among others. Megan has also worked extensively at the national level, recognizing that conservation for the world’s sharks is not a one-size-fits-all solution, partnering with governments, scientists, NGOs and IGOs to identify best practices and policies that aim to reduce shark mortality and build capacity depending on the needs of the region, country or species.

Megan holds a master’s degree in coastal environmental management from Duke University and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Florida Southern College.

Valerie Zundel is SCF’s Program Associate. Previously, she worked for Friends of the Earth as an Oceans Campaigner, focusing on issues like reducing bycatch, combatting vessel-related pollution, and advocating against offshore drilling. As a native Spanish-speaker, she also helped translate campaign materials.

Before that, she was employed by the Shark Research and Conservation (SRC) team at the University of Miami as a Science Outreach and Social Media Manager while obtaining her professional master’s degree in Marine Conservation. There, she gave educational talks to school children about the importance of sharks and shark conservation, communicated shark science on social media, and assisted with shark research.

Valerie has a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Florida and is deeply invested in animal rights. She is also passionate about free diving, especially shark diving.

Brenna Goldner serves as the Grants and Operations Manager at the Shark Conservation Fund, where she combines her extensive experience in grants administration with her passion for ocean conservation. With a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Temple University, Brenna has a strong background in grants administration and operations coordination, honed through roles in the philanthropic, for-profit, and nonprofit sectors.

Previously, Brenna served as the Grants Manager at Talbert & Bright, Inc., where she managed federal and state grants for aviation engineering projects. At the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund, Brenna honed her skills in grants management and project coordination, overseeing grant-related processes and contributing to significant database and website enhancements. Her most recent position as the Accounting & Grants Manager at MomsRising involved managing comprehensive grants administration for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities and assisting with fundraising efforts.

Outside of her professional endeavors, Brenna is passionate about sailing and actively volunteers at a local dog rescue, reflecting her deep appreciation for the ocean and commitment to animal welfare. Her diverse experiences and personal interests drive her dedication to advancing marine conservation and making a meaningful impact through her work at the Shark Conservation Fund.

Meenakshi Abbi joined RPA’s San Francisco office in May 2012 as a member of the Sponsored Projects & Funds team.. Meenakshi draws on extensive experience to serve as a resource on fiscal sponsorship, financial management, project management, and operational efficiency. Meenakshi has a diverse background ranging from directing programs and computer programming to workforce development and volunteering for social justice organizations. Prior to her current role at RPA, Meenakshi worked at Tides for over four years as a program manager for fiscally sponsored 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) projects, and helped re-launch Tides Advocacy Fund. She was also Director of the Small Business Development Center Technology Advisory Program, a nonprofit dedicated to helping small businesses effectively utilize technology. Meenakshi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. Her passions include civic engagement, financial inclusion, and social justice. 

Carissa joined the San Francisco office in 2022 as a member of the Sponsored Projects & Funds Team where she supports the management of several projects focused on environment and climate change. Prior to joining Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Carissa served as General Manager for Cutting Ball Theater, a nonprofit arts organization in San Francisco CA. Carissa has worked professionally in the arts for over a decade working at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as well as the San Francisco Girls Chorus. Carissa has served as a grants panelist for the California Arts Council and currently volunteers with the Gill Tract Community Farm in Albany (California). She has a Bachelor’s degree from University of California, Santa Cruz and a Master of Literature from the University of Glasgow.

Nicholas Dulvy is a marine conservationist who has published over 170 peer-reviewed-papers, book chapters, technical reports and commentaries, and has been cited more than 25,000 times. He is one of the world’s most influential interdisciplinary scientists identified as Highly Cited Researcher in the “Cross-Field’ category, reflecting his ranking in the top 1% by citations for field and year across biological, environmental, and social sciences during the last decade. 

The focus of his research is to understand the nature and scale of global change using comparative analyses of populations, communities and ecosystems along gradients of fishing pressure and climate change. 

He spent six years as a policy advisor, and de facto lead on climate change, at the UK government fisheries agency and is now a Canada Research Chair tier II in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Simon Fraser University and Conservation Fellow of the Zoological Society of London. He recently won the SFU President's Award for Leadership in Sustainability.

Sarah has a first class Joint Honours degree in Zoology and Marine Zoology from the University College of North Wales and an MSc in Conservation from University College London. Her 40 years in marine biodiversity conservation has encompassed working in various capacities for government departments (UK and German), national and international NGOs and foundations, and as Managing Director of a biodiversity conservation consultancy. During this time, Sarah has acted as a marine commissioned research programme manager, a coordinator of an international expert network, a reviewer and auditor of grant applications, and advisor on international marine conservation strategies, with a particular emphasis on the application of multilateral environmental agreements to shark and ray conservation.

Sarah acted as Deputy Chair, Acting Chair and Co-chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group (SSG) for 18 years from its establishment in 1991, including fund-raising for and leading the first global chondrichthyan fish Red List Assessment, completed in 2009. She also headed the SSG’s input to CITES, CMS and other multilateral environmental and fisheries bodies for over 25 years. Her work with the SSG's expert network led to Sarah founding the European Elasmobranch Association and the UK Shark Trust, a public membership charity, during the mid 1990s (she is still a Trustee of the latter). She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to marine conservation in 2004 and became Scientific Advisor to the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) in 2011. In addition to advising SOSF and the Shark Conservation Fund on their grant-making programmes, Sarah has also advised IUCN's Save Our Species Conservation Action Programme on elasmobranch grant applications, and the Oceanário de Lisboa and Oceano Azul Foundation on applications to their Oceans’ Conservation Fund.

Rebecca Regnery, MSB is the Senior Director of Humane Society International’s wildlife department. She is responsible for managing wildlife programs and campaigns and represents the organization at international treaties and agreements including the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES), the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) and the International Whaling Commission (IWC). 

Ms. Regnery collaborates with U.S. and foreign governments, international organizations and other non-governmental organizations, industry and consumers to accomplish wildlife conservation and animal welfare goals. 

Ms. Regnery holds a Bachelor of Science from the American University and a Master of Science in Business from Johns Hopkins University.

Founder and Lead Scientist, Elasmo Project

Rima Jabado is the Deputy Chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC) and Chair of the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group. As a scientist and conservationist, she has spent over 20 years developing and working on conservation initiatives globally. She has extensive experience as a field researcher, director for non-profit organizations, government official, and project manager. Her work centers around bridging the gap between science and policy to ensure issues such as bycatch, threatened species conservation, and illegal trade are tackled. Her primary focus has been investigating shark and ray fisheries and trade and combines field work with outreach and advocacy to mobilize and provide policy solutions at the government and community levels. She has led or supervised projects in over 15 countries and her research has been instrumental in influencing decision makers to implement meaningful measures for the protection of species across a range of fisheries. She is now leading the Important Shark and Ray Areas (ISRA) project to ensure sharks, rays, and chimaeras are considered in area-based management initiatives around the world. 

Rima is a member of the IUCN Marine Conservation Committee, serves as the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) Appointed Scientific Councilor for Fish, and sits on the Advisory Committee for the CMS Sharks Memorandum of Understanding as the representative of the Asia region. She has also founded the Elasmo Project, a non-profit initiative that encourages and supports work in data-poor areas focused on investigating shark and ray fisheries and trade. She has authored/co-authored over 100 scientific, technical, and popular publications as well as lectured at schools and universities. Rima has received various grants and awards in support and recognition of her work on sharks and rays as well as a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation. 

Hollie is an interdisciplinary researcher, conservation practitioner and strategic planning specialist, with an interest in solving complex conservation challenges in collaboration with local stakeholders, which aim to deliver biodiversity & well-being outcomes in parallel. She has a breadth of practical experience in academia, NGOs, policy engagement and the private sector. She currently works as a Strategic Director at The Biodiversity Consultancy (TBC), a part-time researcher at the University of Oxford, and as the Founder and Chair of a small local NGO in Indonesia called Kebersamaan Untuk Lautan (Togetherness for the Ocean).

Hollie completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2021 on ‘Interdisciplinary approaches to shark and ray conservation’, during which she focused on understanding the socio-economic drivers of shark fishing and designing effective and equitable interventions in small-scale fisheries in Indonesia. She received the Society for Conservation Biology Early Career Researcher award (2022) and the Zoological Society of London Marsh Award for Marine & Freshwater Conservation (2023) for her work. Prior to her DPhil, she spent over 6 years working for international conservation NGOs in SE Asia and East Africa, including the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS). Most notably she worked for several years as a technical advisor on sharks and rays for WCS, during which she co-led the development of WCS’s 10-year shark strategy.

She also has an MSc in Conservation Science from Imperial College London and a first class honours degree in Natural Sciences and Management Studies from the University of Cambridge.