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- Our Approach
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  - Ocean-Based Climate Solutions
  - Expanding the Community for Ocean Solutions
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About
What We Do
- Our Approach
- Initiatives
  - Ocean-Based Climate Solutions
  - Expanding the Community for Ocean Solutions
Resources

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Ocean Visions Staff

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Brad Ack

Executive Director

brad@oceanvisions.org

Biography

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Dr. David Koweek

Science Director

david@oceanvisions.org

Biography

Nikhil Neelakantan

Program Manager

nikhil@oceanvisions.org

Biography

Emily Goldfarb

Operations Manager

emily@oceanvisions.org

Biography

Sarah Mastroni

Program Officer

sarah@oceanvisions.org

Biography

Dr. Leonardo Valenzuela Pérez

Program Director, GEOS

leonardo@oceanvisions.org

Biography

Jessica Keith

Communications Director

jessica@oceanvisions.org

Biography

Courtney McGeachy

Director of the Ocean Visions – UN Decade Collaborative Center for Ocean-Climate Solutions

courtney@oceanvisions.org

Biography

For general inquiries, please email info@oceanvisions.org

If you need to mail us, please use: 1019-B Edwards Ferry RD. #1024 Leesburg, VA 20176. Note that Ocean Visions staff operate as a fully remote team with no physical office.

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The mission of Ocean Visions is to develop innovative and durable solutions to complex challenges facing our ocean.

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Brad Ack

Brad is an environmental innovator whose work has spanned from the tropical forests of Latin America, high deserts of the American southwest, and the Pacific NW to work throughout the global ocean. Brad has worked for both government and NGOs at senior levels, often in concert with the innovation sphere, designing and implementing innovative conservation and sustainability initiatives.
Brad currently serves as Executive Director and Chief Innovation Officer for Ocean Visions, a partnership of leading research and academic institutions and innovators, investors and practitioners of ocean restoration. Brad also leads the recently-founded Ocean-Climate Alliance which centers attention on the ocean as a critical pathway to arrest climate disruption and in so doing, restore the ocean.
Ocean Visions and the Ocean Climate Alliance are working to build momentum for a new ocean-climate restoration and solutions agenda; to unlock new intellectual and financial investments in ocean-climate solutions; to source, develop and scale innovations that repair and restore critical components of the ocean-climate system.
Previously Brad served as Senior Vice President, Oceans at WWF-US; Regional Director-Americas for the Marine Stewardship Council; and Executive Director of the Puget Sound Recovery Program in the State of Washington. He directed conservation programs for the Grand Canyon Trust and started his career in Latin America working on sustainable development around protected areas.

David Koweek

David Koweek, PhD is the Science Director of Ocean Visions, where he is responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the science underpinning Ocean Visions work. David is trained as a marine and Earth system scientist. He has led and participated in field expeditions all across the world, including on the Great Barrier Reef, the Ross Sea, the California coast, the Sargasso Sea, and natural carbon dioxide vents off Italy. An expert in evaluating the potential of various ocean solutions, David is a frequent participant in research conferences and expert-level panels, including recent panels for the Energy Futures Initiative, the Foundation for Climate Restoration, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. His scholarly works have been published in top-tier journals, including Nature. Prior to his role with Ocean Visions, David was a postdoctoral research scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. He holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.S. from Brown University.

Nikhil Neelakantan

Nikhil Neelakantan is the Program Manager for the Ocean Visions Launchpad program, where he works with startups working on ocean-based carbon dioxide removal. He comes to Ocean Visions after founding a startup in India that provided small and medium sized businesses with access to formal sources of credit. Prior to that he worked as a business manager at Capital One working in Commercial Banking as well as in the Credit card lines of business. Nikhil started his career working as a process engineer in the semiconductor industry and also worked at a nanotechnology company looking to commercialize a new material called Ultrananocrystalline diamond.

Nikhil has a MBA from the University of Oxford, a MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Purdue University and a B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. Outside of work, Nikhil volunteers with non-profits addressing climate change such as The Open Air Collective and with the city of Richmond, where he volunteers to develop and implement their climate action plan.

Emily Goldfarb

Emily Goldfarb has over sixteen years of non-profit operations, HR and administrative experience. She served for seven years as Operations Manager at Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based national environmental organization dedicated to finding solutions for climate change. Prior to that, Emily spent five years as an operations and program associate at the Bosack & Kruger Foundation, a family foundation that provided funding for projects concerning animal welfare, studies in astro- and geo-physics, and women’s literature. In the for-profit world, Emily worked in the communications field in both television and radio operations. Emily received her B.A. in history from Bates College and an M.B.A. from Clark University, after which she was elected to Beta Gamma Sigma, the international honor society for business students.

Sarah Mastroni

Sarah Mastroni is the Program Officer at Ocean Visions where she is responsible for leading and supporting the development of key projects, products, and activities. Sarah has a background in intertidal research, investigating impacts of climate change in California and Alaskan intertidal systems. Before joining Ocean Visions, Sarah worked with Blue Ocean Barns as a Policy Analyst to help navigate their integration of methane-reducing red seaweed into cattle feed across the United States. She received her B.S. from UCLA where she studied Marine Biology and Italian, and her M.S. from UCSC’s Coastal Science and Policy Program. Sarah currently lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Leonardo Valenzuela Pérez

Leonardo Valenzuela Perez is the Program Director of the Global Ecosystem for Ocean Solutions (GEOS) at Ocean Visions. GEOS is a IOC-UNESCO United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development endorsed programme that articulates a multi-sectoral global network dedicated to the development and deployment of equitable and scalable ocean-based solutions to address climate change and other major challenges.

Previously, he led international climate justice participatory research initiatives in alliance with grassroots organizations, at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Leonardo has been working for nearly two decades at the intersection of Indigenous rights, climate activism and environmental justice research in Latin America, Australia, Northern Europe, and the United States.

Leonardo holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Sydney, as well as a Master of Human Settlements and the Environment and a Bachelor of Sociology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Jessica Keith

Jessica Keith is a cause-driven communications leader with more than 20 years of experience in the environmental nonprofit sector.

As Communications Director for Ocean Visions, she leads the planning and implementation of communication strategies and tactics that raise the profile of Ocean Visions with target audiences and expand support for its mission to develop innovative solutions at the ocean-climate nexus.

Prior to Ocean Visions, Jessica spent more than 15 years with The Nature Conservancy, where she worked as part of the regional leadership team to develop and execute integrated marketing and media programs to advance conservation, policy, and fundraising priorities.

Her areas of expertise include strategic planning, editorial strategy, content development, earned media, donor/member engagement, digital marketing, and project management.

Jessica has a B.S. in Environmental Communication, Education, and Interpretation and a Minor in International Studies from The Ohio State University.

Courtney McGeachy

Courtney McGeachy currently serves as the Director of the Ocean Visions – UN Decade Collaborative Center for Ocean Climate Solutions. Courtney previously directed the GOLD+ Program (planetGOLD) at Conservation International. Prior to joining Conservation International, Courtney served as the Principal of the Pew Marine Fellows Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts, as well as the Manager of the Marine Conservation portfolio at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. During her time at the National Fish Wildlife Foundation, Courtney managed several marine conservation programs including the Fishing for Energy Program, Coral Reef Conservation Program, and the Emergency Prescott Grants Program just to name a few. Courtney holds a B.Sc. degree in Marine and Environmental Science from Hampton University, and a M.Sc. in Marine and Estuarine sciences from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Courtney also previously served as a co-chair for Integrity, Diversity and Equity at the Citizen Science Association.