Who we are

 

Building, supporting, and nourishing movement infrastructure does not happen on its own, overnight, or for free. The movement builders among us are integral to enacting impactful, lasting progress and also safeguarding democracy and our most vulnerable friends, family, and community members. That is what the Healthy Ocean Coalition does.

We are movement builders, bridging the gap between local leaders, frontline communities, small-to-midsize nonprofits, students, business owners, and teachers who have been intentionally excluded over time, silenced, and underrepresented in the policymaking space.

Since 2009, we have been building shared power through information and resource sharing, advocacy training programs, communications support, collective amplification of initiatives, and organizing advocacy opportunities for a community of more than 300 ocean and climate justice leaders around the country. The members of this community are like family to us. Their health, well-being, trust, and safety are the foundational pillars on which we build our bridge from local advocates and experts to the halls of Congress, federal agencies, and the large environmental nonprofits embedded in D.C.

OUR VALUES

  • We prioritize collaboration


    The HOC is only as strong as our members. We work to develop strong, transformational relationships based on time and trust.

  • Our members guide our work


    HOC members have vast and varying knowledge of their communities’ and coastline’s needs. Their expertise guides our offerings and advocacy.

  • We center just and equitable solutions

    All of our services are free of charge. For far too long, people living in purposefully uninvested communities haven’t seen themselves or their needs reflected in federal policies. We are working to change that.

OUR COMMITMENTS

●  We commit to focusing on ocean conservation policies that center the ocean and people in the fight against climate change.

●  We commit to lifting the voices of the HOC members closest to the impacts of climate change and the burdens of past ocean policies.

●  We commit to centering the solutions of these community members, ocean and climate scientists in HOC priority issues.

●  We commit to enhancing our long-standing promise to remove barriers that keep people from becoming ocean advocates by keeping every HOC training free of charge and providing resources to network members.

●  We recognize the historical and current inequities found within the ocean conservation community.

●  We commit to doing our part to rectify these inequities both within the HOC and the ocean conservation community.

●  We commit to infusing the principles and ideas of ocean justice into the HOC’s goals and strategies.

meet OUR TEAM

Our Advisory board

 

Sarah Winter Whelan

Sarah is a Midwest native who fell in love with the ocean at an early age. For over fifteen years Sarah has worked to protect the ocean as a lawyer, advocate, and researcher. Today, she’s happy educating and engaging people in positions of power by raising and amplifying the voices of ocean lovers who know why it is so important that we protect the ocean from the worst impacts of climate change.
Since trading cornfields for coastlines, Sarah has lived in South Carolina, Florida, Vermont, Oregon, and now calls Boston home alongside her husband and two children. Sarah has her Juris Doctorate and Masters in the Study of Environmental Law from Vermont Law School and Bachelor of Science in Marine Science from the University of South Carolina.

When Sarah isn’t working to protect the ocean, she’s exploring New England beaches with her family - yes, even during winter - reading chapter books with her kids, surviving a global pandemic, and contemplating her next ocean tattoo.

 
 
 
 

Jenna Valente

 Jenna’s connection to the sea goes back generations and runs so deep that stewarding the planet in some way, shape, or form is central to her and her family’s identity. Some of her relatives are or were ship chandlers, members of the U.S. Coast Guard, game wardens, watermen and women, regenerative farmers, and environmental policymakers. Between growing up surrounded by people with incredible environmental knowledge and being raised in Hawaii, Washington State, and Maine, following a path that led to a career in ocean advocacy feels like destiny.

Some notable points, or scenic overlooks, along Jenna’s career path were:

  • Graduating with her Bachelor of Arts degree in communication and journalism from the University of Maine in 2011

  • Participating in a series of internships working with endangered and threatened populations of shorebirds like the piping plover at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia.

  • Those internships led to a park ranger position. During that time, she lived on the wildlife refuge and often would wake up to find wild horses roaming around her yard.

  • Completing a communications fellowship with the Chesapeake Research Consortium stationed at the Chesapeake Bay Program in Annapolis, Maryland where she helped draft the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement and fell in love with telling conservation stories and celebrating people that are taking care of the environment and their communities.

  • Graduating from Virginia Tech with her Executive Master of Natural Resources degree in 2015

 
 

Jenna joined the Healthy Ocean Coalition team in 2015 as our Coalition Coordinator, and now serves as the Director of Advocacy where her passion is centered around empowering individuals and organizations to learn more about natural systems, the impacts humans have on those systems, and bolstering an ethic of stewardship, conservation, and social responsibility.

She is dedicated to building support for just conservation policies because she believes in the power of community and has seen the progress that can be achieved when policies and plans are inclusive and reflective of those they will inevitably impact.

Outside of her role with the Healthy Ocean Coalition, Jenna loves spending time with her dog Jolene. She is also a professional photographer and published author.

 
 

Jennifer Felt

Jennifer is the HOC's Senior Strategist and Conservation Law Foundation's (CLF) Ocean Campaign Director. In this position Jennifer works to build and expand a diverse, multi-stakeholder network for regional ocean planning across New England.. Prior to CLF, Jennifer was at the Marine Conservation Institute, where she worked for five years in Washington, D.C. and New Hampshire. Previously, she worked for Humane Society International in Latin America and the Caribbean and served in the Peace Corps in Honduras.

Jennifer is a native of Maine, a proud graduate of the University of Vermont and lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

 
 

Hermina Glass-hill, MHP

Hermina Glass-Hill is Director of the Susie King Taylor Ecology Center and Women’s Institute in Georgia. Hermina is a writer, historian, preservationist, and sustainability advocate who has been a voice for environmental justice and human rights for more than twenty years.

Hermina founded the Susie King Taylor Women’s Institute and Ecology Center to honor this Gullah Geechee freedom seeker and to provide educational programming on the influence of coastal ecology in the lives of enslaved and free women. In 2019, she received the Georgia Governor’s Award for Arts and Humanities for her service in preserving African American history and culture.

Hermina has served as the research historian for the National Center for Civil and Human Rights where she learned the value of hard-won struggles for racial equality and ocean justice during the Civil Rights Movement. Hermina has also worked as the climate justice advocate at Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, engaging communities and educating local, state, and federal policymakers on the impact of climate change on frontline coastal communities.

 

Mac cardona

Mac dedicates herself to engaging communities with science and nature, especially those that are still underrepresented in the sciences. Harnessing her background in wildlife biology, science and nature storytelling, and Latinx community engagement, she founded cWave Labs to help empower Latino communities in the wildlife filmmaking space. 

Although Mac had always loved films, it had never occurred to her to become a filmmaker herself. Initially, her path led her to a career as a wildlife biologist. While studying wildlife biology at Cal Poly Humboldt, she noticed a clear disconnect between scientists and their local communities and became troubled by the lack of Latino representation in the classroom and administration. She became increasingly aware of how many scientists were mainly focused on communicating to other scientists, instead of making the information accessible and inclusive. She began exploring how the power of storytelling could help connect local communities with nature and science. This experience sparked Mac’s drive to lean in to this interdisciplinary path of utilizing films as a tool to communicate science, and led to the creation of cWave Labs.

 
 
 

David Riera, M.Sc., ed.s

David is an environmental scientist, educator, and advocate with 15 years of leadership experience, academic, and research training.

David is a United States Marine Combat Veteran and First-Generation Afro-Hispanic college graduate who is driven daily to tackle various social and environmental issues. He is an Adjunct Professor and a McKnight Doctoral Fellow at Florida International University and an Oceans Advisory Committee Member for the Hispanic Access Foundation. David is an educational professional with a Master of Science - MS focused on Agroecology, Sustainable and Urban Agriculture, Plant Biotech, & Natural Resource Conservation Management.

David is the embodiment of the adage, "don't talk about it, be about it". David is bilingual and has worked in service of his communities for over 25 years. He is an experienced Researcher with a demonstrated history of field and laboratory work, skilled in Veterinary Medicine, Microsoft Word, Heavy Equipment, Gardening, and Molecular Biology.

 
 
 

Dr. Priya shukla

Priya is an ocean and climate scientist and science communicator. Priya holds her PhD from U.C. Davis studying how climate change affects shellfish aquaculture operations within the coastal ocean.

Priya is also a contributor for Forbes Science, writing about ocean and climate science. She also writes and speaks about civically engaged science and the need for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. Public scholarship and activism are core components of her work to communicate climate and ocean science, while amplifying marginalized voices and perspectives. Priya also participates in the Point Blue Science Advisory Committee and published a children's book in 2022.