Board of Directors
Dr. Cat Dorey is the Fair Catch Campaign Manager at the Australian Marine Conservation Society. She is an environmental activist and science advocate who has been working on fisheries and seafood sustainability for nearly two decades. Cat works with NGOs, industry, governments, and academics to provide up-to-date analysis of current and emerging science and policy development for fisheries management, sustainable and equitable seafood sourcing practices, and most recently fish welfare.
Cat previously worked at Greenpeace, first as the science advisor (2003-2010) and then as international coordinator (2010-2015) for Greenpeace's seafood markets projects, which made significant progress in driving retailers, seafood brands, and large seafood companies to make changes to their seafood sourcing practices. From 2015-2017, Cat was the science and policy advisor for Greenpeace’s international "Not Just Tuna" project, which challenged regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) and international seafood companies to address problems of overfishing, bycatch of threatened species, and human rights abuse within the global tuna, shark, and billfish fisheries. She has also worked as a science writer and editor.
Cat has a PhD in immunology from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She lives in the bushland suburbs of northern Sydney, Australia, where she can usually be found rock climbing or digging in a permaculture garden.
Jean-Louis Meuric worked for Davigel SAS in France for 34 years (1980–2014). Throughout his career, he has been in charge of purchases for the company, beginning as a buyer and becoming the Purchasing Manager 10 years later. In this role, he developed Davigel’s fish and seafood business -- which now represents approximately one-third of the company’s total sales -- by increasing its import activities from a large number of countries worldwide. For the last four years before he left Davigel, he developed the company's Fish and Seafood Responsible Sourcing policy. Since he retired in 2014, he has worked for Davigel as a consultant, in charge of implementing this policy by participating in different fishery and aquaculture improvement projects..
Jean-Louis studied business and economics, with a focus on agro-economics, at Hautes Etudes Commerciales Business School in Jouy-en-Josas, near Paris, France. He was also treasurer of the Syndicat National du Commerce Extérieur des Produits Congelés et Surgelés (SNCE – the French association of frozen products importers) for almost 10 years. He is involved in several philanthropic associations near Dieppe, France, where he lives.
Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio is Senior Advisor, Adaptation and Resilience, at the United Nations Foundation.
She has nearly 20 years of experience developing and implementing climate change adaptation and resilience programs. Immediately prior to joining the United Nations Foundation, she was a Senior Adaptation and Resilience Advisor with the World Resources Institute and an International Engagement Associate with the Food and Land Use Coalition. Prior to that, she was the Action Track Co-Manager for the Global Commission on Adaptation, where she led the development of impact initiatives on locally led adaptation, agriculture, and food security, among other issues.
She was also a Regional Programme manager for Action on Climate Today, a £23 million UK Agency for International Development-supported climate change program that mainstreamed resilience into planning and budgeting at the national and sub-national level in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan. Based in New Delhi, she managed an implementation team of approximately 40 people across the program locations. Cristina also served as a Senior Associate Director at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York from 2007-2015, where she developed and managed initiatives to build resilience to climate change in water management, small-scale fisheries, and ecosystems and the services they provide to humankind. She managed a grant portfolio of over $100 Million.
Cristina was a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and a Doctorate in Ecology from the University of Colorado.
Ed Rhodes has been involved in fisheries and aquaculture since graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1966. Half of this time has been with NOAA Fisheries, primarily doing aquaculture shellfish research on both a basic and applied basis, and the other half has been in industry.
He worked with the US Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in Connecticut from 1966 until 1970, and then spent two years with the Inmont Corporation (later Monsanto), developing aquaculture projects for lobster, shrimp, and pompano from a marine facility in the Florida Keys. Ed returned to NOAA research from 1971 until 1989, when he again joined industry to lead a large commercial aquaculture operation for scallops in Chile. In 1996, he moved from Chile to Mexico to develop shellfish aquaculture in Baja. In 1997, he returned to NOAA, serving as their national aquaculture coordinator working out of their Washington, DC, headquarters. In 2001, he retired from government work and started the consulting company Aquatecnics, LLC. From 2004 to 2007, he was the part-time Executive Director of the East Coast Shellfish Grower’s Association, a trade organization. In 2007, he joined Phillips Foods in Baltimore as their Vice President for Sustainability and Aquaculture Development. That led to playing a significant role in the formation of the National Fisheries Institute Crab Council, where Ed served as industry chair until he left Phillips in 2013. Later in 2013, he became the Executive Director of the Crab Council, a position he still holds.
Ed lives with his wife in the Florida Keys, surrounded by water where they enjoy fishing for stone crabs, among other pursuits.
Jim Cannon is Chief Executive Officer and founder of Sustainable Fisheries Partnership.
Jim has worked on fisheries, forestry, and conservation issues in Asia, Europe, and the Americas for more than three decades. He was named Intrafish’s “Person of the Year” in 2009.
Jim founded SFP in 2006 to scale-up the impact of fisheries improvement efforts. At the time, there was no organization like SFP, working with the seafood industry to drive change through their supply chains. The model for fisheries conservation that Jim and the SFP team created is now the standard approach to seafood sustainability by seafood companies around the world.
Before starting SFP, Jim edited the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s World Review of Marine Fisheries in the late 1990s. From 1997 to 2006, he worked at Conservation International (CI), first as head of the conservation economics program and then as co-founder of CI’s Center for Conservation and Government. He has advised McDonald’s on its fish sourcing guidelines and annual sourcing evaluations for more than 20 years and has advised Walmart on seafood sustainability for nearly two decades. He created the Fisheries Improvement Partnerships model, which evolved to become the fishery improvement project (FIP) approach that is widely used today.
From 2005 to 2008, Jim served on the Marine Stewardship Council’s Technical Advisory Board. In 2019 he joined the Board of Verra, to help scale-up financing of projects that tackle climate change and plastics pollution via voluntary offsets markets.
Jim has a degree in population ecology from Cambridge University and an MSc in renewable resources management and an MPhil in fisheries economics from Imperial College London.
Jim is based in the US, in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Susanna Fuller is a marine conservation advocate who has worked largely in Canada, as well as international fora, for the past two decades. She focuses on the science-policy-economy interface, with a view toward solving complex problems facing coastal communities and protecting ocean health.
Susanna is currently Vice President for Conservation and Projects for Oceans North, a Canadian charity that focuses on marine conservation in the Arctic and Atlantic Canada. Prior to this, she led the marine conservation program at the Ecology Action Centre, where she established a strong connection to fishing communities, market-based initiatives, and government regulation and policy. Susanna is on the Board of Directors of Ecotrust Canada and the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, is an active member of the High Seas Alliance, and was a founding member of SeaChoice, Canada's sustainable seafood program. Her seafood markets work has ranged from helping to start a community-supported fishery with local fishermen to involvement in MSC certifications and the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions.
Susanna has a PhD from Dalhousie University on marine sponge diversity in the northwest Atlantic. Her scientific research has also been complemented by extensive work on national and international fisheries and marine conservation policy. Susanna is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When not in front of her computer, Susanna is in her garden or outside with her family.
Andrew Hudson has held leadership positions in international and nongovernmental organizations, and has worked as a scientist and educator. From 1996 to 2022, he was Head of the United Nations Development Programme’s Water & Ocean Governance Programme, where he led the mobilization and implementation oversight of $1 billion in grant financing for the protection and restoration of some of the world’s most significant marine and freshwater ecosystems. From 2010 to 2013, he served as the coordinator of UN-Oceans, the UN’s interagency coordination mechanism on oceans. He also conceptualized, raised funding for, and initiated implementation of UNDP’s Ocean Innovation Challenge, which awards competitive grants to entities (NGOs, academia, start-ups, etc.) advancing innovative solutions – technical, policy, economic, financial – to key ocean challenges, such as plastics pollution and overfishing.
He also served as Executive Director of the Center for Field Research at Earthwatch Institute, leading the development of an annual portfolio of over 150 research and conservation projects for Earthwatch funding. Originally trained and practicing as a chemical oceanographer (MIT, University of Rhode Island), Hudson completed his Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences at the University of Massachusetts/Boston, specializing in marine policy and resource economics. He has also taught at the university and secondary school levels and has served as a speaker or moderator at numerous ocean-related international conferences and events, such as the UN Ocean Conference and the Economist World Ocean Summit.
Andy current resides in Kufstein in the Tirol region of Austria.
Manish Kumar is the founder and CEO of The Fishin' Company, a leading international seafood processor, importer, and distributor. The company was founded in 2003 and conducts business in more than eight countries, across 22 species of seafood. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in the US and has a master's degree in business administration (MBA) and a bachelor's degree in business from Osmania University in India.
Aoife Martin is an experienced resource management professional who has worked on fisheries, forestry, and land-management issues. Her experience includes policy development, fisheries management systems, and the operation of the seafood supply chain.
She currently serves as the Operations Director at Seafish, where she is responsible for leading the organization’s Economic Research and Advice unit, Regulatory Affairs unit, and Safety Training and Responsible Sourcing functions. Prior to joining Seafish in 2017, she spent 14 years working for the civil service in New Zealand and the UK.
Aoife is also the independent chair of the North Atlantic Pelagic Advocacy Group, a supply chain initiative focused on driving improvements in the management of key pelagic fisheries. She is also a non-Executive Director on the Board of NatureScot, the government agency responsible for managing Scotland’s natural environment.
She is a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and has an MBA from the University of Edinburgh, UK.
Bambi Semroc is Senior Vice President of the Center for Sustainable Lands and Waters at Conservation International. The Center promotes sustainable production and innovative financing models to protect nature and improve human well-being in critical ecosystems around the world.
Ms. Semroc has worked at Conservation International for more than 20 years, with a focus on sustainable agriculture. During her tenure she has worked with retail and consumer goods companies to craft next generation sustainability commitments and innovative sourcing programs and landscape initiatives. Over the past decade she led CI’s coffee program and started up the Sustainable Coffee Challenge, a sector-wide effort to make coffee the world’s first sustainable agricultural product. Ms. Semroc works to ensure companies have the information and tools necessary to integrate biodiversity and ecosystem service considerations into their decision-making processes. She has collaborated with the Starbucks Coffee Company, Walmart, McDonald's, Nestle, The Coca-Cola Company, and others.
Ms. Semroc has been featured for her expertise in sustainable agriculture in media outlets including Men’s Journal, Food Tank, Chicago Tribune, Mongabay, and Daily Coffee News.
Andrew Yanagihara is the Managing Director of D-Dining Inc., in Japan. He established the company in 2008 with 80 McDonald’s franchises in Japan, and today owns and runs 90 restaurants in Chiba prefecture, employing nearly 5,000 people. Before starting D-Dining, from 1999-2008, Andrew was a Senior Vice President at Delmar Co., Ltd., which is a long-time supplier of fish and shrimp products to McDonald’s Japan. At Delmar, Andrew was in charge of production, quality assurance, imports and exports, customs clearance, and distribution. Andrew has also worked as a manager of international imports and exports for Toshoku America, Inc. in New York, importing coffee and cacao beans from South and Central America to Japan. From 1993-1996, he was a pilot trainee for Japan Airlines, where he obtained his pilot’s license.
Andrew has a Master of Business Administration degree from Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan. He lives in Tokyo.
