With the Spring Quarter underway remotely, plans have been made to offer the inaugural SMEA Speaker Series virtually as well. Participants can join from the comfort of their own homes from 12:00 to 1:00pm PST, and tune in to hear from three exciting speakers covering a variety of current topics in the marine and environmental realm. While current students have the option to participate for credit, the series is open to all who are interested.

Leading off the series, Dr. Alta de Vos from Environmental Science at Rhodes University in South Africa will be offering “Socio-Ecological Systems Approaches to Protected Areas”. Her talk will be hosted on Zoom on Thursday, April 16th.

Alta de Vos is a lecturer in the department of Environmental Science, Rhodes University, South Africa. She started her academic training as a behavioral ecologist, completing a PhD on the interactions of fur seals and great white sharks at the University of Cape Town, in 2010. After her PhD she left academia for two years to manage the MAPA Project, a non-profit initiative that aims to make African conservation more visible online. In this role, she taught conservationists how to use free online tools to communicate their work and has been instrumental in setting up the beginnings of an online registry and map of African conservation areas and actions. She remains involved with this initiative on a volunteer basis and firmly believes in working collaboratively with non-profits and other public-benefit organizations to co-develop research agendas.

SMEA alumna Danielle (Rioux) Blacklock, Director, NOAA Fisheries Office of Aquaculture will lead the second session, “The Untapped Potential of US Marine Aquaculture”, on Thursday, April 30th.

As the new Director for the Office of Aquaculture, Ms. Blacklock will oversee the aquaculture component of NOAA’s sustainable seafood portfolio and be responsible for providing the strategic vision for developing a strong marine aquaculture industry in the United States.

Most recently, she has been serving as a Senior Policy Advisor for Aquaculture at NOAA Fisheries. She also stepped in as the Acting Deputy in the Office of Aquaculture for several months and, prior to that, was the Senior Advisor for Operations at Fisheries, providing advice and support to our leadership on the agency’s operations portfolio. She has also served as a Recreational Fisheries Specialist, a Fisheries Management Specialist, a Congressional Liaison for NOAA, and as the agency’s liaison in the NOAA Program Coordination Office following her Knauss Sea Grant Fellowship.

Danielle received her Master’s Degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Washington and her Bachelor’s Degree in Marine Science from the University of Maine. She is also a current participant in NOAA’s Leadership Development Competencies Program.

Last on the itinerary for Spring Quarter, Senior Policy Advisor, Ocean Health and Water Quality to Governor Jay Inslee, Jennifer Hennessey, will join the lineup on May 21st. Her talk will cover “Developing Ocean Policy in Washington: Present and Future”.

Jennifer Hennessey is a senior policy advisor on ocean health for Washington State Governor Jay Inslee. Ms. Hennessey advises on policies to address ocean impacts from climate change, such as ocean acidification, ocean warming, hypoxia, and other ocean health topics. Previously, Ms. Hennessey worked for over a decade as an ocean planner at the Washington State Department of Ecology and led the state’s marine spatial planning effort on Washington’s Pacific Coast. Ms. Hennessey holds a M.S. in marine resource management from Oregon State University and a B.A. in biology-environmental studies from Whitman College.

To join SMEA for any or all of the series, please contact Leah Quinn (leahq@uw.edu).