Governance
Become a member
Overview
The diversity of the Coalition’s membership – from smallholder farmers to multinational businesses, specialized research institutes to intergovernmental organisations – is key to driving the safe development of the industry. The breadth of our membership will need effective governance to ensure all members have the opportunity to fully contribute, while keeping the focus of the Coalition on our core objectives.
Governance of the Coalition is overseen and implemented by three groups.
- The Steering Committee will review all industry consultations and lead on the development of key projects—setting KPIs, securing funding and reporting on progress.
- The Advisory Board comprises representatives from our partners and all parts of the seaweed value chain. Together with the Steering Committee it will review all consultations and make recommendations on the topics that should be the focus of the Steering Committee’s work.
- The Secretariat takes care of the day-to-day management of the Coalition. It is responsible for driving membership through stakeholder engagement and advocacy, for communications to and between members and administration of all aspects of the Coalition.
Secretariat
Steering Committee
Our Steering Committee has clear responsibilities in delivering the objectives of the Safe Seaweed Coalition. It ensures delivery of programmes.
Philippe Potin is Senior Scientist at CNRS in France. He holds a PhD in Marine Biology, specialising in the biochemistry of degrading enzymes of seaweed cell wall polysaccharides and biological properties of added-value derived oligosaccharides. For over 15 years Philippe has led the team “Oligosaccharide signaling and defense mechanisms” at the well-known Station Biologique de Roscoff. He has over 90 peer reviewed articles and 8 patents including on the biological properties of algal oligosaccharides and novel enzymes from brown algae and marine bacteria. He is currently the scientific coordinator of IDEALG, a 10-year French integrative research project and of the EU H2020 SC2 Blue Growth Innovation Action GENIALG.
Vincent Doumeizel is Senior Adviser on the oceans to the United Nations Global Compact as well as director of the Food Programme at the Lloyd’s Register Foundation. Vincent leads the charitable objectives of the Foundation through the funding of innovative projects to drive safety in the food supply chain. Partnering with UN, FAO, The World Bank, WWF, Universities, NGO’s and large brands, Vincent led and released the “Seaweed Manifesto” in a call to scale up the seaweed industry in order to address some of the world most important challenges (hunger, global warming, pollution, poverty etc..). Vincent is part of the expert panel to define and drive the algae strategy at the European Commission and also part of the Food Safety expert panel to prepare the next UN Food Systems Summit.
Paul Dobbins is the Senior Director of Impact Investing and Ecosystems Services on the WWF-US Aquaculture team. He is identifying companies for impact investment, stakeholder collaboration, and research opportunities that will accelerate the growth of seaweed and shellfish farming. His project, titled Advancing Aquaculture for Climate Gains, includes research into the potential market for feed additives for ruminants and the development of new markets for seaweed biomass. Before joining WWF Paul operated shellfish farms and spent a decade leading the development of the country’s first open ocean commercial kelp farms. He has served on the advisory boards of NOAA SeaGrant, the Aquaculture Research Institute at the University of Maine, the Maine Aquaculture Association, Focus Maine, and the Conservation Law Foundation, as well as serving as a delegate to the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea.
Elizabeth Cottier-Cook is Head of the United Nations University (UNU)/Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) Associate Institute and Programme Leader for the Erasmus + Joint Master Degree in Aquaculture, Environment and Society. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Biology and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She currently leads a £6.2M research programme “GlobalSeaweedSTAR” funded by UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and bringing together DAC-list countries from around the world involved in seaweed aquaculture. She is also a member of the FAO Technical Working Group on Aquaculture Biosecurity, ICES Working Group on Introductions and Transfers of Marine Organisms (WGITMO) and the Scottish Government Working Group on Marine Non-Native Species.
Tim Slingsby is Director of Skills and Education at Lloyd’s Register Foundation, an independent global charity that supports research, innovation, and education to make the world a safer place. He is part of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation executive leadership team, providing expertise, strategic and operational leadership and taking responsibility for all skills, education and learning-related grants. In addition, he is lead director for the Foundation’s work in Safety of Food, Public Understanding of Risk and is responsible for building a diverse portfolio of international programmes and activities all aimed at the Foundation’s mission to protect the safety of life and property, and to advance engineering-related education and research. Tim is very proud of the incredible diversity of work that the Lloyd’s Register Foundation funds towards engineering a safer world. In this space, the Safe Seaweed Coalition is a hugely exciting and unique opportunity to take proactive steps that ensure the growing, global seaweed industry is scaled up safely to produce a sustainable and safe source of food.
Junning Cai is an economist and Aquaculture Officer at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). His work at FAO has been focused on economic analysis, sector assessment and monitoring, policy and planning, business development and planning, and bioeconomic modelling of aquaculture operations. He has been devoted to the development of the World Aquaculture Performance Indicators (WAPI), which is an FAO initiative to facilitate evidence-based policymaking and sector management in aquaculture. He has authored/edited/developed various information and knowledge products under WAPI; one of which is the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper 580 – Social and economic dimensions of carrageenan seaweed farming.
Anoushka Concepcion is an Associate Extension Educator focusing on marine aquaculture with the Connecticut Sea Grant Program based at the Avery Point Campus in Groton, CT. She is also a faculty member in UConn’s Department of Cooperative Extension. Her programming focuses on supporting marine aquaculture stakeholders in Connecticut, including the nascent seaweed aquaculture industry and associated stakeholders. Anoushka collaborates with industry and regulators to address emerging challenges associated with seaweed aquaculture. Specifically, she assists with the development of guidance on potential human health hazards associated with seaweed grow-out and processing, market development and permitting. She leads the National Seaweed Hub, a collaborative effort of 11 Sea Grant programs and their stakeholders, which addresses the emerging needs of the national seaweed aquaculture industry. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the non-profit organization, Minorities in Aquaculture. Anoushka is passionate about providing the world’s population with responsibly produced food through aquaculture.
Prof. Gwang Hoon Kim is a cell biologist who does research in a broad range of issues related to processes of cell signaling, sexual differentiation, cell-cell recognition, stress responses of algal cells, protein isolation and characterization. His area of scientific expertise also includes seaweed aquaculture and algal breeding using combined methods of mutation breeding and algal proteomics and genomics. His name appears on more than 160 peer-reviewed scientific papers. His laboratory has been chosen as National Research Laboratory (NRL) of Korea. He served as a director of the Institute of Biotechnology and Dean of College of Natural Sciences in Kongju National University. Over the years of work at KNU, 67 Ms.D. and 13 Ph.D. students have defended dissertations in Prof. Gwang Hoon Kim’s laboratory under his direct supervision. He is now a president of Pyropia aquaculture research coalition in Korea.
Lisa Boulton is an experienced Program and Portfolio Manager working in the area of Sustainability, with a focus on Ocean Regeneration, and Seaweeds in particular, at Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland. Lisa has a background in leading complex, global and multi-functional projects and solid knowledge of financials, realizing business value and strategic alignment. She completed the CISL Sustainable Business Management training, which led to a passionate interest in nature based solutions to tackle the SDG’s. She set up a Seaweed Focus Group in 2020, bringing together stakeholders from across all parts of the Nestlé organization to work together on developing the potential of seaweed (including Food, Agriculture, Packaging and Climate). Lisa is a strong believer of the power of the private sector to make a positive impact at scale and is proud to be part of the Safe Seaweed Coalition.
Steffen Hansen joined the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) in March 2013 and is based in Washington DC, USA. While at the GEF Steffen has worked with a diverse set of partners to advance a global portfolio of projects focusing mainly on sustainable fresh and marine water management and institution building. Steffen is a geographer by training from Copenhagen University and has done prior work on the conceptualization of an integrated coastal zone management model, focusing on the production of seaweeds as a cost-effective nutrient bio-filtering tool and with links to new protein, sugar (bioplastic) and energy markets as the main upscaling mechanism.
Jo Kelly is on a mission to harness the power of seaweed to protect oceans, reduce carbon emissions, create livelihoods in coastal communities and nourish the planet. Jo is the CEO of the Australian Seaweed Institute and is working across industry, government and research to build a world class sustainable seaweed industry in Australia. An industry strategist and impact entrepreneur with over 20 years’ experience in business, Jo is passionate about advancing nature-based solutions to deliver environmental, social and economic outcomes at scale. Jo, and her team at Australian Seaweed Institute, are working on innovative seaweed biofilter technology to help protect the Great Barrier Reef from water quality decline.
Dr. Yoichi Sato has been a member of the Research and Development Institute of Riken Food Co., Ltd., Miyagi, Japan since 2005. Before 2005, he was an officer in the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (2001–2002), and an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Agricultural Science at the Faculty of Agriculture of Tohoku University (2002–2004). His main interests are physiology and ecology of macro algae, especially brown seaweeds (Wakame, Kombu, Mozuku).His efforts have supported deeper understanding of the plasticity and adaptability of seaweeds to environmental changes and aided the development and improvement of cultivation technology. Additional fields of interest are development of the optimum processing methods of seaweeds suitable for markets and customer demands. He obtained a PhD (life Science) at the University of Tokyo in 2016.
Jorunn Skjermo is senior scientist at SINTEF Ocean and active in the development of technology and strategies for upscaled cultivation of seaweeds for use in production of food, high-value products, feed and carbon removal. She has served as coordinator of the Norwegian special interest group SIG Seaweed since 2014, has held a PhD in Aquaculture from NTNU since 1996 and is involved in strategic work for the development of the seaweed industry, including inputs to EU algae strategies.
Advisory Board
The Advisory Board comprises representatives from our partners and all parts of the seaweed value chain. Together with the Steering Committee it will review all consultations and make recommendations on the topics that should be the focus of the Steering Committee’s work.
Alejandro Buschmann is a Full Professor and researcher at i-mar Research Center, Universidad de Los Lagos, obtaining its Ph.D. at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. At present, he is also a senior researcher at the Centre for Biotechnology and Bioengineering. He has contributed to over 140 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, covering coastal ecology and seaweed aquaculture, with a particular focus on the contribution of integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) to sustainable aquaculture development. He previously served as the Director of Research and the Graduate School at the Universidad de Los Lagos and head of i-mar Research Center. In addition, Dr. Buschmann has served on different scientific panels of the Chilean Science Agency (ANID) as well as in national commissions for graduate program quality certification (CNA). As a scientific consultant, he has been able to support seaweed culture developments with the industry and the promotion of the use sustainable environmental technologies for aquaculture with different stakeholders around the world.
Sarah Hosking graduated from the Univeristy of Lancaster, UK, with a BSc in Biological Sciences and gained a PhD in plant biochemistry from University of Central Lancashire, UK. She joined the global home, personal care and foods company, Unilever, working in their R&D function at Port Sunlight, Wirral, UK, in 1997. At Unilever, Sarah has held various positions leading both technology delivery and capability building projects. This has included building high throughput screening capability across Unilever and her current role as Biosourcing Manager since 2010 in which she leads a team to deliver bio-based, sustainable new technologies for home care products. She is currently responsible for a portfolio of grant funded projects totalling over £15M as well as managing interactions and projects with a number of academics and companies, both large and small and located around the world.
Adrien Vincent joined SYSTEMIQ in 2017. He is leading the ocean work of SYSTEMIQ and is involved in circular economy projects. He worked with the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy for the past 2 years, being one of the lead authors of the report “Ocean Solutions that Benefit People, Nature and the Economy”, published in December 2020. Adrien is also the Programme Director of Seaweed for Europe, a coalition launched in June 2020 to advance a sustainable seaweed industry in Europe. Adrien is also a mentor at Katapult Ocean and an Advisory Board member at Deep Science Ventures. Prior, he served in the French navy for 2 years and worked at McKinsey & Company during 6 years, being largely involved with the Sustainability practice. Adrien holds an Engineering degree from ENSTA ParisTech, with a major in Environment, a master’s degree in climate change from Institut National Supérieur de Techniques Nucléaires (INSTN), and a specialized Master in strategic management from HEC Paris.
Andrea Weber started her career as a lawyer before she joined METRO in 2003. METRO is a leading international wholesale and food service distribution specialist. Andrea held different leading positions in the company and has proven herself to be an all-rounder by managing several departments, though always connected to the area of environment and sustainability. Due to this experience she became an expert in responsible sourcing, with special focus on fish and seafood sourcing. As Director Corporate Responsibility, she is the single point of contact for the company in all matters of sustainability and assures the fulfillment of sustainability standards and policies, as well as the development and fostering of external partnerships. Moreover, she serves as sparring partner and interface for own brands, marketing and communication, and is strongly engaged in several networks to foster young high-potentials. Andrea is chair of the Steering Board of the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA), a partnership working towards traceable, socially and environmentally responsible tuna as well as a member of the Steering Board of the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI), a global platform and partnership working towards more sustainable seafood.
Dr. Sander van den Burg is a senior researcher in aquaculture and mariculture at Wageningen Economic Research. Sander studied Environmental Sciences and obtained a PhD at the Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University. Since 2011, Sander works as project leader on maritime projects, studying the sustainable use of seas and oceans. Seaweeds feature prominently in these projects, being a promising source of biomass for the production of food, feed and extracts. Relevant such projects include TripleP@Sea, MERMAID (FP7), SEABIOPLAS (FP7), MARIBE (H2020-CSA), SOMOS (2016-2018), GENIALG (H2020) and Safe Seaweed by Design (started in 2021).
Tiffany Waters is the Aquaculture Manager for The Nature Conservancy’s Global Aquaculture Program. The program consists of active projects in seven countries designed to demonstrate the environmental, social, and economic benefits sustainable aquaculture can provide for people and nature. Before joining TNC in 2017, she worked in the private shellfish industry in the Pacific Northwest of the US at the Hama Hama Company – a farm specializing in growing oysters and clams. Prior to working in industry, she worked for five years at the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission – an inter-tribal natural resources organization serving the Treaty Tribes of Washington State. She holds an M.S. in Natural and Cultural Resource Management from Central Washington University, with a concentration on water quality, and a B.A. from Vassar College in Geography and Anthropology. She was raised on the Olympic Peninsula, with her first job at age 12 picking single shell oysters on the tideflats of Hood Canal. She is of mixed European and American Indian descent and a member of the Chinook Indian Nation.
Simon Davis is the founder and managing director of SEADLING, an environmental and social impact seaweed biotechnology company, founded in 2018, that is driving innovation in the seaweed industry in South East Asia. Simon has run leading businesses in Asia for more than a decade and holds an MSc from Macquarie University, Australia. He is a firm believer that responsible business is the key driver to creating lasting sustainability and is a passionate advocate for the pivotal role that seaweed will play in generating novel products for our future whilst creating jobs for poor communities and restoring abundance to our oceans.
Shally Shanker, CFA, is the founder and Managing Partner of AiiM Partners, which invests in technology-enabled companies addressing climate change and equity/access, targeting the $10 trillion industries in the ocean system and its overlap with air/energy and land/agriculture. Shally has over 20 years of investment management experience structuring and stewarding global portfolios and has been involved with the boards of 16 portfolio investments. She was the Director of Mission Investing at the Schmidt Family Foundation and, six years prior to that, was the Investment Officer at The Schmidt Family Foundation and Vice President of Investments at Hillspire, LLC. In addition to her investment experience, she has also worked at the Stanford Solutions Science Lab at the Stanford School of Medicine building a community based intervention program for childhood obesity prevention among low income, at-risk communities. She was invited to join the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust Advisory Board. In addition, she is part of the Working Group for GenderSmart Investing.
Maris Stulgis completed 5 years of university level study at the Kaliningrad State Technical University and holds a diploma in Water bioresources and aquaculture. Before joining the European Commission he worked for 10 years in Latvian national administration in environment protection and fisheries control policies development and implementation. As a Policy Officer at DG MARE, Maris dealt with fisheries control policy development and implementation, including the development of new control technologies, leading the group of EU inspectors monitoring EU rules implementation in the Baltic and North Sea countries. He also covered fisheries data management, and worked areas such as marine pollution, biodiversity, environmental policies. As October 2020, Maris is responsible for Aquaculture, Blue Bioeconomy and Algae.
Pi Nyvall Collén joined the OLMIX group, a French company providing natural solutions for agriculture and agribusiness based on seaweed, clays and trace elements, in 2012 as R&D manager to coordinate research and development on the use of seaweed, from processing, production and stabilization of extracts to identification of the potential applications for plant, animal and human care applications. She was promoted to Scientific Director in 2018. Pi has over 25 years’ experience in research on seaweed, covering genomics, biochemistry, enzymology and physiology. Between 2001 and 2011, at the Roscoff Biological Station in France, she studied different aspects of cell wall polysaccharides from brown, red and green seaweed, as well as different algal or bacterial enzymes involved in the degradation or modification of polysaccharides.
John J Bolton is a lifelong seaweed biologist (PhD, Liverpool, UK, 1978), and has taught at the University of Cape Town, South Africa since 1983. A former President of the International and Southern African Phycological Societies, he has successfully supervised 20 PhD students, and has >160 journal publications. He is an author on more than 40 species new to science, and the known seaweed flora of South Africa has increased by >50% during this time, mostly due to projects he has led. He has also published widely on seaweed biogeography, resource use and aquaculture, and kelp forest ecology. A joint project with Max Troell (Beijer Institute, Stockholm) laid the basis for the commercially successful integrated aquaculture of abalone with Ulva, with these studies now extended to sea urchins. He is a member of a partnership in the EC-funded project ASTRAL: All Atlantic Sustainable, Profitable and Resilient Aquaculture (2020-2024).
Dr. Haimin Chen is a member of the China Algae Research system. She leads a group on marine algae research at Ningbo University, with a focus on the development of the algae industry chain. Her primary research interests include: development and application of genomic tools for aquaculture species of some marine algae, including sequencing and functional annotation of the genome for Pyropia haitanensis; genomic selection for relevant traits in breeding programmes, with a focus on stress resistance; screening, separation and industrialization of algae functional substances; and healthy cultivation of algae. Dr. Chen has participated in a series of major scientific research projects for national, provincial and municipal governments. She won the second prize of the National Marine Innovation Achievement Award in 2008, second prize of the Ningbo Science and Technology Progress Award in 2008, and was recognised at the 2010 Ningbo Youth Science and Technology Awards.
Frank Neumann joined SES in 2012, initially working on energy-scale and offshore seaweed cultivation visions. He now works on improving farming techniques, harvest and deployment operations, and further exposed systems. He assists in strategic issues, public support and new ventures, liaises with suppliers and project partners. He has 12 years of ocean wave energy and coastal engineering experience, being appointed Associate Director of the Wave Energy Centre, which he helped to create. Frank graduated as a Civil Engineer from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany. He speaks German, Portuguese and English.
Graham Clark is the Chief Executive of Asia Affinity Holdings Ltd., a diversified financial services company headquartered in Hong Kong, with operating subsidiaries in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Graham started his career with a major UK insurance broker and in 1974 was posted to their Japan office. He has remained in Asia and over the course of the intervening 47 years has lived and built businesses in Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and a regional wholesale broking business in Singapore. In 2000 Graham launched his own business focused on distribution, business process outsourcing and contact centre solutions for the financial services sector in Asia. Asia Affinity is focused on providing growth and protection solutions, both non-marine and marine to the SME and Micro communities in Asia. Through their subsidiary companies, the group, is active in the Mutual Aid and Cooperative sectors, providing underwriting and sustainable growth solutions. In 2016 the group launched KMB, a capacity building initiative to support the development of sustainable community growth, and resilience, in Asia.
Patricia Bianchi is the Seaweed Account Manager of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council. Her role is central to managing the ASC-MSC Seaweed Certification Program. Patricia supports the development and implementation of the seaweed standard, and supports seaweed research, stakeholder engagement and commercial activities. Patricia also develops capacity building programs on seaweed certification in America, Europe and Asia. Prior to taking up this post, she worked at the Marine Stewardship Council as a Senior Policy Manager where she supported the fisheries and chain of custody standard and certification process development. Patricia has focused her career on market-based approaches such as certification and eco-labelling for achieving sustainable fisheries. She studied in the University of Wageningen and holds a MSc in Environmental Science, as well as a BSc in biology from the University of Uruguay. Patricia has also worked as a social and environmental auditor and with Fishery Improvements Projects for more 10 years.
Daniel Hooft is CEO and Founder of Kelp Blue, dedicated to growing giant kelp forests offshore at large scale to restore the health of the oceans while sequestering CO2. The kelp canopy will be harvested and processed into products including fertilisers, animal feed, bioplastics and textiles that can mitigate the negative impacts of environmentally damaging or chemical-based alternatives. Daniel is passionate about the sea and the complex anthropocene world we live in. He believes that human beings are at their best when their intellectual curiosity, focus, and ingenuity combine to discover fundamental improvements to the way our world works. Daniel has 20 years’ experience in operational, managerial and strategic executive roles with Royal Dutch Shell in 7 different countries. He has a track record in delivering extraordinary business results by identifying technical and commercial opportunities and acting on them decisively. With Kelp Blue, he is putting this experience to work developing a project that has a meaningful positive impact on the environment while being profitable, scalable and replicable.
Alan T. Critchley is a career phyconomist. He graduated from Portsmouth University, UK, with PhD, focused on the introduction of invasive Sargassum muticum—now a naturalised member of many coastal flora. Alan has twenty years’ experience in southern Africa at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal, Pietermaritzburg, and University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, as an academic with research focused on the phycogeography and biological activities of tropical and cold water species of seaweeds. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Verschuren Centre for Sustainability in Energy and Environment, Nova Scotia. Alan continues to undertake collaborative research and support the development of early career scientists in varied phyconomic activities. He has also co-edited several books on cultivation of seaweeds and marine ranching. Alan’s focus is now in promoting adaptive phyconomy and improved, commercial production of many types of seaweeds for their multiple and varied benefits.