Youth of the Ocean

So the initial idea behind Sustainable Ocean Alliance was to bring young people together with heads of state, bridging that gap between the two generations to really come up with solutions to preserve ocean health. It was a novel concept at the time, no one else was doing that. How did you sell this new idea to people?

You know, it was so hard to convince people that activating young people and that investing in entrepreneurial and innovative solutions was a way to advance the state of our ocean. And so I met a lot of resistance, I met a lot of people patting me on the head saying, "You're young, it's okay. You'll learn as you get into your career." So I think that early on, it was discouraging when I met so much resistance. But at the end of the day, I just stayed very true to my own internal compass and my gut feeling and in my belief that this was a gap that is so important that had to be filled in order to help save our planet. So I think to your point earlier, once I identified my own belief system and belief in me, I just knew that I had to keep going no matter what other people said.

You encountered a lot of resistance along the way. There were plenty of naysayers who said, "No way would the heads of state ever met with young people. They have other things to do with their time." So how did you deal with that, convince people that this was a great idea, you could get heads of state, CEOs, etc. to meet on ocean issues?"

It definitely took a lot of one-on-one meetings. I think that went a long way to meet with key individuals and really walk them through the importance of involving the next generation. I remember just sitting down with folks at the State Department or talking to the CEO of National Geographic or talking to Sylvia Earle, and explaining to them that their work was going to be siloed, and it wasn't going to leave a legacy that they want to leave in the world if they were not educating, if they weren't empowering, if they weren't listening to the next generation. So I definitely had to have a lot of one-on-one conversations early on as I was building SOA, and also have these amazing individuals feel as if they're going on the journey together, we were going on this journey together with SOA, as they were contributing something much bigger than themselves. So I do think that it took that level of curated conversation and the one-on-ones and sharing this larger vision that enabled them to understand how they can work together with myself and with our youth.