Kathryn Matthews, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President
Executive Committee
As Chief Scientist, Kathryn (Katie) is responsible for ensuring Oceana’s campaigns are informed by the best and most current scientific understanding, as well as tracking emerging issues, advising on strategic direction, and supporting the 50+ staff scientists across the organization’s offices in 12 fishing nations. She also heads the Science and Strategy department at Oceana’s international headquarters, with teams focused on transparency in ocean governance, programmatic monitoring and evaluation, and the role of fisheries in livelihoods and nutrition. As part of that effort, she also leads Oceana’s development of new campaign teams in Ghana, Malaysia, and Senegal.
Prior to Oceana, Katie led a marine conservation and sustainable fisheries grantmaking program at The Pew Charitable Trusts, advocated for better tuna fisheries management with the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation, and served as a science fellow at both the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Congress. She’s sat on the Society for Conservation Biology’s Board of Governors, heading its Marine Section’s board of directors as president (2017-2019), is currently on the boards of the (U.S.) National Aquarium and the Oyster Recovery Partnership, and serves as a program advisor for the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation.
She has an M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Earth and Environmental Science, where she studied – respectively – pesticide accumulation in Svalbard ice caps and trace metals as paleoclimate proxies in tropical Panamanian corals. Her B.Sc. in Geological Sciences is from Tufts University.
