Helen A. Brohl

Executive Director, U.S. Committee on the Marine Transportation System

Helen A. Brohl is the first Executive Director of the US Committee on the Marine Transportation System (CMTS) appointed in July 2006. As a career Senior Executive, Ms. Brohl manages the CMTS partnership that joins over 25 Federal agencies to address the Nation’s waterways, ports and intermodal connections. Working with senior political, military, and civilian leaders in the Federal government, Ms. Brohl has engaged in a number of dynamic issues, including the advancement of navigation technology, maritime transportation resilience, maritime data, Arctic marine transportation system (MTS), impact of COVID 19 on the MTS, Federal infrastructure financing and investment, system performance measures, ocean policy, innovative science and technology, and, more recently, on diversity, equity, and inclusion and mariner mental health. Ms. Brohl led the development of the first interagency strategy on the MTS in 2008 and the update in 2017.

Rich Innes

Executive Director, Association of National Estuary Programs, Senior Fellow at Meridian Institute

Rich Innes is a Senior Fellow at Meridian Institute where he helps lead the work of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative to catalyze ocean policy reform at the national, regional, state and local levels. With Rich’s guidance, JOCI is particularly focused on the ocean/climate nexus. Rich also helps direct the work of the Association of National Estuary Programs, and advises the State of Washington on climate, salmon and wolf recovery and natural resource issues. 

Sandra knight

President of WaterWonks LLC, District of Columbia

Sandra Knight is the President of WaterWonks LLC, District of Columbia, and a part-time Senior Research Engineer at the Center for Disaster Resilience, University of Maryland. Capitalizing on her extensive experience as a senior leader at the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), she now works with her academic partners and clients providing expertise in national policy, strategic planning, and technical matters in the areas of disaster resilience, flood risk management, hydraulic engineering, and marine transportation.

Lynne Mersfelder-Lewis

Program Manager, Hydrographic Services Review Panel, Federal Advisory Committee, US DOC NOAA National Ocean Service

Lynne has an international background with experience in coastal management and marine protected areas, outreach/communication efforts as well as the organization and implementation of international meetings, training, and events and worked in NOS’s international program office most of her career. Lynne currently serves as the Program Manager for the Hydrographic Services Review Panel, a Federal Advisory Committee at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that advises the NOAA Administrator.

Jerry Miller

President, Science for Decisions

Dr. Miller established Science for Decisions in early 2013. From  2015 through 2017 he has also served as Director of the Science and Technology for Sustainability program at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. He served as Assistant Director for Ocean Sciences at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) from 2009 through early 2013 prior to establishing Science for Decisions.

Dr. Kathy Sullivan

Dr. Sullivan is a distinguished scientist, astronaut, and executive. She was one of the first six women to join the NASA astronaut corps in 1978 and holds the distinction of being the first American woman to walk in space. She flew on three space shuttle missions during her 15-year NASA tenure, including the mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Sullivan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Earth Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in Geology from Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and numerous other professional associations.

Christy Goldfuss

Christy Goldfuss, former managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), rejoined American Progress as the organization’s senior vice president for Energy and Environment Policy. As managing director, Goldfuss helped develop and implement the Obama administration’s environmental and energy policies, including the Climate Action Plan, then-President Barack Obama’s major initiative to combat climate change. She co-chaired the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience and identified priorities for protecting the country against the worst impacts of climate change.

Dr. Marcia McNutt

Dr. McNutt is a geophysicist and president of the National Academy of Sciences. From 2013 to 2016, she served as editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals. Prior to joining Science, she was director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from 2009 to 2013. During her tenure, the USGS responded to a number of major disasters, including earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and Japan, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. McNutt led a team of government scientists and engineers at BP headquarters in Houston who helped contain the oil and cap the well. She directed the flow rate technical group that estimated the rate of oil discharge during the spill’s active phase. For her contributions, she was awarded the U.S. Coast Guard’s Meritorious Service Medal.

Dr. Nancy Knowlton

Dr. Nancy Knowlton has been a scientist with the Smithsonian since 1984, first in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and now at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. She has also been a professor at Yale and at the University of California in San Diego, where she founded the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She is the author of Citizens of the Sea, former Editor-in-Chief of the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal, and contributes regularly to the global ocean conversation via @seacitizens. She is a winner of the Peter Benchley Prize and the Heinz Award, and in 2013 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Rita Colwell

Dr. Rita Colwell is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland at College Park and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and President of CosmosID, Inc. Her interests are focused on global infectious diseases, water, and health. She has authored or co-authored 17 books and more than 800 scientific publications.

 Dr. Colwell served as 11th Director of the National Science Foundation and Co-chair of the Committee on Science, National Science and Technology Council.