Nancy Knowlton

Nancy Knowlton (@SeaCitizens) has devoted her life to studying, celebrating, and striving to protect the multitude of life-forms that call the sea home. She grew up roaming the shores of Long Island Sound, and her research has taken her to coral reefs around the world. She is the former Sant Chair of Marine Science and Editor-in-Chief of the Ocean Portal (http://ocean.si.edu) at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. She also founded the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California, San Diego. Her determination to focus on conservation solutions and successes rather than doom and gloom led to her co-launching #OceanOptimism and #EarthOptimism on Twitter. In 2013 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the US National Academy of Sciences. She is also the recipient of the Peter Benchley Award for ocean science (2009), the Heinz Award for the environment (2011), the Women's Aquatic Network Woman of the Year Award (2018), the National Marine Sanctuaries Lifetime Achievement Award (2019), and the International Coral Reef Society's Darwin Medal (2020). She lives with her husband Jeremy Jackson, also a marine biologist, in Brooksville, Maine and New York City.