Environmental Stakeholder Committee

Ben Gilmer has over 20 years of experience in environmental conservation and food systems, specializing in fisheries, agriculture, climate, technology, and community development. He serves on the ISSF Board of Directors and as Chair of the ISSF Environmental Stakeholder Committee.

Mr. Gilmer is the Associate Director of the Large-Scale Fisheries Program at The Nature Conservancy (TNC), where he promotes seafood sustainability policies, commitments, and tools to corporations, NGOs, and governments. He leads a team with projects spanning Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa and provides oversight for fisheries electronic monitoring and reporting technologies and fishery improvement projects.

Before TNC, he was CEO of Stuart Land & Cattle Company, a diversified agriculture company in Southwest Virginia, and founded Refresh Appalachia, a social enterprise that provided on-the-job training in sustainable agriculture to disadvantaged workers in the coalfields of Central Appalachia. He also worked as a sustainability consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank and other clients and was a member of TNC’s Global Oceans team, where he supported international marine conservation and fisheries projects. Earlier in his career, he worked at Downstream Strategies, Radford University, West Virginia University, and the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

Mr. Gilmer has a master’s degree from West Virginia University and a bachelor’s degree from Radford University.

Dr. Boustany is the Principal Investigator of Global Ocean Conservation at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Before coming to the Aquarium, Boustany was a research scientist at Duke University, where he studied pelagic fish and fisheries, looking at ways to improve stock assessments, reduce bycatch, and improve fisheries management.

He also serves on several advisory committees, advising federal fisheries regulators on domestic and international management of pelagic fisheries. Dr. Boustany is also an active participant in the NGO Tuna Forum.

Dr. Boustany earned a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Cornell University.

Sonja Fordham has been a leading proponent of numerous landmark shark conservation actions, including the first US fishing limits for Atlantic sharks and rays. Fordham has co-authored numerous publications on shark fisheries management and is a member of various shark, skate, and Regional Fishery Management Organization (RFMO) advisory panels, including the International Commission for Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) US Advisory Committee.

She regularly attends annual ICCAT meetings as part of the US delegation and has participated as an observer to meetings associated with the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), and the “Kobe” joint tuna RFMO process. Fordham is deputy chair of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Shark Specialist Group and conservation committee chair for the American Elasmobranch Society.

From 1991–2009, Fordham directed shark conservation projects at the Ocean Conservancy. In mid-2006, she began a three-and-a-half year assignment in Brussels as policy director for the Shark Alliance, a coalition formed to improve European shark policies. She founded Shark Advocates International as a project of The Ocean Foundation in May 2010. Her work has focused on publicizing the plight of sharks and advocating science-based shark policies before fishery management and wildlife conservation bodies.

Sonja Fordham received a US Department of Commerce Environmental Hero Award in 2000, a Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council Fishery Achievement Award in 2004, and the inaugural Peter Benchley Shark Conservation Award in 2007. In 2008, Washingtonian magazine named her one of 30 local Eco-Heroes.

Bill Holden is the Senior Tuna Fisheries Outreach Manager for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), a global fisheries certification and ecolabel program. He began working with the MSC in February 2009 and is based in the Sydney, Australia, office.  His work involves fisheries outreach in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, with a focus on tuna fisheries.

Another component of his work is outreach to fisheries in South East Asia and the Pacific, working towards sustainable fishing practices. Mr. Holden has a wealth of experience in fisheries management from more than 20 years as an owner, operator and skipper of snapper and tuna longliners in the Kingdom of Tonga. During that time, he was the President of the Fishing Industry Association of Tonga (FIAT) and a director of the Pacific Islands Tuna Industry Association (PITIA).

As well as his vast industry experience and knowledge of fishing and marketing operations, Mr. Holden’s work in associations has given him an understanding of regional management, and he maintains an extensive Pacific network. Mr. Holden graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a B.A. in Political Science and Communications.

Sara Lewis directs the Traceability Division at FishWise, overseeing a team implementing traceability and counter-IUU fishing projects with NGO and seafood industry collaborators from all parts of the supply chain. She also leads FishWise’s work relating to government policies such as the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), and has published peer-reviewed papers on traceability and social responsibility in seafood.

Previously, she studied how third-party eco-certification impacts the environmental performance of multinational seafood firms. Ms. Lewis holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marine Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and two masters degrees in environmental studies from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, respectively. 

Dr. Vishwanie Maharaj is an economist with over 20 years of experience working on fisheries and environmental policy issues through research, engagement of the seafood industry, regional management bodies and non-governmental organizations. Both past and present work include incentive-based tools to improve the ecological and socioeconomic performance of fisheries, with a large focus on tuna fisheries that engaged the tuna industry and RFMO staff to promote strategies factoring in the impacts on fishing businesses and fishing dependent communities.

Dr. Maharaj is currently the lead for tunas and other multilateral fisheries at the World Wildlife Fund-Inc. (WWF-US).  In that capacity, she works in close coordination with global and regional leads on overall tuna policy and markets teams on engaging major retailers to drive sustainable sourcing of tuna products. Her more recent work focused on engagement in the FAO and World Bank ABNJ projects, using market incentives to reform Indonesian tuna fisheries and work to address overcapacity and improve business performance in the Eastern Pacific tropical tuna fisheries.

Prior to WWF, Dr. Maharaj held senior positions at the Environmental Defense Fund, South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council and a trade association. She holds a doctoral degree in marine resource economics from the University of Rhode Island and an undergraduate degree in oceanography from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.

Alexia Morgan, Ph.D., is the Science Lead for Tuna and Large Pelagic Species at the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP). Dr. Morgan provides scientific and technical advice to producers and suppliers on key issues related to the fisheries they source from, and ways in which they can improve these fisheries — including bycatch issues.

In addition to these roles, she conducts seafood assessments of tuna and large pelagic fisheries for SFP. Previously, Dr. Morgan was a Research Biologist at the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida and has worked as a consultant for various NGOs on a variety of elasmobranch-related issues. Outside of SFP, Dr. Morgan’s interests and research focus on ecosystem impacts and spatial management of elasmobranch species in the Atlantic.

She has a Ph.D. in Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences from the University of Florida and an M.S. in Marine Biology from Nova Southeastern University.