Beginning March 1, 2021, the MTS Board of Directors will include a Vice President of ECOP. ECOP members are defined as “an individual who is within 10 years of their last professional degree and self-identified as an ECOP.” We would like to thank the talented candidates who ran for office.

The MTS membership elected Jose Alfredo Giron Nava to serve as Vice President, Early Career Ocean Professionals. His term will run from March 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022. Mr. Giron Nava will represent the interests of Early Career Ocean Professionals within the Society, will serve on the membership advisory group and the budget and finance committee, and will serve a two-year non-renewable term.

MTS would like to extend a special thanks to Benton LeBlanc of the Houston Section who also ran for office for his continued service and contributions to MTS.

Alfredo is an André Hoffmann Fellow at the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions and the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. His work focuses on the use of technology to support sustainable fisheries management and the reduction of Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported catch at a global scale. His previous experience includes projects for sustainable fisheries management in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Palau, Solomon Islands, the European Union, and a series of studies at a global scale. He has more than 10 years of experience thinking of ways to 

better communicate science and display data in meaningful ways, such as in the platform dataMares, which he co-founded in 2014. Since May 2019, Alfredo is one of the co-founders of the Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOP) working group for the IOC-UNESCO, which seeks to give opportunities for ECOP to engage in international ocean sustainability conversations.

Alfredo is the first recipient of the Walter Munk Scholar Award by the Marine Technology Society and the Walter Munk Foundation for the Oceans in recognition of his work on using science and technology to improve the state of the ocean. He is also an EthicalGEO Fellow by the American Geographical Society for his work on developing methods to characterize poverty in fishing communities around the world.

LEARN MORE & JOIN ECOP HERE