Andy Sharpless

“What is exciting about this issue and what got me to come here is that saving the oceans is the most serious environmental problem that the world faces for which there is a politically achievable solution,” said Sharpless. “Unexamined and unchecked, the commercial fishing industry has been permitted to suck life from our oceans at totally unsustainable rates. Pollutants are continuing to wash into the sea, the word’s fisheries are nearing irreversible collapse, and populations of important species like marlin and tuna are down 90% from 1950’s levels. The good news is that we know what the problems are, we know what to do, and we can win this fight.

We will prevent the collapse of the oceans. In just two years, our almost seventy full-time advocates working on three continents have made significant headway. Last summer, we saved 60,000 endangered sea turtles by forcing gulf commercial fisherman to modify their shrimp nets. We’ve restricted destructive fishing practices in almost 10 million square miles of ocean, and we’ve signed up more than 100,000 committed members and electronic activists from over 150 countries and territories.”

-- Andy Sharpless, CEO of Oceana

Still, Oceana’s goal of cleaning up 71 percent of the earth’s surface is a daunting one, the type that requires the guidance of a committed and experienced leader. Sharpless fits the bill. His earliest professional aspirations were to lead a public interest advocacy group, so he first served as a grassroots organizer at the Center for Study of Responsive Law, founded by Ralph Nader to encourage the country’s political, economic and social institutions to be more aware of the needs of the citizen-consumer. Sharpless also helped lead the launch of the Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board in the early 1980’s and then served as deputy director of development at People for the American Way.

A graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the London School of Economics, Sharpless was one of the founding managers of RealNetworks, the Seattle-based pioneer in the field of online music and video play-back technology. He also worked for five years at McKinsey & Co., serving the needs of a variety of corporate, non-profit and governmental clients. As Vice President of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York, he helped transform that unique facility when it opened its new building in 1991. Most recently, Sharpless built Discovery.com – the online division of Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Health and The Travel Channel – into an award-winning internet destination.

Based on his years of experience leading some of the nation’s most cutting edge businesses, advocacy organizations and non-profits, Sharpless brought a campaign-based management model to Oceana: “The downfall of many environmental organizations is that they spread themselves too thin and do just enough to fail. We set up Oceana as a campaign-focused organization that sets tangible policy goals and directs the attention and resources we need to succeed.”

Sharpless has made building a large online constituency of people who believe in sustaining our ocean fisheries an important overall goal for Oceana. “All we can do right now is slow down the pace of destruction of the ocean, but once we build the constituency – and the Internet gives us a huge opportunity to do this quickly and relatively affordably – we can win the changes that will keep the ocean and its wildlife alive forever.”

Andy Sharpless became chief executive officer of Oceana in September of 2003. Sharpless is married and has two children.