Nancy Knowlton

Dr. Nancy Knowlton spent much of her career at the Smithsonian, first in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and later at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.  She was also 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. In 2013 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.  In 2014 she helped launch #OceanOptimism on Twitter, and in 2017 she was the co-host of the Smithsonian’s inaugural Earth Optimism Summit. She is a winner of the Peter Benchley Prize, the Heinz Award, the Women’s Aquatic Network 2018 Woman of the Year award, the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and the International Coral Reef Society’s Darwin Medal.