Roderic Mast

A lifelong international biodiversity conservationist and sea turtle expert, Rod Mast is the CEO of America’s oldest ocean nonprofit, Oceanic Society; emeritus chair of the IUCN Marine Turtle Specialist Group; and co-founder of the award-winning State of the World’s Sea Turtles program. Mast and his teams have convened thousands of individuals and institutions from dozens of countries and sectors, all bound by a shared purpose to understand and conserve sea turtles and their habitats. Since 2004, they have created the only global scale, open-source database of sea turtle biogeography, published the first global maps of sea turtle distribution, spearheaded an effective global grants program and produced 21 annual volumes of SWOT Report, an educational magazine that serves global policymakers, funders, scientists and local community stakeholders whose efforts protect sea turtles and critical ocean habitats.