Science Lead

Dr. Taylor Maddalene Myers is a Research Faculty member in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia and Director of the Circularity Assessment Protocol at the Jambeck Circularity Informatics Lab. Her background is in marine conservation, pollution prevention, and science communication, working on projects around the globe with organizations such as National Geographic, The White House Council on Environmental Quality, World Wildlife Fund, Rare, and many others. Her research focuses on the impacts of plastic pollution and tying human behavior and waste management infrastructure on land with what we find in the ocean.

Taylor has also been an avid scuba diver, sailor, adventurer, and all-around ocean lover from a young age, and has traveled to every continent (save Antarctica!) and dived in every major ocean. She knows that waste around the world tells a story, and that the challenges we face in the ocean start upstream, and so her experiences have taken her from scuba diving to dumpster diving (and everything in between!). Taylor has dedicated herself to protecting our environment and all those who depend on it.

Sustainability leader

Alex Michalko is a sustainability leader with 20+ years of experience in the public and private sectors across a range of industries, including technology, consumer electronics, retail, media/entertainment, and real estate. Most recently she served as the Director of Climate and Responsible Sourcing at HP. In this role, Alex led HP’s worldwide climate and human rights teams, driving strategies to reduce carbon emissions, protect workers’ rights, advance sustainable forestry practices, and ensure alignment with global compliance standards to support the company’s sustainability commitments and improve business resilience. In this capacity, she also led HP’s supplier engagement initiatives across social and environmental impact areas. Prior to HP, Alex served in leadership roles at Amazon, REI, and The Walt Disney Company, in addition to a research fellowship at Project Drawdown.

Alex earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford University and both an MBA and a master’s degree in environmental management from Duke University, with concentrations in strategy, environmental economics and policy, and social entrepreneurship. When she’s not traveling the world, she lives in Seattle, Washington, where she enjoys every opportunity to get outdoors and appreciate the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

Conservation Architect

Nicola spent much of her childhood messing around in boats or on the shore in Norfolk. She is a practicing conservation architect based in London.

She wishes to understand more about our environment at first hand, and share the stories and science.

She approaches the voyage with an open mind, willing and wanting to learn from the Ocean, eXXpedition team, crew and the people we will encounter on land.

Marine Conservationist

Tharaka is the founder of Ocean Education & Blue Parks Ambassador, Marine Conservation Institute

In 2015 Tharaka Sriram founded the ocean literacy initiative called “Ocean Education”, where she inspires people for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and fights for the establishment of a global network of strongly protected MPAs.

She also was chosen to be Blue Parks Ambassador of the Marine Conservation Institute, the organization that globally spearheads research, implementation and advocacy for strongly protected MPAs.

As a linguist and political scientist, she has lived on six of the seven continents. The six languages that she speaks fluently made it easier for her to work at the UN, NGOs, ministries and institutions that focused on the issues of women’s rights, development cooperation, Youth and marine conservation.

Natural Resources Management Specialist

Celine spends her days exploring ways to protect wildlife, forests and the ocean. Hailing from Singapore, Celine works at the World Bank, supporting the governments of Mozambique and Indonesia to tackle marine plastic pollution and move towards a plastics circular economy through policy, partnerships and local innovations. Her other projects aim to maximize the value of natural resources for local communities for their sustainable management. Previously, Celine lived and worked in the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon, advocating for forest conservation and indigenous rights.

Celine loves diving, backcountry camping and learning languages – and she recently picked up the ukelele. She is excited to exchange ideas on eXXpedition with other strong women leaders and changemakers on solving the plastics problem.

Sustainable Interior Designer

Environmental and Safety Engineer

Tünde is an environmental process engineer and a safety engineer, interested in environmental sciences. She considers herself a global citizen, she is from Hungary but living in Austria, and is a mother of 2 kids. Tünde is passionate about protecting our beautiful planet and creating a sustainable world. She would like to use her enthusiasm and skills to explore the impact of plastic pollution, and to communicate and educate findings to different generations, to help everyone understand better how we can live a sustainable life.

Founder of Meaningful Recruitment

As founder of Meaningful Recruitment Katie connects with amazing individuals and organisations that are striving to make a positive social impact in our world. She provides career coaching to help them achieve their aspirations and runs campaigns to help organisations find the talent to help them achieve their visions and solutions that will benefit our communities and our planet.

The plastic crisis comes up time and time again with her clients and through her podcasts and time on the radio, much interest is being raised from her followers on how they can contribute to the solutions. She’s so passionate about bringing about change to rid our oceans of plastic that she’s travelled to Norway and connected with people such as Boyan Slat’s team of Ocean Cleanup in San Francisco.

Circular design and systems thinking

Pippa, the Founder of philo & co, a circular design consultancy, has more than 10 years’ experience within the creative industry working with global design agencies and leading FMCG brands. Pip is driven by the power of design to help re-define ‘business as usual’ and create a more resource efficient economy.

“I believe the answer lies within a Circular Economy and closed loop design, we simply cannot continue consuming at our current trajectory. We have seen for too long the grave consequences it is having on the natural world our existence depends upon.”

Pip is a Circulab certified consultant and plays an active role within her community to help educate and inspire change. She is a mentor to openIDEO and recently became a Climate Reality Leader following training by the Climate Reality Corps, led by Al Gore.

“I’m really looking forward to working with my fellow crew virtually to understand how we can utilise our scientific findings to fuel innovation in up stream solutions.”