Unlocking Fishery Progress – Women Hold the Key
Tuesday, November 15 at 7:00-8:00pm ET
Women, important agents of change, are often not consulted as primary stakeholders in Fishery Improvement Projects when governments, industry and NGOs plan fishery improvements. Julie Kuchepatov, founder of Seafood and Gender Equality (SAGE) and Katrina Nakamura, CEO of Sustainability Incubator, set out to understand women’s influence in FIPs through a global survey of implementers of FIPs found on fisheryprogress.org and other improvement initiatives. They will share the results of the survey and the resulting paper. By the end of this presentation, you’ll learn how women are driving progress in FIPs and identify key actions you can take to ensure women in FIPs are able to unleash their full potential, driving innovation and accelerating fishery improvements.
Julie Kuchepatov
Founder of Seafood and Gender Equality (SAGE)
Julie Kuchepatov is a proven thought leader in two global movements: sustainable seafood and fair trade. She has spent her career working directly with a variety of stakeholders in the seafood industry to address some of the most pressing environmental and social challenges in global seafood production. As the founder of Seafood and Gender Equality (SAGE), she is building a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive seafood sector. Prior to founding SAGE, Julie worked at Fair Trade USA, building a seafood program that impacted thousands of seafood producers and workers and became a globally recognized solution to empower seafood workers, ensure workplace safety, and improve environmental sustainability. Her career, spanning almost three decades, began in 1994 as part of a team running one of the most successful Atlantic salmon sport fishing lodges in the Russian Arctic for 13 years, after which she transitioned to support the conservation efforts of Russian salmon fisheries at the wild Salmon Center and as a founding member of Ocean Outcomes (O2).
Katrina Nakamura
Chief Executive Officer of Sustainability Incubator
Katrina has worked in the seafood sector since 1995–first, as a salmon trader & sushi bar owner buying fish at local wharves in Prince Rupert, Gibsons and Tofino BC. As the industry moved to imports, Katrina began providing supply chain services to bridge gaps between the market and producers. Katrina’s service, Labor Safe Screening, won the Partnership for Freedom Grand Prize for tech to end labor trafficking in 2015. It has been applied in 300 supply chains and trains suppliers in human rights due diligence. Katrina also earned her doctorate in 2015 for an impact evaluation of voluntary private sector measures for sustainable seafood. Recently, Katrina prepared a Crew Wellbeing program for the Hawaii Longline fleet (2018-22), wrote draft UN guidelines for responsible seafood (2019), and gave trainings for preventing forced labor in the seafood sector to government inspectors in Indonesia and the Philippines(SAFE Seas 2021-22) and to the Thai and Indonesian seafood industry (IOM, 2022).
