While at World Wildlife Fund, I was able to provide significant support to the organization’s engagement with the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, a regional fisheries management organization with jurisdiction over most of the East Pacific Ocean tuna fisheries. My work helped them engage more meaningfully with the rulemaking undertaken by the commission. I was also honored to be included as an official “outside expert” member of the WWF delegation to the meeting. I also completed a small briefing memo on the conservation impacts of bioprospecting in the high seas for the WWF Oceans team.

This was an immensely beneficial experience for me professionally and personally. It made me more interested in working for a large conservation NGO, significantly broadened my professional network, and prepared me well for my current IPSS placement with The Stimson Center Environmental Security program.

My attendance at the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission annual meeting in August was an excellent case study in not only how the policies we study in school have a real world impact, but also in how industry and private actors are so easily to bend fisheries enforcement rules to their liking through lobbyists.