Illegal Fishing and Transparency Fellow

General Summary

The US Illegal Fishing and Transparency fellow is part of Oceana’s U.S. campaign team to protect the oceans from illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing and promote transparency in the seafood supply chain. The fellow will work closely with all members of Oceana’s illegal fishing and transparency campaign. The fellow will collaborate with Oceana’s science, policy, communications, legal and grassroots teams facilitating projects for the campaign. The fellow will draft communications materials, including fact sheets, blog posts, sign-on letters, and reports, as well as conducting research and drafting internal documents.

The fellow will need to be comfortable with researching and analyzing both scientific and policy documents to support the goals of the campaign. The fellow will coordinate tactics, organize events, conduct outreach, and track campaign activities. The fellow will represent Oceana at meetings and other events as needed to support the goals of the campaign.

The fellow reports to the Illegal Fishing and Transparency Campaign Director. The position is based in Washington, D.C. Occasional travel may be required.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

Essential Functions:

• Support the Campaign Director in the development and implementation of campaign goals, strategies and tactics.
• Conduct research and maintain a working knowledge of the ocean issues and seafood transparency policies.
• Execute targeted campaign tactics in strategic locations.
• Mobilize organizations, businesses, and individuals in support of campaign goals.
• Draft materials for the campaigns, including fact sheets, letters, presentations and internal documents, such as background research memos.
• Coordinate with national and international partners working on illegal fishing and transparency.
• Build support for the campaign as needed from diverse stakeholders. This would include managing outside relationships and initiate outreach with scientists, NGOs, business and organizations such as coordinating with chefs and restaurant owners to help advance our goals.
• Provide substantive and administrative support in the planning and implementation of internal and external projects and events.
• Track time and campaign activities and progress toward goals regularly, meeting all deadlines established by the supervisor.
• Perform additional duties and functions as directed by the Campaign Director.

Job Requirements

Education and work experience:

• A Master’s Degree (environmental science, political science or a related field) and 1 year of campaign or ocean conservation experience, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Experience completing projects under tight deadlines and effectively managing a demanding workload, multi-tasking and taking on new projects.

Skills and knowledge:

• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communications skills, including the ability to synthesize complex information into easy-to-understand, publicly digestible, and persuasive material.
• Experience taking initiative, meeting deadlines, completing unexpected projects, proactively solving problems, and effectively managing a demanding workload.

• Effective organizational skills and follow-through, and capacity to juggle multiple tasks at once.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment.
• Knowledge of the policy-making process at the federal, state, or local level.

• Self-starter with creative reasoning.

Required Competencies: 

• Action-Oriented: Makes things happen. Takes on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy and enthusiasm.
• Nimble Learning: Takes on the challenge of unfamiliar tasks. Can quickly adapt to new situations and to draw on past successes and failures to solve current problems.
• Manages Complexity: Is able to gather data, analyze situations and uncover root causes to problems. Can distinguish between what’s relevant and what’s not and evaluate the pros and cons of potential solutions.
• Collaborates: Brings people together to leverage their skills, talents and knowledge to achieve a common purpose. Creates synergy resulting in a combined effort with greater results than what can be achieved by individuals.

Oceana values a diverse workforce and welcomes people different from each other in many ways, including characteristics such as race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and national origin. Oceana considers all qualified candidates and seeks to recruit from a diverse candidate pool.

Oceana’s US offices have operated on a hybrid schedule and staff have been required to work from their assigned office on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. With agreement between the employee and their supervisor, the employee may work from home Monday and Friday.