Heather is an advocate for sustainable businesses, brands, and thought leaders making a positive impact on individuals, communities, and the world. She founded Elemental MKTG to represent companies and people that understand sustainability is material to their operations. Her goal-driven PR, marketing, and branding strategies are designed to share their endeavors with broader audiences. Within sustainable aquaculture, she has experience working with best-in-class aquaculture companies including Verlasso salmon and Pacifico Aquaculture as well as NGOs such as the Global Aquaculture Alliance.
Previously, she held the Vice President position in the New York and San Francisco offices of the country's largest hospitality marketing and PR firm, Wagstaff Worldwide. She led teams and campaign strategies for clients across the U.S. including Eataly Downtown in New York City; The Rink at Rockefeller Center; the three-Michelin star, Relais & Chateaux restaurant Manresa in Los Gatos, CA; and Hotel Nia, an Autograph Collection property in Menlo Park.
Aurora leads multi-stakeholder initiatives to improve business practices and protect human and labor rights within the seafood industry. Her cross-sector engagement strategy brings human rights, labor, and trafficking experts into the world of seafood sustainability. Uniting expertise from representatives of companies, governments, and civil society, this work charts a new course for a responsible seafood industry via collaboration, development of new tools, and promotion of best practices. She also integrates social responsibility into seafood sourcing recommendations and traceability improvements, providing awareness and guidance to FishWise partners.
FishWise recently released a Roadmap for Improving Seafood Ethics (RISE) developed in partnership with seafood industry and leading conservation and human rights experts. The RISE website (riseseafood.org) offers streamlined guidance and actionable steps companies can take to understand the labor conditions throughout their supply chains and make improvements to protect workers and mitigate their own regulatory and reputational risks. In addition to an accessible step-by-step approach, RISE consolidates supportive resources and guidance developed by human rights and labor advocates. RISE also offers a referral hub providing connections to experts who can provide individualized guidance and support.
With Pacific Catch Restaurant group, Jennifer ensures that the company upholds and works towards finding new, innovative and economically reductive ways to stay within established sustainability guidelines as set by Smart Catch and Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. Developing, implementing and monitoring the restaurant group’s organizational fish and seafood sourcing strategies as well as communicating those commitments to internal and external stakeholders.
She works closely with the CEO, COO, marketing team, executive chef, vendors, guests and in some cases the press, to educate and inform them on the standards that Pacific Catch upholds, how it impacts the menu, the guests, food cost and the ocean. Jennifer Bushman is one of the Fish and Seafood industry’s most respected communicators, teachers and sustainability strategists. For more than two decades, Jennifer has worked with brands like, Verlasso Salmon, Love the Wild, Blue Ocean Mariculture, Pacifico Aquaculture, Equator Coffees & teas, Dole, Kraft, Unilever, and many more.
She has worked within the sustainable seafood community for over seven years. Creating relationships between the aquaculture community, NGO’s such as Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, retailers and consumers. She taught thousands through her culinary school, Nothing to It!, and has been recognized numerous times by the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
Tim Isgitt is Managing Director at Humanity United, an organization dedicated to bringing new approaches to persistent challenges like violent conflict, atrocities, and human exploitation. Tim oversees the Strategic Media and Public Policy portfolios, as well as the communications team.
Prior to joining HU, Tim was the Senior Vice President for Communications and Government Affairs at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Previously, he served in the U.S. State Department as special advisor to the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Tim was a manager of public affairs at the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller in New York, and an associate with the D.C.-based lobbying firm Meyers & Associates.
Tim began his career as a legislative assistant in the U.S. House of Representatives. He received his bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University and a master’s degree from The Johns Hopkins University.
Kohl Gill, a quantum physicist turned entrepreneur, founded LaborVoices in 2010 after observing patterns of opaque supply chains, avoidable labor issues and high mobile phone penetration while working in several South Asian countries as an International Labor Affairs and Corporate Social Responsibility Officer with the U.S. Department of State. Prior to that, he was a Senior Policy Analyst with the U.S. Department of Energy. Before that, he was a Transparency and Anti-Corruption Fellow with Indicorps in the slum areas of Delhi, India. Dr. Gill has a BS in Physics from Caltech and an MS and a PhD in Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has led LaborVoices to reach over 60 thousand workers in 11 countries on 4 continents, creating the world's first public, transparent ranking of factories on open social metrics. Dr. Gill and LaborVoices have earned many honors and awards including: Ashoka Fellow; the Purpose Economy Asia 100; Echoing Green Fellow; and the Clinton Global Initiative. He has recently been profiled by Forbes, Reuters and BBC Radio.
Please join us for a special advanced preview of the film, GHOST FLEET, before it is released in theaters this summer. The film follows a small group of Thai activists who risk their lives to find justice and freedom for enslaved fishermen, revealing stories of survival and a criminal conspiracy at the heart of the global seafood industry. We invite you to engage in a dialogue after the screening to discuss the film and hear your thoughts about how we can create a better world one story at a time.
Ghost Fleet follows a small group of activists who risk their lives on remote Indonesian islands to find justice and freedom for the enslaved fishermen who feed the world’s insatiable appetite for seafood. Bangkok-based Patima Tungpuchayakul, a Thai abolitionist, has committed her life to helping these “lost” men return home. Facing illness, death threats, corruption, and complacency, Patima’s fearless determination for justice inspires her nation and the world.