Independent entrepreneur and a shining example of Georgia’s home-grown success in the third party logistics business. Used Technology to grow a local business nationwide.

“Logistics is a word that some people don’t really understand, but it describes what it takes to get goods manufactured in China all the way across the world to a Wal-Mart store near you. The logistics business runs largely unseen, behind the curtain. But it makes it possible to go to the store and do your Christmas shopping.”

A businessman who is continually analyzing business opportunities and connecting people to create something new.

George is a Tybee island native whose heart is in everything saltwater and outdoors.

Irene became engaged with the The Ocean Exchange™ through her longtime trusteeship with the Sapelo Foundation. This Georgia based foundation has a long history and affinity for water-related issues. Through its environmental initiatives, the Foundation has been a pioneering funder of projects that preserves Georgia’s finite natural resources. Targeted philanthropic investments in water resources management and policy the foundation have addressed critical environmental issues impacting the Georgia Coast and our Oceanic resources.

Irene holds an MA in Anthropology, Geography and Spanish Literature from the University of Basel, Switzerland. She is a passionate diver and tries to head to the ocean as often as she can.

President & CEO

Dr. Schubel has been President and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific since 2002 He is President and CEO Emeritus of the New England Aquarium, and from 1974-1994 was Dean of Stony Brook University’s Marine Sciences Research Center. For three of those years he served as The University’s provost. He is Distinguished Service Professor emeritus. Prior to 1994, Dr. Schubel was an adjunct professor, research scientist and Associate Director of The Johns Hopkins University’s Chesapeake Bay Institute.

Schubel has worked throughout his professional life at the interfaces of science-management-policy on issues dealing with the ocean. He has published more than 225 scientific papers and has written extensively for general audiences. He wrote a monthly column on the environment for Long Beach Magazine. He is a member of NOAA Science Advisory Board and is a member of the Science Advisory Panel for California’s Ocean Protection Council. He chaired the National Sea Grant Review Panel; the National Research Council’s Marine Board; and the Ocean Research and Resources Advisory Panel (ORRAP), the only Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) advising federal agencies with ocean mandates.

At the Aquarium of the Pacific, he created the Aquatic Forum that brings together scientists, policy-makers and stakeholders to explore alternative ways of dealing with some of California’s important, complex, and often controversial environmental issues. He also directs the Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Research Institute.
Dr. Schubel holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Alma College, Michigan; a Masters degree from Harvard University; and a Ph.D. in oceanography from Johns Hopkins University. He received an honorary doctorate from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy in 1998.

President & CEO

Over the past three decades, Scott has devoted much of his career toward creating environmental awareness and stewardship. He currently chairs Scott the Global Green board for Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross (Geneva), and is chair emeritus of the GreenBlue Institute and a founder of its Sustainable Packaging Coalition. He is a former Director of the National Recycling Coalition and the Vice Chair of the Container Recycling Institute and Chair of the advisory board of Elemental Impact. Through his work with these organizations, Scott helped create The Coalition for Resource Recovery. Scott has also served as Chairman of the Board for Georgia State University’s Robinson College, the metro Atlanta YMCA, the Georgia Hi-Tech Alliance, the Georgia World Congress Institute and the Atlanta Chamber’s International Committee during the 1996 Olympic Games.

Scott Seydel began his career as a weaver, loom fixer, and quality control supervisor for Texas Textiles Denim Mills while attending North Texas University. His textile career continued as he joined his family’s textile chemical company as a field service engineer, and subsequently entered management of human resources, polymer chemical sales/service, and global exports. In 1969, intrigued by the growth of textile manufacturing in developing countries Scott garnered agency representations from a dozen U.S. companies and formed Seydel International as a chemical and equipment exporter. Shortly thereafter, Scott and his growing team of professionals formed The Seydel Companies to license the use of chemical and equipment manufacturing technologies from U.S. companies as a basis for forming joint ventures, subsidiaries, and licensed partnerships in over two dozen countries. The Seydel Companies then acquired Seydel-Woolley & Company from Toyo Soda (Japan) and expanded its U.S. domestic fabric weaving and finishing focus to include process chemistry for the paper, packaging, metal working, cosmetic, leather, and animal health and feed industries, and has developed a plethora of patents for products in these application arenas.

Speaker and Author

Jack Uldrich is a renowned global futurist, independent scholar, sought-after business speaker, and best-selling author. His books include the best-selling, The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business, and the award-winning books, Into the Unknown: Leadership Lessons from Lewis & Clark’s Daring Westward Expedition and Jump the Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies. He is also the author of Green Investing: A Guide to Making Money through Environment-Friendly Stocks. His most recent works (2011) include Higher Unlearning: 39 Post-Requisite Lessons for Achieving a Successful Future and Unlearning 101: 101 Lessons in Thinking Inside-Out the Box.

Mr. Uldrich’s other written works have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, The Futurist, Future Quarterly Research, The Wall Street Reporter, Leader to Leader, Management Quarterly, and hundreds of other newspapers and publications around the country. He is also a frequent guest of the media worldwide—having appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio on numerous occasions.

President and CEO

Winner Gulfsteam Navigator Award 2011 – Wave Glider

Bill Vass is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Liquid Robotics Incorporated, a Data as a Service and marine robotics company serving a wide range of customers in the energy, shipping, environmental, intelligence, communications, scientific, fisheries, and defense markets. Mr. Vass brings more than 30 years of commercial and U.S. government Information Technology executive leadership experience to Liquid Robotics.

Previously, Mr. Vass was the President and Chief Operating Officer of Sun Microsystem’s $1.4B Federal subsidiary. Before Sun Federal, Mr. Vass served as Chief Information Officer of Sun Microsystems, as well as Sun’s Chief Information Security Officer.

Prior to Sun, Mr. Vass worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense Office of the CIO and was responsible for all acquisition and development, research and development, and consolidated software development and commercial off-the-shelf integration standards for over 6,800 IT systems with a $35.5B budget, as well as the Pentagon’s IT environment, managing networks, servers and applications across the defense networks. While at OSD, Mr. Vass was also the technical lead for the entire Department of Defense Y2K program.

Prior to joining the Office of the CIO, Mr. Vass was CTO and technical lead for the U.S. Army personnel systems worldwide. Before his work in the DoD, Mr. Vass developed large scale IT engineering and business systems solutions for the oil and gas industry, defense systems integrators, and ocean engineering.

Curator Explore the Ocean Layer & Strategic Partnership Coordinator

Known in ocean circles for her “all OCEAN, all the time” mantra, Charlotte acts as lead evangelist— managing hundreds of global partners, while editing and moderating all content—for the information-rich “Explore the Oceans Layer” in Google Earth. Charlotte has been working with Google on Ocean in Google Earth since early 2008, when she joined Dr. Earle and Mission Blue for that purpose. Understanding and protecting ocean resources are now her primary focus in life.

MISSION BLUE | SYLVIA EARLE’S FOUNDATION
In 2007 Sylvia Earle’s foundation, now called Mission Blue, joined with Google Earth to fill in the two-thirds of the planet that the Google had not yet charted—creating the “Explore the Oceans Layer” in Google Earth.

Mission Blue continues to engage hundreds of partners and individual contributors, helping them develop compelling stories about marine life, science and exploration, ocean and atmosphere, oceanic ecosystems, marine protected areas and the human connection in Google Earth. The recent release of Google Earth 5.0 made the “Explore the Oceans Layer” more accessible, including highlights of Mission Blue’s Hope Spots, which are being supported through Sylvia Earle’s 2009 TED wish:“I wish you would use all means at your disposal — films! expeditions! the web! more! — to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.”

Director of the Emory Center for Ethics

The Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Bioethics, the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair in Jewish Bioethics, a Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, and Sociology, and the Director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University.

Serves as the first bioethicist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), where he is responsible for formulating policy on bioethical issues and safeguarding research subjects. Co-Editor of the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB), the premier scholarly journal in bioethics, and Editor of AJOB Neuroscience, and sits on the editorial boards of over a dozen professional journals in medicine and ethics. Former President of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities; a Fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the country’s oldest medical society; a Fellow of the Hastings Center, the oldest bioethics institute in America; and is the first National Bioethics Advisor to Planned Parenthood Association of America.

EMORY UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR ETHICS
Inspiring and advancing scholarship and education in ethics, igniting the moral imagination of leaders in all walks of life, and fostering lives of moral meaning and ethical engagement.

Chairman

Presently, Al is the President and CEO of the United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce and is responsible for operations in eight regional offices in the United States and nine in Mexico.

Mr. Zapanta is Founder, Member and Chief Executive Officer of PAZ Resources, with overall responsibilities of management of the executive staff and overall business strategy. Previously, he was Chief Executive Officer of PAZ Energy, a single purpose entity that participated in the DFW International Airport natural gas project. Mr. Zapanta worked in upstream operations of Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO Oil & Gas), and retired as Director of Governmental Affairs for ARCO where he was responsible for negotiations with U.S. and Mexican (PEMEX) governments on oil and gas matters, and coordinated ARCO’s effort to deregulate the natural gas market which became law, the Natural Gas Policy Act (NGPA).

Mr. Zapanta has held numerous Presidential appointments, including White House Fellow and Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Management and Administration.

Mr. Zapanta has a BA in Industrial Psychology, MA in Public Administration and has completed work for his PhD in International Political Economics from the University of Southern California. Mr. Zapanta graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and the Inter-American Defense College at the National War College, Washington, D.C.