Ben Jack
Programme Director, Common Seas
Ben Jack is a passionate Ocean champion. For the last 15 years, he has been working to address complex challenges facing our seas and coastal communities: from climate resilience to fisheries management, blue carbon and ending plastic pollution.
Today, he supports Common Seas’ global team of policy experts, researchers, storytellers and circular economy specialists, with a single focus – to radically reduce the amount of plastic the world produces and stop it polluting our ocean.
Jack’s work spans government, business and societal engagement, driving government policy, investing in the circular economy, and helping to shift cultural norms about how we make, use and dispose of plastic. This includes supporting policymakers within the world’s most polluting countries to develop evidence-based and ambitious national action plans, conducting world-first investigations that shine a light on the human health risks associated with plastics; and helping to equip a new generation of sea champions with the knowledge, experience and courage to eradicate plastic pollution.
A Clean Ocean: Speakers & Moderators
Steven Adler
CEO and founder, The Ocean Data Alliance and Pre-Vetted Digital Transformation Crisis Consultant, UNDP
Manuel Arias
Ocean Physical Modelling Program Manager, ARGANS France, and Senior Earth Observation Scientist, ICM-CSIC
Gina Bonne
Officer in Charge/Head of the Department of Environment and Climate Change, Indian Ocean Commission
Angelika Brandt
Head of Department Marine Zoology, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt
Laura Cimoli
Postdoctoral Researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Colin Devey
Oceanic Volcanism – Research Division “Dynamics of the Ocean Floor”, GEOMAR - Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Elva Escobar Briones
Professor in Oceanography, Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (ICML) UNAM
Judith Gobin
Head of Department of Life Sciences, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago
Simon Jungblut
Project Manager of “FACE-IT” at the Department of Marine Botany, University of Bremen, Germany
Kenneth M. Y. Leung
Director of State Key Lab. of Marine Pollution, Chair Professor of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong
Clara Manno
Clara Manno, Pelagic Marine Ecologist at BAS and co chair, SCAR Plastic in the Polar Environments Working Group
Jessica Nilsson
Chair, PAME, the Arctic Council’s work on Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment
Torben Riehl
Research Scientist, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt
Volker Rieke
Head of “Provision for the Future – Basic Research and Research for Sustainable Development”, BMBF
Alex David Rogers
Science Director, REV Ocean, and Senior Research Fellow, Somerville College, University of Oxford
Vladimir Ryabinin
Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO
Tanja Stratmann
Postdoctoral researcher, Utrecht University & Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology
David Vousden
Chair, United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection