Photographer Profiles

Dawn Martin, SeaWeb (NGO)

Dawn Martin Seaweb (NGO)

Dawn M. Martin is Executive Director of SeaWeb, a non-profit organization that uses strategic communications techniques to advance ocean conservation. Martin manages SeaWeb’s staff located in the United States, Canada, Kazakhstan, Paris and the United Kingdom and directs its programs. Along with SeaWeb’s President, she is also responsible for fundraising and strategic direction.  Martin is a frequent speaker on ocean conservation, political strategy, environmental leadership, social marketing and communications.  She was a founding member of the Global Forum on Oceans, Coasts and Islands and serves on its Steering Committee which was formed to ensure implementation of the global commitments made at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development.  

Martin was recruited from Oceana, a non-profit global ocean advocacy organization, where she served as Associate Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer from 2001 to 2004. During her tenure she set up the international headquarters office in Washington, DC and program offices in the United States (Alaska, California and New Jersey), Santiago, Chile and Madrid, Spain.  Martin established multi-dimensional campaign teams that included experts in policy, legal, science, organizational services and communications and led the organization's efforts in identifying its campaign priorities: protecting ocean bottom habitat, eliminating bycatch in dirty fishing, and reducing pollution from cruise ships. She also initiated and implemented a successful merger with another NGO, American Oceans Campaign.  Martin helped to design and develop the membership program and recruited more than 30,000 paying members and 100,000 e-activists.  She was also responsible for managing the organizational budget that grew from $4.5 million to more than $10 million in three years.

Between 1996 and 2001, Martin was appointed to several positions with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) including Associate Deputy Administrator for EPA Administrator Carol Browner, Chief of Staff to the Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, and Senior Policy Advisor to the Assistant Administrator for Water.

Before joining the U.S. EPA, Martin was the Political Director for American Oceans Campaign where she managed the organization's efforts to protect the oceans, including campaigns to combat coastal water pollution, oil drilling off the outer continental shelf, and strengthening the Clean Water Act. She served as co-chair of the Clean Water Network, a national coalition of more than 1,000 local, regional and national environmental organizations and co-authored Estuaries on the Edge: The Vital Link Between Land and Sea.

Martin was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  She received her Juris Doctorate in 1986 from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles with an emphasis on international human rights and humanitarian law from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.  She received her undergraduate degree in Political Science with a minor in Business Administration from Loyola Marymount University.