Staff & Consultants

David Phillips, Executive Director - USA

Biologist David Phillips serves as executive director of the Earth Island Institute, an international nonprofit conservation organization founded by David R. Brower and headquartered in Berkeley, California. From 1978-1984, David was director of Wildlife Conservation for Friends of the Earth. In 1982, he co-founded Earth Island Institute, serving as co-executive director and specializing in international marine wildlife conservation. He directs Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project.

David has been a non-governmental representative to numerous international marine conventions, including the International Whaling Commission, and has testified before the U.S. Congress on marine mammal protection, endangered species conservation, and the impacts of trade on the environment. His direction of Earth Island Institute was acknowledged by the United Nations Environment Programme, which granted David its Leadership Award in honor of his efforts to protect dolphins from indiscriminate fishing techniques. Earth Island Institute's success in negotiating an agreement with the world’s largest tuna companies to adopt fully dolphin-safe policies was recognized by Time magazine as one of the most significant environmental victories of the decade.

In 1994, David founded the Free Willy–Keiko Foundation, successfully overseeing a five-nation, $10 million international campaign accomplishing historic rescue, rehabilitation, and release of a captive orca whale to its native habitat in Iceland.

In 1995, David was awarded the Joseph Wood Krutch Medal by the Humane Society of the United States for his efforts on behalf of marine mammals.

David has been involved in the development and implementation of numerous pieces of legislation pertaining to marine conservation. These include the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act of 1990, the International Dolphin Conservation Act of 1992, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Mark J. Palmer, Associate Director - USA

Mark Palmer focuses on protecting whales and dolphins with an emphasis on strategic planning, legislative advocacy, legal research, grassroots organizing, and media relations. He is also director of Earth Island Institute’s Wildlife Alive subproject, dedicated to protecting wildlife and wild places throughout California and the West.

Mark graduated with a BA in Zoology from the University of California, Berkeley, and spent two years of graduate work at San Francisco State University in the Department of Biology. While at UC Berkeley, Mark founded and led the Endangered Species Committee of California.

Mark has since served as regional vice president for the Sierra Club for Northern California and Nevada; chairman of the Sierra Club’s National Wildlife Committee; and chairman of the Sierra Club’s Arctic Campaign Steering Committee, which successfully blocked oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. He has also been executive director of the Whale Center (1986-1990) and the Mountain Lion Foundation (1990-1995). His articles have appeared in Sierra magazine, Pacific Discovery (now Wild California), USA Today, Earth Island Journal and Huffington Post. He has edited and contributed to several books, including Friends of the Earth Whale Manual, Cougar: The American Lion, and Behind the Dolphin Smile.

Mark has more than 45 years of experience lobbying in the California State Capitol in Sacramento and in the U.S. Congress in Washington, DC on wildlife and wilderness issues, as well as international experience with the Japanese-American Environmental Conference, the International Whaling Commission, and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission. He has participated in dozens of wildlife lawsuits, including the precedent-setting "Wildlife Alive v Chickering". He is editor of the daily newsletter ECO, distributed at International Whaling Commission meetings. He was a consultant for the Academy Award–winning documentary The Cove, and appears in the Animal Planet series Blood Dolphins.

Mary Jo Rice, Associate Director - USA

Mary Jo Rice leads campaigns in the areas of educational outreach, volunteer and internship management, fundraising, event planning, grassroots organizing, and campaign planning and implementation. She has extensive experience in the nonprofit world as a professional teacher and innovative administrator. Mary Jo tailors educational programs to the needs of specific organizations and builds engaged grassroots communities, offering pro bono professionals and volunteers a place to utilize their talents to serve the mission.

Mary Jo is the former executive director of Seaflow, a California organization that publicized the dangers of ocean noise to marine life. She organized the North American Ocean Noise Coalition, bringing together more than a dozen national and regional environmental organizations to collaboratively address pressing ocean noise pollution issues.

A grassroots organizer for more than 25 years, Mary Jo assumes key roles in local campaigns for successful environmental candidates and green initiatives. She led a major open space acquisition effort in Marin County, California, which won her the designation of “Environmental Hero” in Barry Spitz’s book Open Spaces. For her successful leadership roles in various environmental campaigns, particularly in protecting ocean life, she received the 2006 Resource Conservation Award from the Sierra Club’s Marin Chapter.

Sarah Elzea, Dolphin-Safe Tuna Program Manager - USA

Sarah’s mission is to aid the environmental movement in its effort to protect marine mammals by working to promote dolphin-safe fishing practices. She dreams of a world where all of humanity holds a deep reverence for nature.

Sarah brings with her 10+ years of nonprofit administrative experience. Her areas of expertise include, but are not limited to, sailing bureaucratic systems, auditing, accounting, managing multiple projects and project teams, grassroots movement support, and unquenchable curiosity.

Susannah Lee, Development Associate - USA

Susannah Lee supports the International Marine Mammal Project by maintaining the database and collaborating on varied development activities.

Susannah graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2017 with a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Environmental Biology and a minor in Geospatial Information Science and Technology.

She has extensive experience as a researcher, including projects investigating bioremediation of a polluted wetland, urban agro-biodiversity and food justice in the East Bay, and renewable energy production potential in Reykjavík, Iceland. She also works with Earth Island's New Leaders Initiative to plan and execute local and national programming that supports youth leaders in the environmental movement.

Timothy Feder, Communications and Marketing - USA

Timothy Feder has more than 30 years of experience as an independent consultant at an ad agency specializing in strategic communications, service and program marketing, PR, fundraising, website development, branding, and advocacy advertising.

During his career, Timothy has worked with hundreds of local, state, and national nonprofits, government agencies, and foundations, directing a diverse and varied portfolio for organizations working in the environmental, social justice, consumer, social service, and public health sectors. Timothy has worked with the Earth Island Institute and the International Marine Mammal Project for more than 20 years on a wide variety of projects and campaigns.

Jessica Boswell, Intern - USA

Jessica is a recent graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an intern with the International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) of Earth Island Institute. At IMMP, Jessica has authored blogs interpreting novel scientific literature, synthesized and modeled data on dolphin hunting, and researched the impact of plastic on marine mammals in 2023.

Growing up in the city of Oakland, her appreciation for the environment came from her summer camping trips, where she grew to love the flowing rivers and towering trees of the Plumas National Forest. While receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara, Jessica developed an outside concentration focusing on marginalized community politics to enhance her understanding of intersectionality in the face of the climate crisis. She also served as a research assistant in the Young Lab on campus, compiling data to determine the impacts of forest realignment efforts on the Palmyra Atoll.

Additionally, Jessica is a founding member of the Environmental Law Club at UCSB, where she continues to lead students in researching and submitting public comments on local and national projects impacting the environment. Jessica hopes to attend law school in the near future so she can become a strong legal advocate for our oceans and marine species.

Jillian Surdilla, Intern - USA

Jillian is currently an intern with the International Marine Mammal Project, and is also a student at UC Berkeley. In her third year of university, she realized that she could no longer ignore her lifelong passion for marine conservation, and joined IMMP to play a hands-on role in cetacean advocacy. As a Psychology major, she intends to use her academic background and focus on marketing as a means to spread awareness of pressing issues concerning marine mammal rights. Currently, she is working to publicly champion the SWIMS Act, which is potentially the first piece of US legislation to prohibit the capture, breeding, and transport of various whales for entertainment.

Being from sunny Southern California, Jillian's favorite hobbies include beach-going and tidepooling. Now that she attends college in the Bay Area, she loves to take weekend drives down the PCH and visit the state beaches along the way. After she concludes her undergraduate studies, she hopes to attend law school to become an attorney who advocates for environmental protection.

Paolo Bray, Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program, EU - Italy

Paolo Bray successfully started, developed, and leads some of the most influential and widespread sustainable product certification programs in the world. These include the Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program of the International Marine Mammal Project at Earth Island Institute, the Friend of the Sea project (www.friendofthesea.org) for the certification and promotion of seafood from sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, and Friend of the Earth (www.friendoftheearth.org) for the certification of products from sustainable agriculture.

Paolo has worked for the Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program since 1991.

More than 800 companies from 70 countries (including 450 tuna companies from 20 countries) rely on these certification programs to verify the sustainability of their origins, representing one of the largest joint networks of this kind.

Ms. Theresa "Trixie" Concepcion, Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program, Asia Pacific - Philippines

Trixie has worked for the Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program since 1993. She now leads a team that audits around 200+ companies in East Asia and the Western Pacific for dolphin-safe.

Apart from Dolphin Safe monitoring, Trixie and the EII Asia-Pacific team conducts several advocacies which seek to protect the marine environment. These include anti-captivity campaigns, anti-reclamation campaigns, and the campaign to reduce plastic use.

Since 2014, Trixie and her team had been lobbying successfully for legislation to protect marine mammals in the Philippines.

Angel Herrera-Ulloa, Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program, Latin America - Costa Rica

Angel Herrara-Ulloa has a Masters degree in Natural Resource Management, an MBA (INCAE, Costa Rica), and a Bachelors of Science in Marine Biology (UNA, Costa Rica).

Since 1993, Angel has served as Latin American representative of the International Marine Mammal Project. He has authored more than 15 scientific articles and co-authored two books. He conducts dolphin safe tuna monitoring throughout Latin America.

Ulrike Kirsch, Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program - Germany

Ulrike Kirsch holds BA degrees in translation/modern languages and political studies from the Cologne University of Applied Sciences in Germany and Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK, and has worked as a freelance translator, journalist, and project manager in nature conservation and animal welfare for many years.

She has been in charge of the International Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program in Germany since 2000, where it was carried out under the umbrella of the German non-profit NGO Gesellschaft zur Rettung der Delphine (Society for Dolphin Conservation) until 2018. Ulrike has worked for a number of NGOs, with a focus on dolphin and marine conservation.

She is a co-founder and member of the Board of Directors of the German Foundation for Marine Conservation (Deutsche Stiftung Meeresschutz).

Jacqueline Sauzier, Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program - Indian Ocean/Atlantic, Mauritius

Jacqueline Sauzier has worked for the Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program for more than 25 years. Jacqueline is based in Mauritius.

She is responsible for the area covering the Indian and Atlantic ocean areas. Jacqueline is involved with many local NGOs including the Mauritius Marine Conservation Society, playing a key role in the protection of the local marine environment, with a special attention to the protection of marine mammals around the island heavily impacted by the growing dolphin and whale watching industry.

Walter Anzer, Dolphin Safe Logo/Licensing - United Kingdom

Walter Anzer has decades of experience working in managerial positions in leading food companies and as the administrative director of many trade associations covering many sectors of the food industry. In recognition of his services to the food industry, he was conferred a member of the Order of the British Empire in 1991.

Since 1993, he has been an advisor to Earth Island Institute on matters concerning the International Marine Mammal Project and the European Dolphin Safe Monitoring Organization, which has responsibility for the registration and licensing of its dolphin-safe logo, a trademark, and European Union fisheries policy relevant to tuna fishing and the Dolphin Safe Monitoring Program.