When KerriLynn Miller was pursuing her master’s degree at Duke University, she knew she wanted to work on fisheries, but she hadn’t dreamed she would be focusing her career on protecting the biggest, and some would say, scariest fish in the sea. After graduation in 2007, KerriLynn started her career at Oceana. Over the next three years, KerriLynn had the opportunity to work on the shark, sea turtle, and overfishing subsidies campaigns. She organized events at the World Trade Organization and the development of public service announcements with celebrities. While she is quite proud of the work she completed at Oceana, her biggest accomplishments to date have been during the past three years spent at The Pew Charitable Trusts. 

Pew’s mission to use science to advance policy change is aligned with KerriLynn’s personal career objectives and she has had the opportunity to achieve some amazing outcomes as part of the global shark conservation campaign. With her science background and emphasis on policy, KerriLynn focuses her time on the campaign’s involvement both at international forums, such as regional fisheries management organizations and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and at the country level leading campaigns to establish shark sanctuaries. She has helped lead the efforts in both The Bahamas (July 2011) and the Cook Islands (December 2012), traveling for weeks at a time, to work with the local governments to establish their entire exclusive economic zone a shark sanctuary, prohibiting the commercial fishing, sale, and trade of sharks. Most recently, she played an integral role in Pew’s team at CITES, which worked closely with governments before and during the Conference of the Parties meeting to include oceanic whitetip sharks, porbeagle sharks, scalloped, smooth, and great hammerheads and manta rays in Appendix II of CITES. With the global scope of these measures, the inclusion of these seven species in Appendix II is a historic victory for marine species and KerriLynn is thrilled that she was able to play a part in this achievement. KerriLynn can’t wait for her next project and only hopes it to will end in a success for the oceans.