Juno Fitzpatrick Castillo

Within the Center for Oceans, she leads Blue Communities, a global effort to advance human rights-based approaches to fisheries governance and marine management, strengthen ocean stewardship from coasts to the high seas, and address the interconnected challenges of illegal fishing, and accountability at sea. Her work focuses on ensuring that fishers, fishworkers, Indigenous Peoples, and coastal communities have the rights, agency, knowledge, and incentives needed to steward healthy marine ecosystems.

A development practitioner and political ecologist, Juno has more than 15 years of experience in international development and natural resource governance, working alongside coastal communities across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands. Prior to joining Conservation International in 2018, she worked in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, supporting environmental defenders and community-led responses to environmental degradation. Her field experience has also included extensive preparation for work in complex and high-risk operating environments.

Juno is a Senior Advisor to the Institute for Climate and Peace and holds an MSc from the University of California, Berkeley, where her studies bridged Berkeley's College of Natural Resources and Human Rights Center. A lifelong waterwoman, she is based on Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi