Philip Chou
Senior Director, Global Policy
Oceana Staff
Philip leads research and development of new initiatives to reform policy and assesses new geographies to launch Oceana campaigns.
He is currently focused on catalyzing policy change by illuminating the hidden harmful practices plaguing distant-water fishing – industrial-scale fishing by one country that takes place in another country’s jurisdiction or on the open waters of the high seas.
Previously, at the Pew Charitable Trusts, his efforts with Chinese entrepreneurs resulted in over one hundred China Fortune-500 companies eliminating shark fin soup at company functions and selling shark fins through e-commerce. He also oversaw a grant to Philippine NGOS to pass the Philippine Shark and Ray Conservation Act. At SeaWeb his efforts led to the first sustainable seafood conference in Asia, the International Seafood Summit, held in Hong Kong. At Conservation International, he supported an innovative program partnering with Tibetan monks and Chinese forestry officials to co-manage nature reserves in Sichuan Province utilizing traditional Tibetan conservation management practices and community-based GIS mapping.
Philip has worked on projects around the world and speaks Chinese, Spanish, and Russian. He holds an M.A. in International Environmental Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a B.S. in Biology with a concentration in East Asian Studies from Guilford College. A few years after the fall of the Soviet Union he served as a United States Peace Corps volunteer in Vladivostok, Russia. Philip is an avid tennis player, drummer, and regrettably infrequent longboard surfer since leaving his childhood home near the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
