Anna Zivian is a researcher and policy expert with over 30 years of experience in areas including local government, environmental and food policy, climate change, ocean and coastal issues, and equity and justice. Most recently she was Senior Research Fellow at Ocean Conservancy, supporting and advising Ocean Conservancy’s science-based programs. Previously, she was Associate Director of Ocean Conservancy’s Knowledge Management and Senior Manager of the Ocean Planning program. In addition to her work on ocean justice, knowledge, and policy, Anna’s past research looks at the intersection of environmental policy, science, and society, and, in particular, issues of democracy and public participation in science. Anna also shepherded the Ocean Knowledge-Action Network from concept to global network connecting individuals, organizations, and networks across the globe.

Prior to her work on the ocean, Anna served as an elected official in Colorado for ten years. Anna earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Studies in 2011 from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her undergraduate studies were in Russian and Soviet Studies at Harvard University, where she earned her B.A. in 1988. She continues to be interested in languages, and while she has mostly forgotten her Russian, she speaks German, French, and Italian, makes do in Spanish, and is studying Arabic. She also loves everything about food, from growing it to cooking it to eating it to writing about it.

Away from the computer and outside the kitchen, she loves playing tennis, boxing, skiing, cycling, and hiking.