Jackie Savitz
Business Development Director
Areas of Focus: All Practice Areas
Jackie Savitz leads business development for Council Fire. Known for “getting stuff done,” Savitz has an open, engaging, inclusive and decisive leadership style. She has built and led many high-functioning teams delivering meaningful and impactful results. With a background in marine and environmental science, Savitz has forged a strong foundation in environmental and sustainability policy on issues ranging from climate change to fisheries transparency, and touching on offshore energy, shipping, toxic chemical management, community engagement and much more. In her three decades as a conservation professional, Savitz has designed, implemented and led numerous successful campaigns and initiatives related to conservation policy, leading to progress in slowing climate change and improving fisheries management. Savitz was a co-founder of the transparency platform, Global Fishing Watch, which transformed fisheries transparency, monitoring and enforcement. Her public-facing role over two decades at Oceana brought a multitude of leadership and public engagement opportunities, including several TED presentations and dozens of high-level panels and testimonies before Congress, state legislatures, trade associations and other decision-makers. Savitz has been quoted by hundreds of news agencies and has appeared on many news and opinion programs including CNN’s “John King, USA,” “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Prior to joining Oceana, Savitz served as Executive Director of Coast Alliance, a network of over 600 organizations around the country working to protect U.S. coasts. In the mid-nineties, Savitz worked as an environmental policy analyst with the Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C., where she focused on public health, water and air pollution and authored a series of reports on water pollution, air quality standards, fish contamination and medical waste disposal. Savitz first worked as an environmental scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, where she spent five years protecting the Chesapeake Bay watershed.