Spring 2024: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Elects New Trustees and Corporation Members
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Village Campus. (©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) May 17, 2024
Woods Hole, Mass. (May 17, 2024) – At Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s (WHOI’s) Spring Joint Meeting of the Board and Corporation today, Institution leaders elected three new Trustees and eight new Corporation Members.
“I am pleased to welcome our new board and corporation members and thank them for their support. Their expertise, and dedication, will help advance ocean science for global good at WHOI,” said Peter de Menocal, WHOI President and Director.
About the New Trustees
Mary “Susan” Lozier, PhD
Susan Lozier is Dean of the College of Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she holds the Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair. As chief academic officer of the College of Sciences, she provides leadership to ~3000 students and 500 faculty members and researchers across six internationally ranked schools. She currently serves as the immediate past president of the American Geophysical Union, an international scientific association that advances discovery and solutions in Earth and space science. Dr. Lozier is a physical oceanographer whose research examines the ocean’s role in climate. She is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and she serves as the international lead for the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program, an observing system that measures the meridional overturning in the subpolar North Atlantic. She received her bachelor’s degree from Purdue University, her PhD from the University of Washington, and she conducted postdoctoral studies at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Shari L. Sant
Shari Sant is an environmental philanthropist and ocean activist. She is president and founder of Code Blue Charitable Foundation; secretary/trustee of the Summit Charitable Foundation; board member of Mission Blue/Sylvia Earle Alliance; member of the Advisory Board of Focused on Nature; member of the National Council of the World Wildlife Fund; former Vice Chair of the National Aquarium and current member of the Conservation Committee; and a member of The Explorers Club. A proponent of impact photography and filmmaking, Sant is also a member of the Advisory Council of National Geographic’s Impact Storytelling Lab, and she is the former board chair of the International League of Conservation Photographers. She has produced several award-winning documentary films on the environment including the Emmy-award-winning Netflix documentaries “Mission Blue” and “Chasing Coral.” Sant is also Executive Producer on the recent film "Deep Rising" narrated by Jason Momoa. Sant received her Bachelor of Arts from New York University, then worked as senior stylist and design director for Ralph Lauren in New York, then as visual director at Esprit. In 1994, in San Francisco, she founded the environmental lifestyle store Worldware. She sold the business in 2001, and now devotes herself full-time to environmental work, with a focus on producing impact media to inspire change. As an avid diver, photographer, and ocean activist, Sant travels extensively throughout the world, promoting ocean conservation and environmental awareness. She lives in upstate New York in the Catskill Mountains with her dog Sunny.
Jerome C. Vascellaro
Jerome Vascellaro most recently was a senior partner at the investment firm TPG, where he had a wide variety of senior leadership responsibilities. He joined TPG in 2006 and served as the firm’s Chief Operating Officer through 2018. After the 2016 launch of The Rise Fund, TPG’s impact investing fund, he also served as the fund’s Chief Operating Officer. In 2017, he helped create Y Analytics, TPG’s social impact assessment affiliate, and is currently chairman of the Y Analytics Board and a member of Y Analytics Editorial Advisory Board. Prior to joining TPG, Vascellaro was a senior director at McKinsey & Company, where he served clients and helped manage the firm for 28 years. He received a BS, studying engineering and economics, from Brown University, where he graduated with highest honors, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar. Vascellaro is a Fellow Emeritus and former Vice Chancellor of the Corporation of Brown University. He served on the Corporation of Brown for 20 years and had a broad range of senior governance and development roles and responsibilities. He is a former Trustee and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the California Academy of Sciences, the science museum and research institution in San Francisco. He is also a former board member of the Echoing Green Foundation, which supports exceptional leaders that are solving deep-rooted social problems.
About the New Corporation Members
Bruce A. Beal
Bruce Beal is Chairman of Related Beal (formerly The Beal Companies), a fully integrated real estate firm focused on development and investment opportunities in greater Boston. He has had extensive involvement in all phases of property development and is the fourth generation of the Beal family to run the company, founded in 1878. Beal has acted as an adviser on real estate matters to the President and Fellows of Harvard University (The Corporation) for over 25 years. During this period, he expanded Harvard University's holdings in Boston by assembling over 250 acres to ensure the expansion of the University. He introduced the condominium form of ownership to Massachusetts and was asked to assist the United States Government in the reorganization of railroads. Beal has served as a Trustee of The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, as well as Trustee and Overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Harvard Art Museums, The Harvard School of Public Health, and several other Boston cultural, educational, and medical institutions. Beal has also served as a Trustee of The Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is a Trustee of The Palm Beach Cultural Council, a Trustee and Member of The Executive Committee of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and has served as a Director of Tweedy Brown Mutual Funds for over 25 years. Beal is also a Fellow of HRH The Duke of Edinburgh's World Fellowship. He has lived in Woods Hole, MA for 30 years.
Bryne D. Berry
Bryne Berry was born in the United States and had the fortune of spending her formative years also living in China and Singapore. She graduated with her BA in Political Communication from Louisiana State University in 2010 and received her JD from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law in 2017. After graduate school, she assisted in a line of cases arising from the BP oil spill and subsequently helped a local nonprofit dedicated to aiding survivors of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. Berry is now a resident of Steamboat Springs, CO, and manager of the Bill & Sherry Berry Foundation. In her free time, she can be found either snowboarding or scuba diving.
William B. Berry
Bill Berry grew up on the Gulf Coast and has been an avid marine enthusiast his entire life. After receiving BS and MS degrees in Petroleum Engineering, his professional career allowed him to work worldwide for Phillips Petroleum, ConocoPhillips, and Continental Resources, while based in the UK, Ivory Coast, Norway, China, Singapore, and the United States. This enabled him to collaborate with numerous countries on the effective stewardship of their natural resources and the marine environment. While in China, he was recognized by the government of China as one of the 31 outstanding foreign experts in 1996. Berry retired from ConocoPhillips as Executive Vice President of Upstream and retired as CEO of Continental Resources. He has served on various public and private organization boards and has been an active participant in supporting technical education with a special interest in programs focused on women and minorities. He served on the board of the Texas Alliance for Minorities in Engineering, the Houston Chapter of Teach for America, and Engineering Advisory Councils at both the University of Oklahoma and Mississippi State University. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Oceaneering, the advisory boards of Continental Resources and the Oklahoma State University Hamm Institute of American Energy, and on the Foundation Board of Mississippi State University.
Dallas S. Clement
Dallas Clement is president and chief financial officer for Cox Enterprises, a leading broadband, automotive services, and media company with $23 billion in annual revenues and over 50,000 employees worldwide. He is responsible for the company’s growth strategy, financial reporting and performance, and business operations. Clement leads Cox’s expansion efforts by focusing on emerging businesses that embrace technology, as well as exploring innovative business models in new areas, including cleantech and controlled environment agriculture, digital media, public sector technology and healthcare technology. Previously, he served as executive vice president and chief financial officer for Cox Automotive and executive vice president and chief strategy and product management officer for Cox Communications. He serves on various boards, including Truist Financial Corporation and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Clement holds a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard College and a master’s degree in engineering economic systems from Stanford University.
Elisabeth (Lisa) B. Donohue
Lisa Donohue's professional career spanned 30+ years in global consumer marketing and at the forefront of digital, data and technology advancements in the marketing ecosystem. As CEO of two major marketing agencies, Donohue partnered with many of the world’s leading Fortune 500 consumer companies across various sectors and industries. Additionally, she created and led a marketing technology start-up inside the world's third-largest communications company, Publicis Groupe, while a member of the executive management team. She is the founder/CEO of Scorton Creek Ventures LLC and focuses her time on corporate board work and strategic advising. Having served previously on the boards of two NASDAQ listed technology companies, she is currently on the board of two NYSE listed companies - NRG Energy Inc (Houston) and Gap Inc (San Francisco), and one private equity board, Brown Jordan Inc (St. Augustine). In addition to corporate board work, Donohue has extensive experience in non-profit board leadership. She was a trustee of Milton Academy for 14 years, serving as Board Chair for the last seven years. She was also Board Chair of the Operating Board and Co-Chair of the Foundation Board of She Runs It—a 100+ year organization dedicated to supporting, empowering, and paving the way for women to lead at every stage in their careers in media, marketing, and technology. She graduated from Brown University with a BA, majoring in Organizational Behavior and Management with a minor in Business Economics.
Karen Olcott
Karen Olcott is a strategy advisor and investor in technology and telecom, after 30 years of executive leadership positions at T-Mobile, Microsoft, Pinnacle EFX, Showtime Networks, and ABC Sports. She is future-focused, comfortable with complex problem-solving, and is known for connecting the vision for C-suite leaders. She led strategic partnerships focused on cloud, AI and 5G, and shaped multi-year deals with Amazon, Microsoft, MSNBC, Netflix, Dialpad, and many others. Olcott holds a US patent for Wireless Coverage Verification, has won over 45 industry awards, and is a two-time Emmy winner in sports television. She worked with 50 Attorneys General to improve the prosecution of human trafficking, served as a board member for Love146, Polaris, and was President of the Broadcast Designers Association. Olcott attended Brown University, Freie Universität Berlin, and Harvard Graduate School of Architecture. She currently resides in Woods Hole, MA.
William G. Sunda, PhD
Bill Sunda is a retired marine research scientist living in Chatham County, North Carolina, just south of Chapel Hill, NC. He attended Lehigh University as an undergraduate, and then was a member of the inaugural class of the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in the summer of 1968. After graduating with a PhD in Marine Chemistry in 1975, Dr. Sunda took a job with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Beaufort Laboratory in Beaufort, NC, where he worked as a marine research scientist for 39 years. After retiring from NOAA in 2014, he continues to do research in the marine science of trace metals and phytoplankton as an Affiliate Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Dr. Sunda has co-authored 107 scientific papers in marine biogeochemistry, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Citation Classic Award in 1986 for his Joint Program PhD research, a NOAA Administrator Award and Distinguished Career Award, the Clair Patterson Award from the Geochemical Society for “outstanding contributions to Environmental Geochemistry,” and is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Geochemical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Kenneth Tubman
Ken Tubman has spent more than 40 years in the energy industry. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of SAExploration, a leading seismic acquisition company. He also works with multiple startup companies, serving on the advisory committee for Cloudstream Medical Imaging and advisor to RevoChem and other companies. He has held senior positions within ConocoPhillips (including Vice President, Geoscience and Reservoir Engineering and Vice President, Subsurface), Veritas DGC (Senior Vice President, Veritas Hampson Russell, and Vice President, Geoservices), and Marathon Oil (Vice President, Technical Innovation.) Tubman started his career with ARCO and has held various technical and management positions in the central functions and business units. A common thread through most of his career is involvement in technology delivery and development. Active involvement has been part of Tubman’s approach to supporting organizations, being a board member multiple times (including as President) for The Society of Exploration Geophysicists and other not-for-profit organizations, including the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston and The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Houston. Tubman holds a PhD in Geophysics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1984) and a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Massachusetts (1978).
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its mission is to understand the ocean and its interactions with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment. WHOI’s pioneering discoveries stem from an ideal combination of science and engineering—one that has made it one of the most trusted and technically advanced leaders in fundamental and applied ocean research and exploration anywhere. WHOI is known for its multidisciplinary approach, superior ship operations, and unparalleled deep-sea robotics capabilities. We play a leading role in ocean observation and operate the most extensive suite of ocean data-gathering platforms in the world. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide—both above and below the waves—pushing the boundaries of knowledge to inform people and policies for a healthier planet. Learn more at whoi.edu.