About Us

Amanda and Berenice met through the ACTAI Global community, who bring their social and financial capital for active ocean conservation and economic empowerment via entrepreneurship. Amanda and Berenice are both passionate about the ocean and the more time they spent sailing, kitesurfing or diving, they realized it needed help. After partnering with the United Nations Accelerator Program and Mission Blue to produce a virtual gathering in November 2020 around elimination of marine plastics and sustainable ocean development, they realized that our planet and society needs partnership between the private and public sectors to create innovative solutions. They decided to leverage their knowledge and networks to help projects and companies be impactful through mentoring and capital.
Interested in Partnering

Amanda Terry

Amanda Terry is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Nfinita, an NFT for Social Good platform that creates a more sustainable, transparent and scalable way for nonprofits to fundraise.   She is also Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ACTAI Ventures, an early stage technology investment firm. She has held leadership roles at Twitter, NBC, 5Min Media (acq by AOL) and Zagat (acq by Google).

She has been a long time member and community lead for ACTAI Global, 501(c)3, where she led a Fireside Chat series, a virtual gathering with the UNDP and Mission Blue around ocean conservation. She’s an avid kitesurfer and Advanced PADI diver. She is a graduate of Princeton University with a BA in Public Policy and East Asian Studies and University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business with an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurial Management.

Berenice Charrez

Berenice recently graduated with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at UC Berkeley, during which she developed small human heart models to improve drug screening platform. Her passion for science and the healthcare sector could only be rivaled by her love for the ocean. She grew up in Geneva, where her dad, a passionate rower, encouraged her to discover sailing at the age of 13. Since then, she has sailed more than 20’000 miles offshore and is an avid kitesurfer scuba and freediver. Her discovery of open water swimming brought her to Ironman racing as well, where she competed in 2019. She worked with the Volvo Ocean Race in 2018-19 to raise global awareness about plastic pollution through workshops. The ocean being a significant part of her life, she is committed to protect and improve their health.

Thomas Kriese

Thomas Kriese has been designing and managing the way people interact online for close to 30 years. He was most recently Vice President of the global community at Singularity University. He has created and managed communities across multiple sectors and contexts: offline-to-online (AOL); VC-to-impact investment (Omidyar Network) and linear-to-exponential thinking (Singularity University).

Thomas grew up land-locked in the high desert mountains of New Mexico, but a childhood trip to the Sea of Cortez planted the seeds of fascination for all things ocean-related and he’s spent countless hours kayaking, swimming and sailing wherever he can get wet around the globe. Thomas has a degree in Linguistics from the University of California at San Diego. When he’s not spending quality time with his three kids, you can find him swimming, biking and running his way into fitness. And yes, he’s the urban chicken guy.

Advisors

Bill Tai

VC, athlete, ACTAI chairman

Bill Tai has been funding companies as a Venture Capitalist since 1991 and has had 22 companies he backed at the early stage grow to become listed companies. He has served on 8 public company boards from his portfolio and was the first investor in Zoom, Canva, and Wish. He is also Chairman of ACTAI Global – a 501(c)3 uniting Athletes, Conservationists, Technologists, Artists & Innovators supporting ‘active conservation’ of our environment and economic empowerment via entrepreneurship.

Sylvia Earle, PhD

President and Chairman of Mission Blue

Dr. Sylvia Earle is the founder of Mission Blue and a National Geographic Society Explorer in Residence. She is an oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer with a lifetime of experience as a field research scientist, government official, and director for corporate and non-profit organizations. Author of more than 225 publications and leader of more than 100 expeditions with over 7,500 hours underwater, Dr. Earle’s research concerns the ecology and conservation of marine ecosystems and development of technology for access to the deep sea.

Anne-Cécile Turner

Founder BlueShift Sustainability Consultant
The Ocean Race Sustainability Director

Anne-Cecile’s passion for sustainability has been an integral part of her life for about 15 years. She is a leader in sustainability program implementation for NGO, international corporations and events through her agency, Blueshift. As sustainability director of The Ocean Race, around the world sailing race, she has leveraged the  race’s visibility to raise awareness about plastic pollution and climate change. In close partnership with the UN, numerous stoppover cities signed the UN Clean Seas pledge while racing boats collected important microplastic and weather data throughout their route around the globe. Anne-Cecile continously leaves legacy of impact and sustainability in every project she encounters.