Miguel Angel Jorge is the Director of the National Geographic Society’s Ocean Initiative, which strives to work with a wide array of partner to restore the ocean’s health and productivity. He joined NGS in February of 2010.  Previously Miguel spent 12 years with WWF.  Most recently he worked as Director of WWF’s International Marine Program, where he oversaw the WWF-Network’s global strategies on fisheries and seafood, shipping and high-seas conservation policy.  Before that he directed WWF’s marine and freshwater work in Latin America and the Caribbean, served as interim Director of the Mexico Program and led several large-scale conservation planning processes, in the Gulf of California, Galapagos and Mesoamerican Reef.

In his early career, Miguel worked in the aquaculture industry.  He has overseen community-scale development projects for USAID, served as a conflict mediator in refugee camps and has participated in several intergovernmental ocean forums, from regional fisheries management organizations and regional seas conventions to preparatory conferences for the Earth Summit. A native of Cuba, he has lived in the US, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Switzerland, and traveled extensively.  Miguel is a fellow of the MIT-Sloan Business School ELIAS program. He has a Masters in Marine Policy from the University of Delaware and a Bachelor’s in Aquatic Biology from the University of California at Santa Barbara.