Speaker Bios

Dale Jarvis is the Executive Director of Heritage NL, helping communities across Newfoundland and Labrador safeguard traditional culture and historic architecture. Dale holds a BSc in Anthropology/Archaeology (Trent), and a MA in Folklore (Memorial). He has worked for Heritage NL since 1996 and is Adjunct Faculty with the Memorial University Department of Folklore. He regularly teaches on oral history, cultural documentation, and public folklore.

Stein Arne Rånes (male) is a Senior Advisor at the Department of Industry and Economic Development at Troms and Finnmark County Council. Master of Science in Fisheries from the Norwegian College of Fishery Science (NFH/UIT – The Arctic University of Norway). He has more than 30 years of research and advisory experience in the field of management and planning of natural resources. He has been researcher at The Norwegian College of Fishery Science and NOFIMA, and Advisor at the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, The Regional Council of Northern Norway and Nord-Trøndelag, and several County and Regional councils. He has also worked many years in the industry, both in fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, and oil & gas. Since 2013, he has worked at Troms and Finnmark County Council (former Troms County Council) as Project Manager and Senior Advisor with Marine Spatial Planning and regional development. He has also been and is responsible for several major projects related to coastal development, both at national and international level. This applies both in relation to seafloor mapping, interaction in coastal ecosystems and climate resilience. He has been a member of the working group on Marine and Maritime SDI, and of marine base maps in the coastal zone initiated by the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation. Currently he is also advisor and facilitator for several intermunicipal Marine Spatial Planning projects in the region. In addition, he is also a member of the national expert group on Marine Spatial Planning in the County Councils Aquaculture Cooperation.

Chief Operating Officer at Genís

Jon G. Steingrimsson is the Chief operating officer at Genis hf, an innovative Icelandic biotechnology company, pioneering the development of therapeutic chitin derivatives. Jon is responsible for process development, scale-up activities, development and management of manufacturing processes and facilities. He has a master’s degree from the Technische Universität Berlin and previous experience from the field of engineering services in the energy-intense industries in Iceland.

I grew up in Hasvik, a small fishing community on the island Sørøya in Finnmark, Northern Norway. I have a Master in Fisheries Sciences from the University of Tromsø. After being a student in Tromsø, Norway an Tokyo, Japan, pluss some years working in different cities in Finnmark, I setteled in Hasvik 15 years ago. Here I live with my husband and our three boys aged 9, 11 and 15.

I work as the CEO of Vest-Finnmark Rådet, which is a political cooperation between seven municipalities in the Vest-Finnmark region. The seven mayors are the board of Vest-Finnmark Rådet, and we are focusing our work on the development of the coastal communities. This includes both business development and community life, where we use knowledge acquisition and political advocacy work as our two most important tools to achive our goals.

Hard facts:

Name: Bente Olsen Husby

Product of the 1972 generation

Living in Hasvik, on the island Sørøya in Finnmark, Northern Norway

 Head, School of Fisheries

Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University

 Retired as Regional Director General of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) for Newfoundland and Labrador, Kevin Anderson assumed his current position as Head, School of Fisheries at the Fisheries and Marine Institute of Memorial University in May 2020.

 He held a variety of positions within Fishers and Oceans Canada, including Negotiator for the Labrador Inuit Land Claims Agreement signed in 2005; Director of Conservation and Protection; and Regional Director of Fisheries and Aquaculture Management.

 He holds a B.Ed. and BA from Memorial University, along with an M.Sc. in Marine Policy from the London School of Economics.

Minister Charlie McConalogue was appointed as Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine on 2 September 2020.

He was born in October 1977 and is from Gleneely in Co. Donegal. From a farming background, he was educated at Carndonagh Community School before going on to study at UCD where he studied Economics, Politics & History. He first became involved in politics while attending UCD.

After working in Fianna Fáil Headquarters for a number of years, as well as working abroad in Australia, Minister McConalogue returned home to work on the family farm before being elected as a Donegal County Councillor in 2009. In 2011, Charlie was elected TD for Donegal North East.

Minister McConalogue was appointed previously as Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality with responsibility for Law Reform and prior to that, he held the positions of Fianna Fáil spokesperson for Children, Education and Skills, and Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

Dr Conor McTiernan is a lecturer in the Department of Tourism in Letterkenny Institute of Technology. His teaching role includes such subject areas as strategic tourism and hospitality management, food and beverage management, tourism planning, destination development and research methods. Conor is currently supervising several post graduate dissertation projects. He is a member of the Irish Hospitality Institute (IHI) and the First International Network of Trust (FINT).

Conor’s research primarily focuses on innovation, knowledge management and trust in tourism SKeith HutchingsMAEVE SEOIGHE (JOYCE)MTE’s. Recent publications include:

• McTiernan, C, Musgrave, J and Cooper, C (2021) ‘The role of trust in the transfer of pro-environmental knowledge in small and medium sized tourism enterprises’ Journal of Sustainable Tourism.
• McTiernan, C, Thomas, R and Jameson, S (2018) ‘Focusing on knowledge exchange: The role of trust in tourism networks’ in The Future of Tourism: Innovation and Sustainability. Editors Fayos-Solà, Eduardo and Cooper, Chris, Springer

Margaret Storey, TIDE Project Officer, Tourism Unit is representing Donegal County Council as one of the Partners in the TIDE – Atlantic Network for Developing Historical Maritime Tourism project.  Margaret holds a BSc in Small Enterprise Management & has a Fellowship in the Institute of Accounting Technicians of Ireland.  She has worked in the Tourism Sector for almost 30 years holding posts in the both the Bed & Breakfast Industry (National level) and Self-Catering Sector (Local, County & National level), both sectors promoting Ireland as a destination.

Donegal County Council is one of the Partners along with Partners from Northern Ireland, UK, Spain, Portugal & France.  The aim of the project is to create Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented Reality (AR) in archaeology & submarine exploration fields to enrich visitor experiences, creating a new dimension to tourism and cultural heritage of the Atlantic regions.

Sunniva Løviknes has a masters in fisheries biology from the University of Bergen. She started as a advisor in fisheries and aquaculture for the Troms and Finnmark county municipality in jan. 2020.
Sunniva works primarily with fisheries and aquaculture management, but has a passion for the development of blue economy to the benefit of the coastal societies in northern Norway.

University of Iceland

Sveinn Agnarsson is a professor in economics at the Faculty of Business Administration, University of Iceland. He holds a PhD in economics and a BA in history. Resource utilisation, regional development and economic history are his main research fields, and he has taken part in several EU-financed projects on fisheries and aquaculture.

Line Kjelstrup is the Cluster Manager for Biotech North, a knowledge-based industry cluster within marine biotechnology and marine health products. Biotech North is located in Tromsø, Norway, and serves the biotechnology and biomarine sectors in the northern part of the country. The goal of the cluster is to increase the members innovation and competitiveness and consolidate the position of Tromsø as “The Hot Spot for Blue Biotech”.

Kjelstrup is from Tromsø and has a Master of Science in Fisheries and Aquaculture from UiT-The Arctic University of Norway. She has previously worked in the Ministry of Fisheries, Norway Seafoods and NCE Aquaculture. For 7 years she was the fisheries envoy for Norwegian Seafood Council to Sweden. And for two years she worked as Program Manager for Arctic Frontiers, before she started the job as Cluster Manager for Biotech North early 2020.

Minister of Fisheries and Marine Affairs, Norway

Born: 1966
Joined: 14.10.2021

The Minister of Fisheries and Marine Affairs is responsible for fisheries and marine affairs in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, including responsibility for fisheries and aquaculture policy, seafood policy and maritime research and innovation policy.  The Minister is also responsible for coastal management and port and sea transport policy (formally organized under the Ministry of Transport and Communications until 1 January 2022).

Minister of Fisheries and Marine Affairs Bjørnar Selnes Skjæran was born in 1966 and comes from Lurøy in Nordland.  Skjæran has been deputy leader of the Labor Party since 2019 and was between 2011 and 2019 leader of the Nordland Labor Party.  Skjæran was a member of Lurøy municipal council from 1987 to 2015, and mayor from 2011 to 2015.

 Skjæran was elected as the first representative of the Nordland Labor Party for the Storting period 2021-2025.

 Skjæran is a farmer by profession and runs a transport company.

 Education:

 1982 – 1985 General education

 1985 – 1986 Norwegian School of Agriculture

 Experience:

 1986 – 2021 Self-employed (farming, transport)

 1987 – 2015 Municipal council representative in Lurøy municipality

 2011 – 2015 Mayor of Lurøy municipality

 2011 – 2019 Leader of the Nordland Labor Party

 2015 – 2019 Group leader for the Labor Party in Nordland

 2015 – 2021 County council representative in Nordland

 2013 – Member of the central board of the Labor Party

 2019 – Deputy leader of the Labor Party

 2021 – Member of the Storting

Dr. Darrell Mullowney is a Research Scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada in St. John’s and a lecturer at the Marine Institute of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Darrell’s research focuses heavily on population dynamics and productivity drivers of snow crab, both within Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) and globally, and how to best apply biological processes into resource management strategies. Darrell’s work is recognized and applied both domestically and internationally. This talk will focus on historical and recent drivers of snow crab productivity within the NL marine shelf ecosystem and briefly highlight on-going work investigating future prospects for snow crab under an assumption of continued global warming.

Started his work career when he was 13 years old – as a newsagent in his hometown. Have worked 10 years in SAS, 2 ½ years as a radio journalist, been project manager in Karlsøy municipality, development manager in Tolga municipality, marketing and information manager in Hålogaland Theater, been a doctoral student, project manager for the establishment of a financial marketplace for trading in salmon derivatives , project manager for internationalization in Innovation Norway, political advisor and city councilor for business, sports and culture in Tromsø, and director of the Regional Business Association of Tromsø / Troms Chamber of Commerce. He has held his current position as director of the North Norway European Office since October 2017.

Jobs, studies and family have taken him to Oslo, Molde, Tolga / Tynset in Norway, Stirling in Scotland, Gaborone in Botswana, a short stay in Singapore and now Brussels. He has studied at the University of Oslo and the University of Tromsø, where he has a master’s degree in social sciences and a doctor’s degree in political science. He also has an extra intermediate subject in sociology, in addition to extra university courses in international business development.

4 Rue Wiertz, 1050 Ixelles, Belgium

nils@northnorway.org

Karl Bonner is the Cluster Manager and direct point to contact for a newly dedicated Blue Economy Marine Cluster.Karl brings a blend of domain knowledge within the internationalseafood industry and best practice through his educational background.

Before transitioning from the private sector to this public sector role, Karl worked as registered consultant with Intertrade Ireland successfully completing several Trade Accelerator Vouchers (TAV) and Elevate programme with SME’s in a cross-border capacity. Karl is experienced in start-ups having successfully completed Enterprise Ireland National Entrepreneurship programme, New Frontiers and developed a seafood-based pet food business. Karl is a strategist having successfully crafted and implemented an ambitious 3-year International Growth Plan with his previous employer. Karl also led several capital expenditure projects supported by BIM and introduced a holistic LEAN Transformation project with his previous employer which ran over an 18-month period and was funded by Údarás na Gaeltachta.

Karl holds a Masters in Sales Management, a Post Graduate Diploma in International Selling and is a Business Studies graduate from Edinburgh Napier University. Karl and the Killybegs Marine Cluster have formed a professional Steering Group comprising Industry, Government and Academia which will lead the way to unlocking the full potential of the Blue Economy on the West coast of Ireland. 

Majbritt Bolton-Warberg is the Blue Bioeconomy Programme Manager at the Marine Institute in Ireland, responsible for designing and implementing a national support and coordination function for the blue bioeconomy sector. She worked for 12 years at the National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway in research and lecturing roles. She has also worked with Bord Iascaigh Mhara (Irish Seafood Development Agency) and South Carolina Department of Natural Resources.

Majbritt holds a BA (mod) from Trinity College Dublin (Environmental Science), an MS from the College of Charleston, South Carolina (Marine Biology) and earned her PhD from NUI Galway (Aquaculture).

B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D.
Director

Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Resources

Fisheries and Marine Institute

Memorial University

Dr. Winger has a broad knowledge of fisheries issues with extensive experience in the areas of species- and size-selectivity of fishing gears, reducing bycatch and discard of unwanted species, impacts of fishing on the environment, and resource assessment of emerging fisheries.  He has worked on projects ranging from Canada to Norway to Mexico, been invited to speak at several international conferences, and has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals. He holds a B.Sc. in Marine Biology and Oceanography from Dalhousie University, as well as a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in the field of fish behaviour and fish capture, from Memorial University of Newfoundland. For more information, visit his Centre’s website and Facebook page.

Jo Inge comes from Lakselv. He’s been a fisherman for 12 years. He fishes cod, king crab, and live shrimp in pots. Earlier in his career, he has dived for sea urchins and exported these live to the market. Jo Inge has his education from the Norwegian College of Fisheries Science in Tromsø. In addition to fisheries, he is an active county policy. He is concerned that the ocean’s resources are managed in a timely manner. To relax after long working days, he listens to Bob Dylan.

 B.Sc., M.Sc.,M.BA. Director

Centre for Aquaculture and Seafood Development

Fisheries and Marine Institute

Memorial University

Ms. Burke has broad experience in the areas of seafood value chain optimization, marine bioprocessing and the development of the value chains of unutilized marine biomass materials. Most recently she has worked on crustacean bio-extraction and bio-conversion projects for nutraceutical, biomedical and bioscience applications, across Canada, the US, Europe, Argentina and Australia. She holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry (Food Science), a M.Sc. in Food Science and a M.BA., from Memorial University of Newfoundland. She will complete her Ph.D. (Environmental Science) in the Spring of 2022. Her thesis research focuses on using simple green technologies for the extraction of multiple bio-products from snow crab processing discards. For more information, visit her Centre’s website.

Joint CEO of Inishowen Development Partnership. Andrew is an original member of the Loughs Agency set up under the Good Friday Agreement, he is a past Board Member of BIM (Irish Sea Fisheries Board). Andrew has been instrumental in setting up North West Rural Development a cross border Leader company.
Andrew has presented to the European Parliament on Fishery issues and presented to the Cypriot Re-unification Council in Nicosia and the British-Irish Inter-parliamentary body on Cross-Border and Rural Development issues.
Andrew was presented to the New Brunswick Assembly for developing links between New Brunswick and Ireland. Andrew Ward has a Business Degree from University of Ulster and is the former chairperson of one of Ireland’s biggest fishery co-operatives.

Elías Bj. is the dir. of quality and development dep. at the Icelandic Tourist Board (ITB). Among the subjects he has been focusing on lately are regional development and sustainability in tourism.  Before joining ITB Elias worked in the hospitality industry in Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Florida.  He holds a BSc degree in hotel and restaurant management and an MBA.

Project Manager at the Icelandic Tourist Board in Reykjavik.  www.ferdamalastofa.is/en

Johann V. Ivarsson is a project manager and analyst at the Icelandic Tourist Board, a government supervisory institution for tourism under the Ministry of Industries and Innovation. Johann‘s main area is on projects and research that focus on the economic development of tourism in Iceland and its interplay with other industries and factors, such as sustainability and the environment. Johann has ample experience as an analyst and manager in the financial markets and as a unversity lecturer in Iceland.

Matís (Icelandic food & Biotech R&D)

Jónas R. Viðarsson is the director of division of value creation at Matís in Iceland, a public non-profit food & biotech R&D company. Jónas is educated in Fisheries Science, Environmental Science and Resource management, and has a long hands-on experience in working in fisheries and fish processing. Jónas has as well 15-years of experience in running national and international research & innovation projects related to the food sector, some of which include climate change scenarios.

In 2002 Maurice developed a waste management manual for the Irish Hotels Federation which was the beginning of his career change to focus on environmental sustainability within the tourism and hospitality sector.

Maurice is a Graduate from the Shannon College of Hotel Management, holds an MSc in Hospitality Management from TU Dublin and undertook post-Graduate studies at Cornell University.  He worked for 25 years as a Hotel Manager and Guesthouse owner before switching to business consulting which included Financial and Food Safety before focusing on the environment. As a micro business owner for 20+ years he also brings a deep understanding of the challenge’s owners and managers face.

Since 2002 he has assisted hundreds of micro, small & medium companies achieve savings by adopting environmental sustainability as a business tool. 

He developed a national Environmental Certification Award programme for the hospitality sector (Green Hospitality Programme), worked as an Energy Advisor for the SEAI Small Business Programme, as an Environmental Advisor for the EPA’s GreenBusiness.ie small business programme, is a registered Enterprise Ireland Green Start consultant, supports Local Enterprise Offices nationwide on their Green for Micro programme, is a Bord Bia Origin Green consultant, a registered Water Steward and is Six Sigma Green belt trained.

He has delivered workshops and training (In person and online) on environmental sustainability and created/partnered in developing a number of Good Practice Guides.

Maurice has extensive knowledge within the environmental, business and tourism sectors, which, coupled with his business history, allows him to engage with small business owners and managers from a personal business perspective allied to a wider environmental expertise.  

Ministry of Industries and Innovation – Department of Fisheries.

Dr. Jón Þrándur Stefánsson is a specialist in the Department of Fisheries. Some of his main responsibilities are related to regional fishing quota development and policies, seafood industry related project development contracts, projects within Nordic co-operation on fisheries and aquaculture, climate programs in the seafood sector and related sectors, participation in policy making activities by the Ministry of Industry and Innovation and senior advising role on diverse projects to the Minister of Fisheries.

Cllr Jack Murray has been involved in politics all his adult life. After studying Irish History & Politics in the University of Ulster, he was employed as Director of Publicity for Sinn Féin in the Newry & Armagh constituency and then as a political advisor in the Stormont Assembly. In 2011, at the age of 26, he was co-opted onto Donegal County Council to replace Pádraig Mac Lochlainn following his election to the Dáil. Jack was subsequently returned to the council at the 2014 and 2019 local elections. In June 2021, he was unanimously elected Cathaoirleach of Donegal County Council by his fellow councillors, having previously being elected as Mayor of Inishowen in 2017.