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She encourages graduate students to consider Knauss Fellowships, “if you want to grow and learn and change the way you think and see the world.”

“The research we fund is rigorously reviewed not only for scientific merit, but also for relevance. Our home at URI, as a Land Grant and Sea Grant university and an R1 institution, allows us to call on world-class experts to address issues from the seafood supply chain to sea level rise, and to bring them together with communities to effect real change.”

“What you learn,” she adds, “is context.”

Context is key to Sea Grant work as well.

“The research we fund,” says Rhode Island Sea Grant Director Tracey Dalton, “is rigorously reviewed not only for scientific merit, but also for relevance. Our home at URI, as a Land Grant and Sea Grant university and an R1 institution, allows us to call on world-class experts to address issues from the seafood supply chain to sea level rise, and to bring them together with communities to effect real change.” “We’ve been at URI for more than 50 years, and we look forward to many more to come.”

- Tracey Dalton

to support state policymaking around aquaculture and mixed uses of the salt ponds. Patrolia received her M.A. in marine affairs in 2016 and followed that up with a Sea Grant Knauss Fellowship, which gives highly qualified graduate students an opportunity to spend a year working in Congress or the legislative branch on federal policy issues affecting marine and coastal resources. She worked for Sen. John Thune, the chair of the Commerce Committee, which oversees NOAA. She was given the opportunity to draft what she calls a “small” piece of legislation on illegal fishing that eventually made its way into a larger maritime security bill and became law. After her fellowship, Patrolia worked at large firms on sustainability issues for major corporate clients, but her heart was still with the nonprofit organizations in the coastal and ocean world that couldn’t afford to work with D.C.’s premier lobbying agencies. This led her to start her own smaller firm, ESP Advisors, “to see if I could bring some of the more sophisticated lobbying activities back to the ocean space at a more approachable price point for those groups.”

Emily Patrolia Founder and CEO of ESP Advisors

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