Jenny Tato

Jenny was raised in a military family that moved to a new place every few years. This upbringing instilled a sense of adventure in her. It was through her time as a child roaming and exploring the hills of southern Germany that she knew she would spend her life protecting similar wild places. Throughout the past six years, this love of nature has been the source from which she has pulled from in her work as an environmental educator, environmental justice activist and conservationist.

Jenny has a varied background working in indigenous rights, diversity, equity and inclusion, environmental education and waste reduction. In her most recent experience she served as the International Coastal Cleanup (Macomber) intern at Ocean Conservancy where one of her jobs was to manage the Trash Free Seas team’s TIDES database, the largest collection of citizen science data on marine debris worldwide. Throughout her career her passion in conservation has grown with her interests expanding in plastic pollution and its impacts on coastal community resilience. Looking to the future, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in marine policy with a focus on human dimensions, specifically of indigenous coastal communities.

She is currently working on a personal project called 365 Days of Plastic where she has been collecting her plastic waste as a call to action for government, consumers and companies to address the growing plastic pollution issue. This project started May 2018 and will culminate in a final art display May 2019. You can follow updates on this project through her Instagram @trash.less.oceans and Youtube Channel; TrashLessOceans.