TMT Team
Our team brings to the table a wide range of relevant expertise including fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS), company and trade analysis, tech development, and international processes.
Executive Director - Gareth Johnstone
Gareth Johnstone is the Executive Director of TMT, where he works to advance the organization's vision for a sustainable future where ocean communities, ecosystems and economies are thriving and no longer threatened by illegal fishing and associated crimes.
Gareth is a seasoned scientist and global executive leader with over 30 years of experience and a successful track record of delivering outstanding results in the international non-profit sector, working at the intersection of scientific research, policy and the environment.
Before joining TMT in July 2024, Gareth served as the Director General at WorldFish, where he shaped a new 2030 global and institutional vision for research and innovation in aquatic food systems. His leadership and science diplomacy led to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit recognizing “aquatic foods” as a priority action for a sustainable food systems transformation and the global 2030 Ocean Action Agenda. Under his leadership, WorldFish’s scientific contributions and impacts were recognized with the 2021 World Food Prize and the 2021 Arrell Global Food Innovation Award, mobilizing a diverse coalition of “aquatic food system champions” and a global movement that reached over 2 billion people.
A life member of the UK Royal Geographical Society, Gareth holds a PhD in Geography from King's College London and a Master of Science degree in Environmental Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
During the course of his career, Gareth has authored numerous scientific papers, delivered speeches and shaped unique cross-sector partnerships on diverse issues related to ocean governance, food systems, biodiversity, environmental sustainability, sustainable fisheries and aquaculture, blue economy, climate change and system-level leadership.
Staff
TMT has an experienced and dedicated team based in Norway and other locations in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Senior staff making up the Senior Management Team include Senior Analysts Stig Fjellberg, Eleanor Partridge and Yann Yvergniaux, CTO Arne Jorgensen, West Africa Coordinator Viviane Koutob, and Head of Finance and Administration Wyatt Oden. Supporting analysts, regional coordinators, communications, and administration make up the rest of our excellent team.
Board
Jan Thomas Odegard - Board Chair
Jan Thomas Odegard has been Chair of the TMT Board since 2016, and has been a board member since the founding of TMT in 2013.
Odegard has worked on environmental and development issues for 30 years as director, board member and program manager with NGOs and foundations, with in the UN and the private sector, as well as being an activist, university researcher and freelance journalist.
Jan Thomas spent five years (until late 2012) as the National Director of the oldest and largest Norwegian member based environmental organisation (Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature/ Friends of the Earth Norway). Here Odegard worked closely with TMT founder Gunnar Album on IUU fisheries and marine resource management in Norway and internationally. From early 2013 Odegard assisted Album in the establishment of TMT, including the planning, fundraising and management of its activities.
Additionally Odegard was stationed with the UN in Mozambique (UNDO/UNIDO) from 1999-2001, after which he became a program manager with the Rainforest Foundation Norway until 2007, focusing on natural resource management, policy development and fundraising. He was subsequently ten years on the board, and the vice-chair since 2016. Odegard also has experience as a social sciences researcher from the University of Oslo, as program manager for Norwegian Human Rights Fund, and ten years as an activist and free-lance journalist.
Since October 2018 he is the Executive Director of The Development Fund, a Norwegian NGO promoting climate adaptation, rights and economic development in rural communities in selected developing countries.
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Zahor El Kharousy - Board Member
Zahor El Kharousy studied Fisheries Biology and Management (Msc) at the University of Bergen, Norway and in 2011 was appointed the first Deputy Director General of the newly established Tanzania Deep Fishing Authority and its Director General two years later.
During the five years he spent at the DSFA he was actively engaged in regional initiatives to fight IUU fishing, including regional air and sea patrols, FISH-i Africa, and the Maputo Declaration which was the first regional effort in setting up Minimum Terms and Conditions for fisheries access in the East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique.
Zahor has been the Commissioner of Tanzania in the International Whaling Commission and alternative head of delegation in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) and is currently advising both the Government of Zanzibar and Tanzania on blue economy and the ongoing Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) intergovernmental negotiations of the United Nations.
In 20018 he was appointed to be the Managing Director of the Zanzibar Fisheries Company, a state owned company tasked with the engagement and promotion of sustainable commercial fisheries in the Zanzibar Archipelago.
Kjersti Tusvik - Board Member
Kjersti Tusvik studied law at Stockholm University in Sweden and the University of Oslo in Norway, where she specialised in maritime and insurance law. During the studies, she was a Research Assistant at the Scandinavian Institute for Maritime Law at the University of Oslo.
She has worked for more than 15 years within the field of environmental, maritime and EEA transport law. Her experience includes private and public national and international legal services, research and training.
Tusvik has experience from the Norwegian Coastal Administration, the legislation department of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) in Lisbon.
Tusvik is currently working at the EFTA Secretariat in Brussels, where she is responsible for transport law in the EEA Agreement.
Frida Bengtsson - Board Member
Frida Bengtsson is currently pursuing a PhD at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University where she works on ocean governance and the role of corporate stewardship in the management of marine resources.
She focuses in particular on ownership dynamics and governance systems that facilitate transshipments, a practice often described as opaque and underpinning illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing as well as human rights abuses at sea. She is also involved in SeaBOS, a science-based collaboration between nine of the world’s largest seafood companies and scientific institutions to achieve sustainable transformations within the seafood sector.
Frida holds a Bachelor’s degree in social sciences with a major in Geography and a Master’s degree in Development Studies.
Before joining the Stockholm Resilience Centre, she worked with Greenpeace where she was involved in and negotiated several sustainability commitments covering entire supply chains from Russian and Norwegian fishermen to household brands such as McDonalds and Birds Eye.
In 2018 she negotiated a major voluntary conservation agreement with the Association of Responsible Krill Harvesters (ARK) to limit fishing in key areas for penguins during the breeding season and to close an area in Antarctica for fishing all year around. She has also led multiple ship expeditions to Antarctica and to the Arctic.