Jill Harlow, who joined the organization in May, will serve as the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association’s first director of strategic initiatives. This new position reflects the MCFA Board’s deep commitment to growing the organization’s capacity to provide solutions for Maine’s community-based fishing businesses and fishing families. 

Says Harlow, “I am inspired by the grit, hard work, ingenuity, and fierce independence of Mainers who spend their lives working on the water. MCFA brings hope to small, independent fishing businesses and fishing families. Together, we persevere. That bold statement embraces our heritage and our future in equal measure.”

Harlow is an accomplished strategist, writer, and organizational leader with more than twenty-five years of nonprofit experience. She spent eighteen years helping to build the Gulf of Maine Research Institute as a member of the advancement and strategy teams. There, she was immersed in a broad mix of programs aimed at designing and implementing solutions to address fisheries, seafood sustainability and climate as well as science education challenges and opportunities. Most recently, she served as chief of staff for Pecan Street, an Austin, Texas-based R&D nonprofit that works to support an equitable clean energy transition and create data-driven opportunities in regenerative agriculture. Jill is a Colby graduate and an alumnus of the Williams Mystic Maritime Studies Program and the Salt Center for Documentary Field Studies. She is a Leadership Maine graduate and has a certificate of executive leadership from the University of Notre Dame’s Mendosa College of Business.

Harlow’s work will focus on planning and resource development to scale existing MCFA programs to achieve greater impact as well as launch new initiatives and special projects. Internally, she will build systems to help the team remain nimble and responsive to the needs of the fishing community. Maine fishermen look to the organization for stability amid unstable seafood markets and increasing uncertainty as science and regulations struggle to keep up with a changing environment. Externally, she will build on the organization’s legacy of trust within the fishing community and other partners to identify and implement promising new solutions. 

Executive Director Ben Martens says, “Jill will be a great thought partner for our team. She offers an unusual fresh perspective contextualized by an awareness of the challenge Maine’s fishing industry has had to overcome in the past two decades and deep experience growing a nonprofit here in Maine.”