Our Team

Jamie Pollack

Board Member, Executive Director
Team bio - Jamie Pollack.

The apex of the Shark Angels ecosystem, Jamie keeps the team swimming. She supervises all aspects of the organization from campaigning to fundraising to managing staff. Her background is in advertising & marketing, graphic design and advocacy. She has empowered children and adults worldwide to care about sharks. Jamie Pollack is an avid and passionate SCUBA diver for over 30 years now. Besides loving to travel and scuba dive, she truly enjoys taking pictures underwater. She also enjoys good coffee, dark chocolate and yes ice cream!

Julie Andersen

Founder, Board Member, Director
Team bio - Jamie Pollack.

The original Shark Angel. An amazing free diver and passionate shark advocate, her enthusiasm is contagious. Putting her marketing and media skills to work for sharks, she’s the brain behind Fin Free, Shark Free, Remove the Nets, Say No to Shark Fin and several other global campaigns. Her love for sharks began at an early age when she went SCUBA diving with her dad. Seeing Sharkwater was the catalyst for her to create Shark Angels to help save these amazing animals. Few people leave successful careers to pursue a passion for the planet.

Cheryl McCarron

Education and Program Director
Team bio - Cheryl McCarron.

Our resident “Shark Nerd”. Responsible for managing events, advocacy programs and random shark facts. She loves talking sharks and her knowledge of these toothy creatures exceeds the deepest dive of a whale shark (6,000 feet!). Her recent presentation about Sharks and Sex will have you chomping at the bait for more. Go ahead – ask her anything!

Olivia “OJ” Symcox

Director, South African Chapter
Team bio - Olivia Symcox.

OJ is a lifelong surfer and bodyboarder, former duty lifeguard, rescue scuba diver, qualified skipper and free diver, as well as a public relations consultant. OJ is passionate about conservation and through her well-established media contacts, is committed to educating the public about sharks and the conservation issues facing our oceans. She is dedicated to making a difference and dispelling the shark fears of those who enter the water.

Marc Bauman

Board Member
Team bio - Marc Bauman.

Marc is a recognized leader in the dive industry and an ardent shark advocate whose career has spanned two decades.  Having a passion for all things water related, he is active in progressing ocean conservation initiatives with a focus on developing the next generation of industry leaders.  He is the Executive Vice President of Palau Sea Ventures as well as the Director of the Sales and Marketing at Sam’s Tours, a position he has held since arriving in Palau in 2008. In this capacity, he oversees a global network of over 95 partners and multiple sales offices. Turning his passion into a business, Marc has worked on numerous television and film documentaries before turning his focus to the business side of the diving industry.  He is an entrepreneur/investor and involved in a host of other dive-related investments.

Hank Louis

Board Member
Team bio - Hank Louis.

Hank is a visionary architect, artist and author with a unique character and calming demeanor focused on the inspirational and humane aspects of design. 30 years of experience as the Principal Architect and lead designer in the Park City area. Hank has been principal of 15.15 Architects and Form Fifteen. He was a biennial visiting studio critic at the University of Utah until founding the DesignBuildBluff program in 2000, which teaches graduate students of architecture design/build, empathetic, team, and sustainability skills, among others. He is an avid diver and loves to travel.

Liz Parkinson

Advisory Board Member
Team bio - Liz.

An expert free diver, athlete and stuntwoman. Having spent countless hours in the ocean with sharks, Liz wants to use her firsthand knowledge to take a bite out of the misinformation around these beautiful animals.

Jenny Bravo

Board Member
Team bio - Jenny Bravo.

Jenny has been passionate about diving and sharks since she earned her certification on Qamea Island in Fiji over 15 years ago. Since then, she’s been blessed with the opportunity to travel the world both for business and pleasure and been awed by the majesty of sharks from Sipadan Island in Malaysia, with its incredible quantity of white-tip and grey reef sharks as well as the magnificent hammerheads, to the Maldives, where where a family of baby black-tips called it home right below the bungalows.

Jamie and Jenny met diving in Belize, Jenny’s third trip to Belize and first time diving the blue hole; few sharks amongst the limestone formations but an unforgettable experience.

Upon retiring in April, 2020, from a 20+ year career with Deloitte, serving a diverse collection of international clients in all aspects of their business, Jenny decided to put that knowledge to work with a select group of companies that focus on the environment. Jenny was one of four founding leaders of Deloitte’s Sustainability practice and that only heightened her life-long passion for nature, and the importance of education, conservation, and restoration. In addition to Shark Angels, Jenny is currently on the board and advising One Tree Planted, Flash Forest and The Nature Conservancy.

Logan Archer

Youth Ambassador
Kids shark education w/ Shark Angels.

My name is Logan and I love sharks! I am 8 years old and just started the 4th grade. I live in Meridian, Idaho and I have two brothers and two sisters. When I’m not busy trying to save sharks or going to school, I love to play ice hockey. When I was five, I learned that over 100 million sharks are killed each year due to things like shark-finning, over-fishing and pollution and I knew I needed to do something to help. I decided that I wanted to sell t-shirts and donate the proceeds to a conservation organization. I drew the picture for my t-shirt and I asked my Mom and Dad (and a bunch of other friends and family members) to help. In March of 2020, Logan Saves Sharks was born. I chose Shark Angels as my conservation organization because they believe that kids like me can help make a difference! I hope to help save sharks in two ways: by raising money and by raising awareness. I want to educate other people (especially kids) about the importance of sharks to our oceans and to our world as a whole. The more you learn about sharks, the less scary they become! I hope that if we can change people’s minds, we can change the world and help keep these precious animals safe.

Todd Tarala

Program Manager
Team bio - Todd Tarala.

Todd grew up vacationing on the west coast of Canada, where his love of the ocean and environment started to grow. After watching Jaws as a child, he fell in love with sharks and has been fascinated with them ever since. Being land locked in Canada his education took him in the direction of environmental sciences where he still can make an impact on the environment. He has been scuba diving all over the world for the last 13 years, and some of his highlights include: white sharks in Guadalupe, oceanic white tips in the Red Sea, and whale sharks in the Maldives. Having returned earlier this year from a trip to the Philippines and not seeing any sharks he felt it was time to let his voice be heard. He watched an Ocean Story on Liz Parkinson where she welcomed people to reach out to her which he did. She got him connected with Shark Angels. Now its time to make a splash on shark conservation.

McKenna Hardie

B.S. Grad Student, FL Tech, Intern
Team Bio - McKenna Hardie.

I was born and raised in a small town called Thurmont, Maryland. Before I headed off to Florida for college I got my Open Water and Advanced Open Water Diver certification from PADI. I am currently a senior at Florida Tech where I am majoring in Marine Biology and minoring in Psychology with a focus on animal behavior. I have always adored sharks and all things ocean. I knew I wanted to be a voice for sharks when I realized that most people didn’t see them as beautiful or fascinating, but instead labeled sharks as monstrous people eating machines. I want to use my passion to get people interested in sharks in hopes that they grow to appreciate and love them like I do. Hopefully this love fuels a fire in people to take action in the fight to help sharks. Jacques Cousteau said it best, “People protect what they love”.

Michelle Pritchard

Advisory Board Member
Team bio - Michelle Pritchard.

Her diving started in 2008 and has had a lifelong fascination and love for sharks. She did every report she could on sharks throughout school. Michelle started her diving career mainly out of Wilmington North Carolina, where she has spent every summer diving with the sand tiger sharks, and an occasional sandbar shark. What started out as a bucket list item to get certified and go to the Caribbean once, has turned into Michelle’s passion. Michelle is a PADI Divemaster.  Her day job is as an attorney who specializes in Social Security Disability, but she’s also worked in criminal law, both in NC and CA. She has a certificate in Entertainment Law: Business and Legal Affairs from UCLA and hopes to be involved in some creative content combining her love of sharks and the ocean, in order to bring more awareness of conservation.

Lauren Benoit Romeiro

Marine Scientist, B.S. Graduate University of RI, Cinematographer
Team bio - Lauren Benoit Romeiro.

Lauren started working for 333 Productions in 2017 as a cinematographer and has been featured on Discovery Channel, National Geographic, Lionsgate Pictures, Facebook and ESPN. Along with highly acclaimed underwater cinematographer Joe Romeiro, they operate a wildlife filming and conservation vessel the R/V WARFISH from Rhode Island. Using the R/V WARFISH, she has quickly made an impact in the shark world. She is working on her PhD specializing in endothermic sharks and pelagic sharks throughout the Northwest Atlantic. Using deep-sea BRUVs, eDNA, fin cameras, psat tags and taking biopsy’s for reproductive hormones & isotope analysis all on free-swimming animals, she will be able to get a better understanding of the socialization, mating and hunting behavior of these animals.

Jodi Leafer

Advisory Board Member
Team bio - Jodi Leafer.

Passionate SCUBA and shark diver. A wicked and true Bostonian. You’ll hear her a mile away, usually chatting about sharks but always making people laugh and smile. She’s great at finding interesting & informative posts to engage and educate our followers. Jodi loves to educate people about how they can help sharks.

Troy Dayton, CFA

Board Member
Team bio - Troy Dayton.

Mr. Troy Dayton is an experienced investment professional with over 25-years of managing institutional and retail client assets. He is an expert in public company valuation, financial modeling, in-depth due diligence and product development. Further skilled in marketing and client service, Dayton helped raise over $2B in client assets for his predecessor companies.

Currently, Mr. Dayton is a Senior Portfolio Manager for Capital Insight Partners, a private wealth management company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. His duties include asset allocation, portfolio management, and the identification of attractive investment opportunities across the global landscape. Prior to joining Capital Insight Partners, Dayton was a Partner, Co-Director of Value Research, Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst at Denver Investments, a Denver, Colorado based investment management company. His research responsibilities included investment analysis and recommendations within the healthcare, industrial and consumer staples sectors across the small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap universes.

Troy’s goal is to bring his love of sharks and diving to the world of finance.