Lisa Marrocchino

Why We Chose Her: 

“As a leader, I like to gather different forms of knowledge from a number of sources, including my team’s lived experiences,” says Lisa Marrocchino, CEO of Proteus Ocean Group, an ocean-focused social impact organization advancing Fabien Cousteau’s Ocean Ventures. It’s not just a “nice to do;” Lisa sees that as actually a key element to a successful business like PROTEUS™, the state-of-the-art, modular, sustainable underwater habitat, observatory and research platform for scientists, innovators, and global customers that is being built and operated by Proteus Ocean Group. 

Lisa, who brings to her position her expertise in raising capital, business optimization, strategic planning, research and public, private and alternative investments, believes these “different ways of knowing” create a whole that is much greater than the sum of the parts. “At PROTEUS™, we use our team’s domain expertise to build, inform and drive business decisions. By aggregating our teams’ expert wealth of knowledge, we can best facilitate and execute our business strategy.” As CEO of this global startup, she encourages the entire organization to approach problems and solutions from different perspectives and apply their learned experiences. 

This philosophy around shared knowledge is central to not only how Lisa runs her business but what her business is all about.

Explaining that PROTEUS™ is currently building a global coalition of expert advisors involving NGOs, government, educators and the private sector to enable data and knowledge sharing, Lisa says, “On a local level, the first step is to gather information by speaking to the local community members who live and understand the pain points and, at the same, time empower these local voices to make them part of the solution to impact change.” She notes that in the ocean community particularly -- both locally and globally -- data is often siloed and not easily or frequently shared. “Sharing of data and knowledge is an integral pillar of our business model.” The goal is for PROTEUS™ to enable ocean data collection which will benefit decision makers, and it will do this by providing knowledge to people with domain expertise who can drive solutions. “With this knowledge-sharing comes creative storytelling that will facilitate global engagement to help restore and protect our ocean,” Lisa says.

Respecting, searching out and spreading the knowledge of all for the betterment of all is the ultimate proof of the value and appreciation of humankind for all the right reasons< and we applaud them for doing so.