Amanda Nickson is the Senior Director of Conservation. Prior to joining the Foundation, Amanda served as Director of International Fisheries at The Pew Charitable Trusts. Amanda joined Pew in 2010, leading on advocacy efforts with regional fisheries management organizations. From there she led Pew’s international work on ending overfishing and securing effective management of commercially fished tunas globally. Her portfolio then expanded to cover all of Pew’s international fisheries work, conservation and management of tunas and sharks, as well as work to end illegal fishing and roll out fisheries reforms in European waters.
Before joining Pew, Amanda worked for WWF for nearly 12 years, including leading international efforts to protect threatened charismatic species including tigers, pandas and marine turtles. She also developed and led WWF’s Bycatch Initiative, a major policy and field program aimed at reducing the incidental catch of non-target species in fisheries in more than 20 countries throughout the world.
Amanda began her career in health promotion policy, serving as the New South Wales state lead for the National Breast Cancer Centre in Australia. She also ran the first publicly funded campaign to prevent homophobic violence, which won the Australian government’s Violence Prevention Award.