Julie Packard

Julie Packard has dedicated her career to preserving ocean life. In the late 1970s, after earning a master’s degree in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, she chose to focus on environmental action. She helped transform a dilapidated fishing cannery into the world renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium in Northern California, in 1984. Today, the aquarium draws millions of visitors each year, and Packard continues to work as the organization’s executive director. She also chairs the board of the innovative Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, which, in her words, aims to give “voice to the ocean, [to] have people realize our lives truly depend on the future of the sea.” In 1998, Packard received the Audubon Medal for Conservation, and she currently serves on several commissions concentrating on national ocean policy.

Hope Gangloff, known for her colorful, stylized portraits, spent a week making sketches and photographs of Packard against the backdrop of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.