Michael Sutton

Michael Sutton is a social entrepreneur and conservation leader who currently serves as vice president, Pacific Flyway, with the National Audubon Society. He serves as a member of Audubon's National Leadership Team and oversees Audubon's conservaton programs, including a $20 million budget and more than 100 professional staff in California, Washington, and Alaska. Previously, Sutton served for eight years as vice president of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where he founded the Center for

the Future of the Oceans, the Aquarium's conservation advocacy arm. Before that, he helped establish ocean conservation programs at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the World Wildlife Fund, where he founded the Marine Stewardship Council based in London. He currently serves as chairman of the Wild Salmon Center and COMPASS in Portland, Oregon and as a board member of Ocean Champions. Sutton also serves on the advisory boards of the Ocean Foundation, the Sea Change Investment Fund, the Vermont Law School's Environmental Law Program, and LightHawk. Before joining the World Wildlife Fund staff, he spent more than a decade in government service, where he served as a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and as a park ranger with the National Park Service in Yosemite, Yellowstone, Biscayne, and Virgin Islands National Parks and Death Valley National Monument. In 2007 and again in 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed Sutton as a member of the California Fish and Game Commission. He was elected president of the commission in early 2013. He also serves as summer faculty at the Vermont Law School, where he teaches ocean and coastal law. Sutton received a bachelor's degree in wildlife biology from Utah State University in 1978 and pursued graduate studies in marine biology at the University of Sydney, Australia. In 1992, he received a law degree in international and natural resources law from George Washington University's National Law Center in Washington, D.C. In 2013, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Utah State University.