Who We Are

John Englander is an oceanographer and leading expert on sea level rise, as well as Director and Co-founder of the Rising Seas Institute. He is the author of two highly acclaimed books: High Tide on Main Street (2012) and Moving to Higher Ground: Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward (2021), which clearly explain the science, the economic risks, and the opportunity to build a more resilient future.

John has led numerous expeditions to Greenland and the High Arctic, including dives under the polar ice cap. He has delivered high-level briefings on sea level rise to the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Naval Academy, corporate executives, and the heads of all eight Arctic nations’ Coast Guard services. His presentations have reached more than half a million people worldwide.

He has held leadership roles in both the private and nonprofit sectors, including as CEO of The Cousteau Society and The International SeaKeepers Society. John is a Fellow of both the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) and The Explorers Club.

Sharon Gray is a marine scientist and science communication specialist with expertise in sea level rise. She has spent more than a decade educating and raising awareness about climate change and sea level rise through writing, public engagement, and the development of educational content and curriculum for undergraduate and graduate programs, professional associations, and the general public.

Sharon began her career as a research scientist for government agencies, aquariums, and educational institutions, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Mote Marine Laboratory, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI), the Monterey Bay Aquarium, The Florida Aquarium, and the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). She holds degrees in biology, chemistry, and psychology from Eckerd College, along with a technical degree in Marine Environmental Technology and advanced SCUBA diving certifications.

Sharon has led several expeditions to Greenland. She currently lives aboard a catamaran with her family, affording her firsthand exploration of the real-time impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems and coastal communities. She is also writing a reader-friendly book on sea level rise for the public.

Dr. Jason Box is a renowned glaciologist and Professor in Glaciology at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), where he has authored over 70 scientific journal articles since 2013. He has participated in 30 expeditions to Greenland, spent more than a year camping on the ice, and has installed and maintained a network of over 20 automatic weather stations on Greenland’s inland ice sheet.

Dr. Box is a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and is widely recognized for his work communicating climate science to the public. He has appeared in several prominent documentaries, including Chasing Ice and Before the Flood, where he shares insights on the rapidly changing Arctic and the global implications of ice loss.

Dr. Eric J. Rignot is a Chancellor Professor of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine, and a Senior Research Scientist in the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is a principal investigator on several NASA-funded projects focused on the mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, ice-ocean interactions, and the dynamic retreat of glaciers, including those in Patagonia.

His research interests include glaciology, climate change, radar remote sensing, ice sheet numerical modeling, interferometric synthetic-aperture radar (InSAR), radio echo sounding, and ice-ocean interactions. Dr. Rignot’s research group investigates the interactions between ice and climate, with particular focus on ice sheet mass balance and their current and future contributions to sea level rise.

In 2007, he contributed to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (Working Group I), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with former Vice President Al Gore.

Dr. Josh Willis is an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, specializing in sea level rise and ocean temperature dynamics. He was the principal investigator for the NASA mission Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG), which studied how warming ocean waters affect marine-terminating glaciers around Greenland. He holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography and an M.S. in Physics, both from the University of California, San Diego.