Dr. Lida Teneva is a distinguished marine ecologist, ocean policy strategist, and conservation executive whose career spans climate science, Indigenous-led ocean governance, and international environmental philanthropy. Over more than two decades, she has worked at the intersection of scientific research and public policy, translating complex ocean-climate science into durable protection frameworks across more than fifteen countries and both polar regions.

Dr. Teneva serves as Chief Executive Officer of OneReef, an organization dedicated to supporting Indigenous and local stewards in the long-term protection of their coral reefs across the Pacific Islands. Having served on its Board for nearly seven years before assuming executive leadership, she guides OneReef’s partnerships with Pacific Island communities, funders, and governments to expand the reach and permanence of community-led reef management.

As former Vice President of Ocean and Area-Based Conservation at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Dr. Teneva designed and launched a new global Area-Based Conservation program, developing strategy to strengthen marine protected area (MPA) coverage and effectiveness across Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, Latin America, and East Africa. Her leadership positioned one of the world’s largest conservation organizations to pursue marine protection with greater scientific rigor and clearer accountability for outcomes.

Her work at the science-policy interface has been equally consequential at the subnational level. As Director at the California Ocean Science Trust, she created a new Legislative Services program bringing independent scientific analysis directly to lawmakers and regulators on ocean protection, fisheries, and climate adaptation in one of the world’s largest ocean economies. Earlier, as Science Officer for Dalio Philanthropies’ OceanX initiative, she designed ship-based expeditions that produced new discoveries of shark and deep-sea species and directly strengthened MPA designations.

Dr. Teneva has worked throughout her career with Indigenous and local communities on the governance of their own marine resources. As Science Advisor for Conservation International in Hawai’i and through her work with the Wildlife Conservation Society on marine protected areas in Fiji, she supported stewardship models grounded in customary tenure and traditional ecological knowledge. This experience—extending across Hawai’i, Fiji, French Polynesia, Palau, Australia, Indonesia, Chile, and California—informs her conviction that lasting ocean protection is built with communities rather than imposed upon them.

Her scientific foundation lies in coral reef ecology and climate change. As a research scientist, she studied the resilience of coral reefs to warming and acidifying seas across Pacific atolls, Caribbean islands, and the Great Barrier Reef, developing global model projections of coral bleaching and contributing to in situ instrumentation for measuring reef response to carbon cycle change. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on coral bleaching prediction, ocean acidification, cultural ecosystem services, and fisheries.

As a key member of The North World Approach, Dr. Teneva brings a distinctive combination of climate science, ocean governance expertise, and direct experience with Indigenous-led conservation. Her fluency in both polar and tropical marine systems, and her record of building protection frameworks that endure because communities own them, will be instrumental in shaping an Arctic governance model that integrates rigorous science, effective area-based protection, and the knowledge and authority of the region’s Indigenous peoples.