Global Sustainability Director at Iberostar Group
United States
Dr. Megan Morikawa is the Global Sustainability Office Director at Iberostar Group where she leads the work that is being done under the company’s Wave of Change movement, an initiative based on three complementary but different action lines: eliminating the consumption of single-use plastics, promoting responsible seafood consumption and the improvement of coastal health. Dr. Morikawa joined Iberostar in early 2018 to work as an advisor for the company’s work in coastal health, focusing on leading the on-ground research on coral reef restoration in the Americas. She now leads a strong sustainability team along with Gloria Fluxà, who is part of the company’s fourth generation leadership and ownership, in scientific actions for Wave of Change’s three pillars and to connect Iberostar Group with the greater scientific community to provide a strong foundation towards the movement’s action lines.
Megan received her Bachelor of Science, summa cum laude, from Duke University with a personalized major titled Conservation Biology and Genetics: Applied Environmental Sciences, where she was a Robertson and Udall scholar. She received her PhD at the Palumbi Lab at the Stanford Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey, where she conducted research on multi-species coral nurseries to see if coral reef restoration can be made ready for climate change using genomic tools to unveil natural diversity in reefs in the Pacific. She also studied the impacts of seasonal shifts in coral transcriptomes on the response during bleaching stress. As a postdoc at University of California, Santa Barbara, Megan worked on testing the feasibility of multi-species and climate resilient coral nurseries in the Caribbean.