Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Richard Miles: Inventivity, what does it mean? The state of being inventive, creating, or designing new things or thoughts. Hello, I'm Richard Miles. Welcome to the Inventivity Pod. Join us as we speak to inventors, entrepreneurs, and visionaries who are using Inventivity to change the world. They'll bring us alongside their journey as they share their personal stories from start to finish, including the triumphs, the failures, and everything in between.
[00:00:33] James Di Virgilio: Hi, I'm James Di Virgilio. Welcome to our series exploring the Blue Economy, a look at what it is, who's involved, and what the future is going to look like thanks to innovators. For this limited series, we are able to talk to inventors and subject matter experts who are excited to give our audience a look into the growing and impressive blue economy today. I'm very happy to welcome our guest, Katie O'Fallon. Katie, tell us a little bit about your background. I have an illustrious list of all the things you've accomplished, but let's hear it from you.
[00:01:03] Katherine O'Fallon: Well, I could probably talk about my background for a very long time, so I'll try to shorten it up a bit. I, uh, grew up in Minnesota, so landlocked, um, but growing up on the lake, swimming before I probably could walk, and somehow, somewhere in the middle of middle school time, I kind of got this interest in marine science, the oceans, which is kind of an interesting fact, since I only saw the ocean once before I decided to go to school to study it. But one of the things that my dad always kind of said, and I think I attributed to falling in love with the ocean, was a television series called Seaquest DSV. For those of you who grew up in the, uh 90s, watched some of that science fiction, that was kind of the moment where I think I realized that there was this deep ocean of the unknown. And one of the things that I really was attracted to it by was at the end of every episode. So it was science fiction. Get that. But there was always a science concept behind it. And so at the end of every episode was a professor, Dr. Robert Ballard, came on at the end and told about the science concept. Well, if those of you who know Dr. Ballard a little, um, ocean explorers, you know that he discovered the resting place of the Titanic, because that's his most famous discovery. But he also discovered so many other things, including deep sea hydrothermal vents and everything. And so that was really the moment where I kind of said, I really want to study marine science. And I decided to go to New York. I went to LAU Long Island University, Southampton campus, focusing on marine science. And then I was able, through that time at university, um, I got to do a co-op in Curacao. I spent a semester sailing through the Caribbean on 131ft schooner, which was amazing. You do not realize what you can put your body and mind and emotions through until you kind of do all those things at once. I also spent a, ah, summer in Hawaii doing coral bleaching research at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. And spent um, some time in Fiji and the Salmons doing research. And it was during all those different times of doing research and education that I really found my passion for education. I really realized that I loved teaching others about the marine environment and what I was so passionate about more than doing research. And that's how I ended up finding my way to Florida, which is where I'm now based in Fort Lauderdale. And I started teaching as I was getting my master's in science education here at Nova Southeastern University. And one of, um, the things I really found out that I love teaching, but I also love creating the curriculum and building out programs. And I became the magnet coordinator of a marine science middle school here in Fort Lauderdale, New River Middle School. And then as I was building out all this amazing curriculum, because I realized marine science is just one small sliver of ocean exploration and innovation and the blue economy. And so what I decided to do was to get a little bit more broad application and make a bigger impact. And that's how I came to where I'm at right now in the role of executive director for the Marine Research Hub, which I've been in now just a year. I actually celebrated my one year anniversary in October. And so my job now is to oversee building the blue economy here in our backyard.
[00:04:22] James Di Virgilio: And the blue economy itself is something that is now often talked about a lot of our listeners perhaps it's the first time you're hearing that term. So if you could describe what the blue economy means to you.
[00:04:33] Katherine O'Fallon: The blue economy? Yeah. For many people it is kind of a new phrase that, uh, is not as familiar. And it's basically the sustainable use of our resources, our ocean resources, for economic growth, for livelihood, but ultimately for the health of our ecosystems and coastal environments. And that all encompasses the blue economy. And over the last couple of years or so, they've also added to it. Some people are referring to it as the new blue economy. And what the new blue economy is, is basically all the same things. Sustainable use of our ecosystems and resources, but adding in technology and knowledge to that. So really understanding data and knowledge based economies so that you can make those decisions to be sustainable. Um, and that's a really important piece that has been added in because we can't really make decisions on being sustainable and having economics without really understanding the data and information about why we're making those decisions.
[00:05:32] James Di Virgilio: So the blue economy itself, in one sense, has been around since the beginning of humankind, with obviously, fishing and even transportation, other things. And as we're looking at this now, what is one of the significantly different lenses that we're looking at as humans? Like, uh, centuries ago, were people wondering if they should be stewarding the resources around them, or were they just saying, hey, there's fish in my backyard, I'm going to catch them all? How different is what's happening now versus what's happened historically?
[00:05:59] Katherine O'Fallon: Yeah, exactly what you said. In terms of, we thought there was unlimited supply. Basically, when people looked to the oceans before, they just thought it was there for the taking. There was no limit to what was in our oceans. And also, they use the oceans as kind of a dumping ground for things. I mean, we have a lot of waste that we put into our oceans, not just from plastic pollution, but toxic chemicals that basically they didn't want it on land anymore. So let's just go dump it out into the middle of the ocean, because it will just sink and it will disappear out of sight, out of mind as well. And that was really how we viewed the ocean, is just for us to take, take and not really understanding that there's a limit to everything and there is an impact to everything that we do. And so we have definitely shifted and need to continue to shift our focus, because now we're even looking, the ocean was for transportation, it was for food source, it was all of those different impacts. But now we're looking at the ocean in terms of also helping to fix the problems that we've created. The ocean now has the solutions for climate change and resiliency and sustainability and all of those things if we can just utilize it in the right way with knowledge driven, sustainable uses.
[00:07:16] James Di Virgilio: And so how does the marine research hub come into play here? What are you able to accomplish that wouldn't be accomplished if the Marine research hub was not there?
[00:07:26] Katherine O'Fallon: So the Marine Research hub was actually founded in 2017 by a group of business members in the community here in South Florida. They actually saw themselves kind of surrounded by all these great academic institutions and research institutions like Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, University of Miami, Nova Southeast University, just right here in our backyard, not to mention all the other amazing universities in Florida doing marine research. And what they saw was that there's all this research being done, but where is it being commercialized and monetized? Where are we actually getting some of these solutions being deployed to do good in our backyard? And so as a business community who's looking at economic growth, these are business members, and they're just like, we should be taking advantage of this. We should be elevating these nature based and research based solutions that are right here in our backyard to commercialize and monetize them so that they can create the jobs, build business, harden our infrastructure, but ultimately take care of our most valuable resource, which is our coastal environments here in South Florida. And so that's where the hub came about, was basically this idea of working together to elevate the solutions and connect the dots. So our job is, I call myself, like, the connector a little bit, because we look at ourselves as elevating all the resources that are out there and bringing the stakeholders together because there's a lot of things happening, but a lot is happening in silos. It's not as connected. One's over here doing something, another one's over here, and they're doing the same things, but they're not doing it as efficiently and effectively as they could be if they were more connected with each other. So the goal of the marine research hub is to really elevate the solutions, connect the dots, so that we can get these solutions deployed to sustain our oceans, to take care of our environment, but at the same time creating jobs in our backyard around the sustainable use of our oceans. So we look at academic connections, government economic development funding and investment opportunities like incubators and accelerator programs, and industry and workforce, along with community outreach and all the different sectors, stakeholders that are impacted in our backyard.
[00:09:46] James Di Virgilio: So a very wide scope, it sounds like, narrow this down for us and give me, uh, perhaps a real world example of something that has occurred where you have been the connector, as you've mentioned, so we can get a grasp on that.
[00:09:58] Katherine O'Fallon: Definitely. I would love to give you an example. So, for example, there is a company that is based right now in Orlando. They're a company called Ecospheres, and they deal with toxic persisting chemicals. So it's NASA based technology. So it's basically absorbing toxic persistent chemicals. PFAS. PFAS. Things that have basically been outlawed and banned now. But we realize that they are not going away. That's why they're called toxic persistent chemicals. So we have to take care of them. And the only way right now, currently that we've been the most effective way of taking care of them is by dredging them and basically shipping them across the country into an incinerator where you're still creating other environmental impacts. And it could actually create toxic spills along the way because of shipping and train derailments and different things like that. What's cool about their technology is that they can actually absorb those toxic chemicals in site, too, and then they can destroy them basically on site without impacting the local environment. They can be in water, land, they've got different applications. And because they're based in Orlando, they're kind of landlocked. And they need to have a little bit more connection to infrastructure that is going to get them basically around the world into, into, you know, South Pacific countries that just don't have the infrastructure and the ability to ship these chemicals out. And so we are working with ecospheres right now as they're looking to relocate and move down here to South Florida, hopefully, uh, soon to have headquarters, manufacturing, have more access to the ports, and also with investment opportunities, they're going to be starting a series funding round pretty soon as well. And so we're, um, basically giving them a platform of introducing them to economic development industry here in Greater Fort Lauderdale with the Greater Fort Lauderdale alliance so that they can help them find that manufacturing space, find the locations, but also just getting them in front of government officials, uh, our port connections, and elevating where they're at. Another company that we're doing the same similar thing is a, ah, company dealing with coral restoration that's based in the Bahamas right now. So they're trying to scale up, uh, large scale coral restoration, and they are looking to eventually have a stateside facility. And we think, what better place than Fort Lauderdale? Because we have some major projects that are going to be taking place, uh, with Port Everglades here that's going to need coral mitigation. Plus, we're close to the keys where there's a lot of very good research that's been going on at University of Miami and Nova Southeastern University to help with that coral restoration process. But the thing is that it needs to be scaled up more quickly than all these smaller institutions and facilities can do. And that's where Coral Vita's model of commercialization comes into play to kind of scale up and work with these smaller restoration and university systems.
[00:12:57] James Di Virgilio: So if I'm ecospheres, if I'm doing coral restoration and I have this idea, this prototype, perhaps it's already working, and I'm having trouble getting traction. Um, I'm having a hard time figuring out how do I distribute this? How do I get a foothold with these companies that do this? How do I go talk to all of them? I contact someone like you, or I contact the marine Research Hub, and then you will essentially become the liaison, plugging me into the other resources. And if I'm ecospheres, am I paying a fee for this service? Are the companies on the other end paying a fee to be connected to you, or how does that all work?
[00:13:27] Katherine O'Fallon: Yes, you're completely right. We try to make the connections. We connect with, like I said, all those different entities, and even R and D with our universities. That's a huge component that a lot of these companies and innovations need is, as they're scaling up, they're still continuing to do R and D, and they're going to also need the labor in the workforce as well, which is a great connection with our universities for that pipeline. But at the same time, we are now currently a nonprofit. So, uh, our funding has been mostly through grants and board initiatives, sponsorships and partnerships. We may eventually change to a model of membership, but right now, we really are recognizing that the board initiatives are saying we want to invest in marine research hub, so that we also have kind of that firsthand look at some investment opportunities as well, because these are all companies that are investable solutions that could and should be here in our backyard. So for companies that have now ESG goals and sustainability goals, having a partner like marine Research Hub, who's kind of doing the vetting and helping to find some of these is going to just be a really good advantage for them, because now they're getting first look and first opportunity as an investor in this space. And one of the things we also want people to start to realize is that investing and taking care of the environment are not two separate things anymore. People used to think that taking care of the environment was just philanthropic. It just was a nice thing to do. Now it's really showing that investing and the environment are actually more intertwined than you ever thought, because you can actually make money and do good for the environment. And that's a really important component that is happening here in South Florida, in this ecosystem that we're building up now.
[00:15:14] James Di Virgilio: The Marine Research Hub is a nonprofit, right? So essentially, you're attempting to do this in a way that obviously benefits, as you've mentioned multiple times, the community in South Florida, and then also benefits the environment, the companies as a whole, and the new innovators that are all coming along. Uh, you mentioned you've been around since 2017, so how has the traction been moving in the past couple of years. Are you starting to see this become something that innovators are maybe reaching out to you and saying, hey, we know that you can help us with this, or are you out finding them? Where are you in that process?
[00:15:45] Katherine O'Fallon: It's a little bit of both. So, thankfully, uh, the Marine Research hub, yes, it was started in 2017. Um, and it was basically kept alive over the last few years until they were able to hire me on as executive director last year. They really just had very little funding, just enough to kind of keep it going, to keep, uh, the connections, but not really the ability to have a dedicated team to go out and farm out these new innovative companies. We work with an accelerator program called Ocean Exchange. It's an accelerator pitch program that the Marine Research Hub actually helped them relocate here to South Florida in 2019 from Savannah, Georgia. So that was a huge part of building up this ecosystem because they are also helping to find those solutions so that we can connect them to the right entities. So I would say that, um, we've kind of kept it going, and this last year, we've definitely gotten a lot more traction just because I've been able to dedicate 100% of my time, whereas before, we really just had our board members who are trying to do good and build up the ecosystem while they still had their own companies to run. So, um, we're definitely expanding, and the goal is we don't want it to be just South Florida. We want the impact of the blue economy to be the entire state of Florida. We have so many assets in our backyard here that we should and could be the epicenter for solutions when it comes to the blue economy.
[00:17:13] James Di Virgilio: So here on the Inventivity podcast, we talk to innovators all the time. We talk about innovation all the time. We talk about a culture of inventivity. And in your case, of course, all of our listeners heard your background in the beginning. This is a very new position for you, I'm sure. A new challenge. How have you found yourself innovating into this new challenge? Essentially. Right. Being the executive director of a nonprofit, which is very different from doing educational work that you did before you, how has that been for you?
[00:17:42] Katherine O'Fallon: It definitely has been a challenge, but a fun challenge. I will say that I'm just taking my education experience into a different space a little bit. Instead of educating middle schoolers, I'm educating, um, government officials, and I'm educating private companies and also working with some of the new companies as well. Because you've talked to so many innovators and new companies and new startups. And you probably recognize that, uh, there's a lot that we don't know. And I used to say this about my students all the time. We don't know what we don't know. And so my job is kind of to help them figure out what they don't know from all the different sectors. Who are they talking to? Who's their audience? What do they really need to pinpoint home? And I think that has been a lot of my experience with education has helped me in this role right now, because you can basically, uh, have this great knowledge of your company. You can have all the stats and all the data and stuff, but if you don't put it into the context of your audience, you're going to lose them and they're going to be gone. So I think that's really helped me in this role. And, uh, like I said, it's just been so much fun. I love teaching people about what they don't know in the blue economy. And when you start talking about all the ways in which it's connected here, it's kind of like this moment of Aha, huh? We should be doing more. Why aren't we doing more? All right, how do I get involved and how do I help? And we've been doing know, partnering with our partners here. The Marine Industries association of South Florida is the owners of the Fort Lauderdale International Boat show, which is the largest in water boat show in the world. And when you think about the impact of the marine industry, people are out on the water because they love the water. So they're buying boats and out yachting and doing all those things because they want to take care. They love the marine environment. Now we're showing them a way that they not only can enjoy the marine environment, but they take care of the reason that they're out there boating as well. And it gives people, I think, this opportunity to be a little bit more invested in the sustainability of their passion and their backyard and their community.
[00:19:48] James Di Virgilio: Well, I can feel your passion coming through for the marine environment, which is fantastic. And then with that, let's dream a little bit here. Let's look into your dreams. What do you want to see happen, or what do you envision happening in the next ten years with where you are now and where you want to be? And what does that look like for the blue economy, where you're at?
[00:20:09] Katherine O'Fallon: Oh, wow. Let's dream, uh, a bit. I would love to see the goal of the hub is to build up more companies that are here in our backyard that are doing good environmental work, that are accelerating, and they're creating jobs because, uh, as a former teacher, middle school, I would tell my students all the time that you have all these amazing opportunities in your backyard. You can be passionate and take care of the marine environment and still have a really good paying job and be able to have the lifestyle you want. And that's really kind of what all of these companies are all about, is that you can make a good living, enjoy the job that you're doing, and take care of your environment and your community. Because if we don't do that, we're not going to have a community here in our backyard. And so the goal would be, is to just see more and more companies that are going to be sustainable, uh, to help us be resilient here in South Florida. So if I could know on every block in Fort Lauderdale, have a company that is somehow connected to the marine environment and the blue economy, I think that would just be the dream. And the vision is that you can have it all, you can have the lifestyle, you can have the environmental impact, we can be taking care of our, uh, community and enjoy what you're doing. And the thing that's also unique, I want to say with a lot of these blue economy companies is they think they have to be an environmentalist or a scientist to work for companies like this. And that's not the only jobs that are available. They're a company. They need the accounting and the business side, they need the marketing side, they need the HR, they need everything that goes into being a sustaining company. And so, yeah, you need the engineering and you need the environmental. And depending on what technology you might have, you're going to need all those things. But there's going to be a whole bunch of other jobs that are going to be tied to this company. And that's really the cool thing about it.
[00:22:12] James Di Virgilio: What would be the biggest hurdle then to that dream not being realized?
[00:22:17] Katherine O'Fallon: The biggest hurdle is probably and will always be funding. I think for most of these spaces, it's funding. We have a lot of funding right now, I must say. There's a lot of funding going into solution, resilient based companies, infrastructure, everything from the Biden Administration, Inflation Reduction Act. NOAA is putting in a ton of funding. One of their strategic goals is accelerating growth of, uh, blue economy. But it's always, I think, is always going to come down to just funding and support in terms of getting these new pilot programs, um, regulations and such. So it's going to be funding and regulations and permitting, and that kind of goes into both as far as regulations, because when it comes down to the ocean and it comes down to coastal water infrastructure, there's just so many different entities that are involved in it. And sometimes funding and time for permitting and regulations is the thing that really does hold up that innovation, getting where it needs to go, because there's great things that have been discovered. They're sitting on a shelf, but because they didn't have the funding to get off the shelf, they didn't leave the lab and to actually be deployed, or they didn't leave the lab because they didn't have the opportunity to pilot that program and get the data to support it so it could move to that next level. So one kind of impacts the other a little bit.
[00:23:42] James Di Virgilio: Yeah, there's no doubt about that. And how would you recommend that someone listening to this very podcast get involved with your organization? What can they do to become a part of it?
[00:23:51] Katherine O'Fallon: What you can do to become a part of it is depending on where you're at, depending on if you're in the university system, um, think about the fact that you might be doing research that has an application that could lead to a company solution. Or maybe you're on the business side and you're thinking to yourself, I want to be helping as a co founder of a new environmental company, network within your universities as well. Because I think there's a lot of silos that we're trying to break down from the business school to the marine science, to the engineering school. So network and really connect with people. Besides that, is get involved in your community. There's little things that you can do that don't have to be in inventing something new. I think you probably in the space that you guys are in with innovation, everybody thinks it has to be this major, brand new, out of the box new invention. It's not necessarily needs to be a new invention, it just can be a modification to something else that creates that sustainable aspect. So for example, in the marine and yachting community, we actually launched this Year a Marine research hub, uh, Innovation and Sustainability Award at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat show. Because we really wanted to focus in on the companies that are in the marine industry that are doing good, but it's just not advertised. They're just not talking about it because that's not their main job. Their main job might be building propellers, their main job might be building boats and designing halls or paints and all of that stuff, but maybe they're recycling some of the material in an efficient way. They're a Marina who is implementing, um, waste management systems. And so those little tweaks of your company and how you're dealing with things throughout your company can make a difference. And I think that's a big piece that people don't realize that you can do. You don't have to be, uh, uh, a crazy, out of the box new idea innovation. It can just be a little tweak that makes your company and your environment more sustainable and more resilient. And just getting involved, seeing where you can get involved. If it's from beach cleanups to waterway cleanups, as an educator and working with kids all the time, we try to just say doing your part is going to matter and that one part is going to lead to another part and then to another. And that bigger impact of everything, and just reaching out into your community, connecting those dots. If you know somebody who knows somebody, make an introduction to them, because that's where this ecosystem is going to build and it's going to thrive. People know everybody. They just don't always know how one person's going to impact the other.
[00:26:27] James Di Virgilio: All right, Katie, last question. Are you ready?
[00:26:30] Katherine O'Fallon: I'm ready.
[00:26:30] James Di Virgilio: All right. You mentioned doing your part. Uh, what is one thing that someone listening to this, no matter where they are, they could be in the middle of Kansas. They can be in a coastal area like Florida, they can be in Long island or in Minnesota. What is one thing they could do to be a better steward of the blue economy from where they are?
[00:26:47] Katherine O'Fallon: To be a better steward for the blue economy is to understand what you're purchasing. I think. Making some of those choices of what you're doing, purchasing and waste, like throwing things away. I grew up in the time where recycling was the new thing. The three R's I was recycling with my family before recycling was in fashion. We had to actually go to a small town. You had to bring your recycling, sort it yourself, first of all, and then bring it to the recycling center and sort it and make sure it got into the right places. That was not something that's easy for everybody to do. You have to maybe, uh, try to make some of those decisions on what you're purchasing and what you're putting into the landfill and waste and recycling, and just also being educated about where your things are coming from. Your carbon footprint is a huge part of our lifestyle. We don't realize that buying locally is so important for not only the economics of your community, but also for, uh, the impact to the climate and to our environment and being more resilient and sustainable is important. So there's lots of little things like that. So buying locally, recycling, or refusing, uh, refusing. Not using a plastic straw. People don't realize that here in Florida, pretty much, we don't use plastic straws on a lot of restaurants, especially on the coastline. But you go into the middle of the country and you go into other parts, and plastic straws and other materials are still very much a part of our daily lives. So not utilizing them can be an impactful solution and decision that you make. And sometimes I'll say, kids say the darndest things, and middle schoolers will always be like, say, well, it doesn't matter. I'm only one person. Well, if you do it and somebody else does it, and those numbers add up. So, yes, you're only one person. But one person can make an impact.
[00:28:42] James Di Virgilio: Yeah, that's absolutely right. History proves that to be true with the multiplication by idea, if you will. Well, Katie. Katie O'Fallon, thank you so much for joining us on the program today. This was an absolutely great episode. Thank you all for listening. We want to thank our guest, obviously, for her time. Katie, thank you very much. And of course, we wish you much success in your endeavor with the Marine Research Laboratory and the blue economy. You can simply Google search from any one of your favorite cell phones or devices, the Marine Research Laboratory, and it will pop up first right there. And you can see more of what they're doing and what Katie is doing down there in South Florida. Thanks again for joining, Katie.
[00:29:16] Katherine O'Fallon: Thank you.
[00:29:18] James Di Virgilio: The Inventivity Pod is produced by the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention, located in Gainesville, Florida. Richard Miles and me, James Di Virgilio, are your podcast hosts. Podcasts are recorded at the Heartwood Soundstage in Gainesville and edited and mixed by Rob Rothschild. Be sure to subscribe to The Inventivity Pod wherever you get your podcasts and leave a comment or review to let us know how we're doing. Until next time, be inventive.
