My Interview with Lad Akins/Director of Special Projects at REEF: Reef Environmental Education Foundation

It was my original intention to interview Lad Akins Director of Special Projects at REEF (Reef Environmental Education Foundation). Lad was also Executive Director of REEF from when it was started in early 1990’s. So not only is he an employee, but is familiar with anybody who has ever been employed at REEF. Furthermore, it would have been interesting to get an answer to the question, When you were young did you want to grow up to run a non-profit marine conservation organization? A schedule miscommunication took place, and Lad was out in the ocean collecting data when I showed up at REEF Headquarters in Key Largo. However, the new Lionfish Program Coordinator, Elizabeth Underwood was conducting a class for high school students at the time. I sat in on the class, and then interviewed Elizabeth Underwood afterwards.
I have to admit to having what feels like an unfair advantage here. A good analogy would be a person that grows up in a bilingual household, and takes one of the languages as a foreign language course in school. I have spent a great deal of time in a volunteer capacity for REEF, so
I am very familiar with the operation. On the basis of volunteer work I have done at REEF, I have been hired several times by a company call Geo Marine. Geo Marine does research on coral reef systems for the United States Navy. I have good insight on how non-profit organizations and for profit companies operate in the marine conservation field. I might even have been able to write this short “reflective” paper extemporaneously without doing an interview, because I have been in the midst of informally conducting this interview with many individuals for the last twenty years. Nevertheless, I learned some good specific...

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...derstand from a writing assignment point of view, that the interview and reflective paper were probably more about specifics of a particular career than the generalization I have made of “it”. Concretely tying the pursuit of a degree specifically to a new career would make a nice conclusion to this paper. Maybe getting the degree is just part of “it”. Certainly pursuit of a BA in General Studies, because I don’t have a degree can’t hurt. I do not know what my ultimate niche will be in the marine conservation field. Certainly there is dependence on doing it full time, as opposed to part time. I already have decent credentials, two thousand hours bottom time doing fish surveys, excellent underwater photography skills, and excellent diving skills. Sometimes I get disconnected from “it”, I just need to stay connected, and “it” will take me where I want to go.