Blue Capacity Collective was born from years of conversations between two conservation professionals who found themselves asking the same questions: Why does this work have to be so hard? Why are we all struggling in isolation? And why can't we find the support we need to actually thrive in this field we're passionate about?

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Andrew leads the Fish and Fisheries Lab at James Cook University, and over the course of his career has seen talented PhD students burn out and leave conservation before they've barely begun. Samantha was the Programmes Manager for a renowned NGO, leading a global sustainable marine tourism initiative until severe burnout forced her to step away from the role she loved.

 

Both of us are mixed race, working across Asian marine ecosystems, and we've spent years watching brilliant professionals - ourselves included - stumble into leadership roles without the tools or training we desperately needed.

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We found ourselves constantly translating business leadership advice for conservation contexts, lamenting the lack of industry-specific resources, and watching our peers navigate the same overwhelming challenges we faced. The breaking point came when Sam's burnout led to a complete career pause—not because she wasn't capable or passionate, but because she'd never learned how to manage scope creep, set boundaries, or navigate the impossible workloads that conservation professionals face every day.

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What we discovered

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In 2023, we piloted a Southeast Asia focused capacity building workshop, focusing primarily on technical skills but including one day on leadership and self-management. The response to that leadership content was transformative. Participants didn't just engage: they came alive. They shared struggles they'd never voiced, connected with concepts they'd never encountered, and left asking for more.
 

That's proved what we'd been hypothesizing: technical skills matter, but it's the human skills - the ability to plan strategically, communicate effectively, manage ourselves and others - that determine whether conservation professionals thrive or burn out.

 

 

The Need We're Addressing

Across Asia's marine ecosystems, we're witnessing continued environmental degradation alongside a hidden crisis: the loss of conservation talent. Not because people lack passion or technical expertise, but because they lack the professional development support to build sustainable, fulfilling careers.  

Conservation professionals are expected to be researchers, project managers, fundraisers, communicators, and leaders - often simultaneously - yet we're rarely given training in the core skills that make these roles manageable. We're operating on conservation salaries that put most professional development out of reach, while working in cultural contexts that add layers of complexity others don't see. This strain, with a lack of training and support, means our profession risks losing the talented, passionate individuals we need for conservation success. These issues have been widely documented in published papers examining the state of the conservation profession in Asia (e.g. HERE and HERE). Our profession needs better professional skills to enhance our effectiveness as conservation researchers and practitioners, and to help us retain the knowledge, skills, and people we need for conservation success.

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And we aren't the only ones who think this training and support is important. Our capacity development work contributes to the following Global Biodiversity Framework 2030 Targets:

 

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