Rebecca Gruby
Robert K. Johnson Professor of Marine Conservation and Director of the Johnson Center for Marine Conservation
Contact: Rgruby@miami.edu
Rebecca Gruby (she/her) is the Robert K. Johnson Professor of Marine Conservation in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School. She is also the Director of the Robert K Johnson Center for Marine Conservation. Dr. Gruby is a social scientist with interdisciplinary training in environmental governance. Over the last 15 years, she has worked on issues spanning marine protected areas, small-scale fisheries, marine ecosystem-based management, the blue economy, ocean philanthropy, and justice and equity in the marine conservation field. Geographically, her work has focused on small island (large ocean) states and territories in Oceania. She has published more than 35 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals including Annual Review in Environment and Resources, Conservation Letters, Global Environmental Change, and Nature Sustainability. Dr. Gruby holds a Bachelor of Science in Natural Resource Conservation from the University of Florida (2006), and a PhD from the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University (2013). She worked as a Research Associate at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. between 2006-2008, and was an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University between 2013-2022. She is a mother to two girls, and an advocate for diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in the marine conservation field and academia. Her commitment to ocean sustainability and coastal communities stems from growing up surfing along Florida’s coasts.
