The hardest marine policy problems in Alaska aren't technical. They're human.

Permits migrating out of fishing villages. Tribes navigating regulatory processes designed without them. Scientists with strong data in need of community trust. Fishermen who know what's happening to the resource and have no real seat at the table.

Jamie O'Connor founded Intertidal Consulting to work at that intersection — where policy, community, science, and governance collide, and there are no easy answers.

She's a fifth-generation Bristol Bay set-netter and owner-operator. She founded and chairs the Ekuk Beach Fishermen's Association because Ekuk needed a voice and didn't have one. She advised Senator Lisa Murkowski on fisheries and environmental policy, led the Alaska Marine Community Coalition's Working Waterfronts program, and served as AMCC's Deputy Executive Director. She's represented coastal communities on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council Advisory Panel and holds a Master of Science in Marine Systems and Policies with distinction from the University of Edinburgh, where her research centered fishery access as the foundation of community resilience.

She trained as a journalist at the University of Alaska Anchorage. A skill that has served her well in testimony, survey reports, coalition messaging, and policy analysis. The ability to communicate across harvesters, researchers, legislators, funders, and Tribal leaders isn't incidental to the work. In most rooms, it is the work.

When clients bring Jamie in, they're hiring someone who has stood in most of the places the people across the table are standing and knows the process they’re working through.