The Story Below Your Work
A hands-on storytelling workshop for ocean leaders, founders, and scientists.
The ocean has a visibility problem. So does your work.
When a forest burns, the whole world watches. When a coral reef bleaches, it dies in the dark, a hundred feet down, witnessed by no one.
Most of us only ever meet the ocean at its surface. Many never meet it at all. And nearly everything that matters happens where no one can see it: the warming, the collapse, the recovery. The problems are invisible. So are the solutions, and so are the people working on them.
That's the real fight you're in. Not against deniers or competitors or funding cycles. Against invisibility, and the apathy that follows.
The instinct is to fight invisibility with information. We reach for the technology, the data, the framework, things just as invisible as the deep sea. You cannot fight invisibility with abstraction.
You fight it with a story. Underneath every ocean career is the same thing: an encounter that never left you. For some it was a single dive. For others a childhood, a coastline, an animal you connected with. Whatever it was, it changed the way you see the ocean.
That encounter is a way in. Your unique experience, what you thought, felt, and did, can't be found anywhere else. And when people hear it, they don't just understand why it matters. They feel it.
There are many stories your work needs. This is the one underneath all of them.
About the workshop
Over 90 minutes, you'll uncover the origin story beneath your work and shape it into something you can actually tell. You'll leave with a story in your own voice and one concrete concept for a film or piece of content. Expect to write, brainstorm, and say a few things out loud you haven't said in a professional room before.
Who it's for
Organization leaders, founders, innovators, and scientists working on ocean challenges. People whose work deserves a wider audience than it's getting. No storytelling experience needed.
Your host
Ricky Rhodes is a Los Angeles-based director and producer working across narrative, documentary, branded, and political film. He directed the United Nations' ocean treaty series, an eight-film body of work that helped carry the BBNJ agreement into international law, and currently serves as a communications specialist with the UN Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea, promoting the World Ocean Assessment. His documentary series Impossible Cleanups, an extreme engineering story at the ends of the earth featuring Plastic Odyssey, is pre-sold internationally. His branded and political films have been seen tens of millions of times, and his award-winning narrative work includes an Oscar-qualifying short.
A lifelong surfer, Ricky is drawn to the most important stories on the planet, which are so often the ones no one can see. His films make them visible, because the impossible only becomes possible when people can feel it.
Ricky will also lead a panel and an ocean impact storytelling mixer during the Summit. Details to be announced here and on the One Ocean Week calendar.
Leon Wang is the Blue Ventures Program Manager at Maritime Blue. The Blue Ventures program works to source and support global sustainable ocean and maritime innovation to accelerate adoption by our members and the market. Leon activates our ecosystem of mentors, partners, and investors to provide best-in-class programming and support for innovators.
Leon is a connector focused on architecting, curating and delivering on programs, platforms and resources that grow and catalyze sustainability change-agents. They spent the last five years at Sustainable Ocean Alliance, working closely with organizations across the globe furthering innovation and youth leadership for ocean health and restoration. Prior to that, they worked in the makerspace lab at Singularity University, demystifying emerging technologies for executives and empowering them to solve intractable problems and address humanity’s grand challenges. As a certified Biomimicry Professional, Leon brings their expertise in life-centered design, nature-inspired creativity, and emerging technologies to help drive climate solutions forward. Leon is also the Operations Advisor for Zebras Unite - a founder-led, cooperatively owned movement creating the culture, capital & community for the next economy. They thrive in the connective tissue that bridges sectors and stakeholders, bringing alignment and operational efficiency to collaborative impact.
Leon holds a M.S. in Biomimicry from Arizona State University and a B.S. in Bioengineering from University of California, San Diego. In their free time you might find them hiking with their dogs (Turkey and Goose), volunteering at land rematriation projects, learning a new game, or scouting their next diving opportunity.