BIO: Sarah Oktay is passionate about educating the public concerning major environmental issues on Cape Cod
and the islands, something she is well placed to do in her role as the director of University of Massachusetts
Boston’s Nantucket Field Station which is part of the School for the Environment. She is a chemical
oceanographer by training with a doctorate from Texas A&M University in Galveston. She is an invited member
of the Society of Women’s Geographers, a former President and Vice President of the Nantucket Civic League,
the Co-Captain of the Nantucket Clean Team, former chair of the Nantucket Harbor Plan Implementation
Committee and the Nantucket Coastal Management Plan and helped write the Nantucket and Madaket Harbor
Action plan for Nantucket. She believes strongly in bridging the gap between scientists, policy makers, and the
public to aid communities and effect change.
She has received a regional Conservation Award from the Garden Club and an international award for an inner
city STEM program in Massachusetts featuring place based research from the Organization of Biological Field
Stations, of which she is currently president, presiding over several hundred field stations across the globe. The
Commonwealth of Massachusetts House of Representatives gave Sarah and the Nantucket Field station a citation
in recognition of the Grace Grossman Youth Collaborative.
She writes a weekly column for a Nantucket paper called Yesterdays’ Island which allows her to describe
scientific issues and the natural world to lay people. Her nine years of service on the Nantucket Conservation
Commission has been featured in Vanity Fair, Yankee Magazine, Cape Cod Times, ABC.com and many other
news organizations. She is currently partnering with Water Defense, a nonprofit started by actor Mark Ruffalo, to
test water safety and pollution concentrations across the country.