A new executive director at Save Our Shores takes charge.

After a recruitment effort that took more than five months, Santa Cruz eco-nonprofit Save Our Shores has finally found a new executive director in Katherine O’Dea.

“We are all super excited to have her,” says Margaret Collins, the nonprofit’s board chair. “She’s very connected to the ocean, and that’s very important for us.”

O’Dea, who has 22 years of nonprofit experience, comes to California from Rhode Island, where her love for the sea grew from a childhood spent along the New England coast.

“The ocean was my playground from a very young age,” O’Dea says. “It’s in my heart, it’s in my blood.”

She’s only been on the job a few weeks, and has already set out to achieve an ambitious goal she set for the nonprofit: Double its impact over the next five years. And though she is still trying to deepen her understanding of the agency, she has prioritized bilingual education out of the gate.

O’Dea wants to expand the agency’s education programs to better serve schools in communities like Watsonville, Salinas and North Monterey County, and sees it as key in creating a new generation of coastal stewards.

“Some of them never get to experience the shoreline,” she says. “If you don’t experience it, how can you appreciate it?”

O’Dea is also hoping to build more corporate partnerships in Silicon Valley, where an increasing number of Santa Cruz residents work.

“They want to live and play here, and they need to understand these issues affecting this paradise they live in.”