Paul Woods

Paul Woods is co-founder and chief innovation officer of Global Fishing Watch, serving as the principal architect of the Global Fishing Watch technology platform.

Before leading the organization’s innovation work, Woods served as interim CEO and helped establish Global Fishing Watch as an independent nonprofit in 2017. He now heads the development of new technologies and applications of big data and remote sensing to solve challenging problems facing our ocean. For example, Woods led the teams that developed GFW’s flagship Marine Manager tool and its more recently launched Vessel Viewer–products that have drawn high praise from experts and are in use by governments seeking to improve the monitoring, control and enforcement of their ocean territory.

Before joining Global Fishing Watch, Woods served as chief technology officer at SkyTruth, a U.S.-based technology firm that harnesses satellite imagery to protect the environment. There he built a dedicated team of technologists that were committed to using remote sensing, big data, and cloud computing to promote conservation around the world.

Woods is a software engineer and spent about 20 years in the early part of his career working with various software companies in finance, telemedicine and big data.