Who We Are

Coral Vita was founded by environmental entrepreneurs driven to solve one of our planet's greatest challenges: preserving the reefs  we love. Our team of business, policy, and science leaders all share a deep passion for protecting coastal ecosystems and communities.

Our Mission

Coral Vita creates high-tech coral farms that incorporate breakthrough methods to restore reefs in the most effective way possible. Our scientific team has partnered with leading marine institutes, utilizing techniques to grow coral up to 50x faster while boosting their resiliency against the warming and acidifying oceans that threaten their survival. We then outplant these corals back into degraded reefs, bringing them back to life.

Coral Vita’s land-based farms not only supply corals for restoration projects, but also function as education centers for local communities as well as eco-tourism attractions. They can also scale to make a significant ecological difference, with a single farm able to grow millions of resilient corals for distribution around a region.

The Team

Core Team

Sam Teicher

Co-Founder, Chief Reef Officer

From flipping over logs to find bugs in his parents' backyard to becoming a scuba diver as soon as he was old enough, Sam has been in love with nature his whole life. He's always been drawn to solving problems, from creating college prep programs for his DC public school football teammates to creating cross-border Middle East dialogues around action-oriented conservation. He previously worked on climate resiliency initiatives at the White House and Global Island Partnership, co-authored Sustainable Development Goal 14, is a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur and Coral Restoration Consortium Advisory Board member, and still somehow manages to get stuck into scrums on the rugby pitch.

Gator Halpern

Co-Founder, President

Always fascinated by the ways that humans alter our environment, and by how the environment in turn shapes our societies, Gator is a curious scientist at heart with a drive to help change the world around him for the better. Prior to founding Coral Vita, Gator was an academic researcher studying land-use change in Peru, Brazil, and South Africa. He is a graduate of Pomona College, has a master’s degree from the Yale School of the Environment, and has been named a United Nations Young Champion of the Earth and a Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur. When not at work you can find him snorkeling on the reef, watching Liverpool Football Club, or trying to make his son Arlo giggle as much as possible.

Austin Martin

Chief Operations Officer

Veronica Cuccurullo

Operations Manager

Joe Oliver

Director of Restoration Operations

Amir Matouk

Director of Aquaculture Operations

Dr. Katelyn Gould

Director of Restoration Science

Chance Lane

Head of Engineering

Tom Bean

Head of Software

Andrew McCall

Data Engineer and Analyst

Sam Wright

Director of Operations

Bahamas Farm Team

Abigail Alain

Technician

K'Vean Cleare

Technician

Nicholas Von Albedyhll

Technician

Oshiko Riley

Team Lead

Shay Williams

Technician

Tyriq Forbes

Technician

Simon Dixon

Farm General Manager

Joshua Davis

Technician

Annabel Purvis

Assistance GM

Eliana Burrows

Technician

Andrew Saunders

Technician

Saudi Development Nursery Team

Mar Padial

Farm General Manager

Antonio Fojo

Farm Assistant General Manager

Aamer Barah

Technician

Ahmed Bermo

Team Lead

Reem Kabli

Technician

Lamia Alzahrani

Technician

Saif Rayani

Farm General Manager

Norah Alshammari

Technician

Ghassan Basalamah

Assistance GM

Ultimate Vision

At Coral Vita, we are creating a global network of high-tech coral farms that can sustain our world’s coral reefs despite the threats they face. Our vision is to produce billions of corals from our farms each year in order to maintain these magical ecosystems for generations to come.

As we work to achieve this vision, we also acknowledge that the best thing our society can do for coral reefs is to stop killing them. We strongly urge responsible parties to limit greenhouse gas emissions, reduce pollution and overfishing, and take other meaningful steps to eliminate threats to environmental health – these necessary actions ultimately impacts humanity’s well-being and prosperity. Yet we also recognize that the pace of degradation - coupled with the lack of sufficient positive action - demands scalable adaptation solutions be implemented as mitigation measures continued to be pursued.

That's why we are scaling land-based coral farming methods. Doing so will enable stakeholders around the world to have a ready-to-install supply of corals for all restoration needs. We aim to provide a means to sustain vital resources in spite of the ecological danger our planet faces. Coral Vita improves the livelihoods of those who depend on coral and aspires to enable a new generation to protect these reefs that will sustain their communities and nations well into the future. As a mission-driven company, Coral Vita is committed to reinvesting the majority of our profits into sustaining coral reefs.

Featured Blog Posts

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