Jenny Green (née Waack) didn't start out as a dive-conservation founder. Before Galápagos Shark Diving existed, she worked in banking — a career she stepped away from in 2016 to travel. That trip included a liveaboard dive expedition in the Galápagos, and it changed her direction: she began working with the Galápagos Whale Shark Project on communications and social media, and founded Galápagos Shark Diving the following year, in 2017.
Her stated view of the business is unusually direct about who conservation work is actually for: you don't need a marine-biology degree to contribute to it. Divers who join a GSD citizen-science expedition are, in her words, becoming "shark ambassadors" — not because they've studied the animals academically, but because their photographs and observations become real data. Over the life of the project, that data has fed into the broader push for Marine Protected Area policy in the region, not just an internal research archive.
She remains hands-on in the business day to day — trip planning, guest communication, logistics — rather than a founder who stepped back once the company was running. Part of her stated mission is shifting how other dive operators think about sustainability, not only how GSD itself operates.
Source: adapted from a 2022 EcoVenture interview with Jenny Green (Green).