Richard Stavis

Founder, Stavis Consulting LLC

Role: Associate

Site: CDL-Atlantic

Stream: Oceans

Richard Stavis, CEO of Stavis Consulting, LLC, is an internationally-acknowledged seafood thought leader and innovator with over 35 years in the seafood community functioning in executive, purchasing, sales, and sustainability roles. This experience has given him insight into harvesting, farming, processing, and product standards.

While CEO of Stavis Seafoods, Inc. from 1998 to 2018, he grew the enterprise from USD $40 million USD to approximately USD $250 million. Over the last decade, his primary focus has been understanding, advocating for and applying best practices in sustainability, traceability, and ensuring responsible labour practices within the seafood supply chain, culminating in a transition to the role of Chief Sustainability Officer at Stavis Seafoods LLC from 2018 until 2021.

Richard is a board member of FishWise and a Trustee of Human Rights at Sea. He founded and is a member of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership’s Squid IUU sourcing prevention working group. Richard is also an Advisory Committee member of the Seafood Alliance for Legality and Traceability (SALT). He was the Sustainable Fisheries Partnerships’ Squid Supplier Roundtable’s first Industry Chairperson. Richard is a regular conference speaker at Seafood Expo North America, where he creates, develops and moderates panels on an annual basis. Richard has spoken at other conferences, including the Sea Ahead Global BlueTech Conference, the World Ocean Conference Sustainable Ocean Summit, the United Nations Oceans Conference, Capitol Hill Oceans Week (CHOW), and others.