Growing fast, GDST launches executive director search

With more than 100 companies now affiliated with its global, industry-driven standards for seafood traceability, the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) announced it is hiring a new executive director to lead it through its next phase of growth.

Nineteen months after first launching the GDST, its standards are emerging as an important framework for facilitating interoperable seafood traceability. The standards are designed to increase reliability and help ensure that seafood products entering the market are legally sourced. The goal is to simplify and align data requirements and to allow different commercial or governmental traceability systems, complying with the GDST standards, to exchange information easily with any other.  Dozens of leading companies have already adopted the standards and begun implementing them.

“The GDST standards are a game-changer for companies across the seafood supply chain,” said Michael McNicholas, CEO of Culinary Collaborations, one of North America’s top sushi wholesalers. “Companies adopting and implementing the standards today will see faster, better, and cheaper traceability tomorrow.”

Since being launched in 2017, the GDST has been convened and facilitated by two international NGOs, WWF and The Institute for Food Technologists. With the increased uptake of GDST standards around the world, the program is growing into an independent industry-based organization that will own, maintain, and promote the standards for years to come, according to IFT’s Bryan Hitchcock, who serves on the GDST Steering Committee.

“It’s already clear that the GDST standards will be fundamental to the future of the seafood industry,” Hitchcock said. “Now it is time to stand up a permanent industry-based platform that can keep the standards updated and build additional tools to support their widespread implementation.”

With support from the GDST Steering Committee through the transition, and funding from two major U.S. foundations, the GDST is ready to hire its first executive director. Additionally, the GDST plans to announce a second professional-level position to work under the new executive director in the near-future.

“This new ED position is an exciting opportunity for candidates with strong entrepreneurial instincts who want to work at the cutting edge of how digital information technology is transforming the seafood industry,” said McNicholas, who is also chair of the GDST hiring committee. “Like the GDST itself, this is a job that will have a global impact on the future of the seafood sector and its long-term sustainability.”