Hi, I'm Mary Frances.
I’m an international development and capacity development specialist with twenty years of experience across fisheries, aquaculture, ocean sustainability, and aquatic food systems.
My work has taken me across Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Small Island Developing States, working with governments, universities, research institutions, NGOs, and international organizations. Along the way, I’ve designed learning programmes, facilitated workshops, built partnerships, evaluated programmes, and helped organizations think more strategically about how people learn, collaborate, and create change.
Through all of this, I’ve become convinced that technical expertise alone isn’t enough. The challenges facing aquatic food systems are complex and interconnected, and addressing them requires people who can learn together, work across boundaries, and turn knowledge into action.
That belief is what led me to create Blue Skills Collective: a space for bringing together expertise in learning, facilitation, capacity development, and systems thinking, and for building collaborations around the people and institutions working to create more sustainable aquatic food systems.
My work has included partnerships with UNESCO, WorldFish, the GRÓ Fisheries Training Programme, and international research and development initiatives around the world. Across them all, one lesson has stayed with me: lasting change happens when people have the opportunity to learn, connect, and grow together.
Who we work with
Blue Skills Collective collaborates with organizations working across fisheries, aquaculture, ocean sustainability, and aquatic food systems, including international organizations, research institutions, governments, NGOs, universities, regional bodies, and community-based initiatives.
Who We Are
Rather than operating as a traditional consultancy, we aim to create a platform for collaboration by building teams around the needs of each project and drawing on diverse perspectives, disciplines, and lived experience. At the heart of this approach is a simple belief: meaningful transformation happens through shared learning, strong relationships, and collaboration across boundaries.
Gail Sant is an independent consultant who is personally and professionally motivated by a lifelong love for the ocean. Drawing on a background in equitable ocean and climate governance and capacity building, her experience traverses global and local scales: from advancing foresight resilience and transformational change at the UNFCCC, to founding a grassroots NGO in Malta, and developing a global Fellowship programme with the Nippon Foundation-University of Edinburgh Ocean Voices.
Gail is passionate about using community-building, co-design, and storytelling as tools to share knowledge and forge pathways toward human and planetary health. Whether she’s working, creating ceramic sculptures of sea creatures, or reading nature books, Gail is always seeking to deepen her understanding of humanity’s relationship with the natural world, striving to play a part in the paradigm shift toward an equitable, healthy ocean for all.