Team

An evolving answer to an unwavering mission

A note from the foundersRead in full

We started Your Devocean to get ocean organisations the hands they needed. We listened. Hands weren’t the constraint. Funding was. So we followed the money. We looked at blue carbon, at regeneration then at biodiversity credits. We tried sponsorships, and matching companies with ocean organisations. Each time, a harder question came back: why should a company commit its budget?

That question changed what we built. It also made us ask what we were actually for. Calling ourselves an “enabler” wasn’t an answer. A purpose gets you into the room. You still have to understand what makes the other person act.

What makes someone act is knowing what their capital did and the value that delivered. So that’s what we built: a way to measure the difference ocean work makes, a data trail a company can stand behind & where capital spent can land on the balance sheet.

Changing course meant going back to people who had believed in us and saying we were wrong about part of it. We’d do it again. Our mission of healthy oceans has never moved. Our understanding of how to walk the path keeps winding and expanding.

Maj Grove & Robert Kornfeld

Maj Grove

Founder & CEO

She makes sure the vision becomes reality while alignment between team, partners and mission is preserved as we evolve.

What she has.: 5 Years of leading startups through their early stages, with a focus on business development, market understanding & building operational excellence that lasts as the team and company grows. She started her career at Insurello building a country department from early market research to a fully operational, independent team of 12. From there she took on a multi-department Country Manager role at Fenix Family. Thrusted into leadership from day 0, and it’s where she excels to this day.
What she brings.: She leads Your Devocean and its relationships with investors, corporate partners; while building a team set up for success. She turns the company’s ambition into plans, leads people and priorities.
Why it matters.: Restoring the ocean takes years. Partners need a company that will still be here, run with discipline, when the work pays off. That’s Maj’s responsibility.

“The mission is born from the heart & lived through the creation by the people bringing it to life. I am here to recalibrate a financial system so as to bring back symbiosis between business, people and the planet we all belong to.”

Robert Kornfeld

Founder & CCO

He holds the intersection between the ocean action and the value delivered for corporations.

What he has.: A serial entrepreneur who has founded 3 companies, including Yallotrade. As CPO at Fishbrain, he led a product for an app built around people on the water, used by 14 m anglers. Product strategy, sales and growth, at startup and at scale.
What he brings.: He designed how Your Devocean works, from a recovery in the water to a line in a report. Now he spends most of his time with the companies that use it, making sure the product answers what they actually need.
Why it matters.: The rules behind sustainability reporting are complex. Your team shouldn’t have to carry that. Robert’s job is to make the platform absorb that complexity, so what reaches you is clear.

“We all consume through producing companies, but in order to become regenerative, companies need to give back more to nature than they take. I want to shape that world where we do more good, than less bad.”

Ellen Kornfeld

Impact & Sustainability Success Manager

She knows what has to hold up when an auditor reads the report.

What she has.: Three years in ESG & Sustainability Services at WSP, helping companies turn CSRD and EU Taxonomy requirements into action. Before that, a MSc in Sustainability and Environmental engineering with a master thesis focused on CSRD implementation.
What she brings.: She works with companies and ocean actors from day one to define the evidence each intervention needs. That way, the data collected in the field is the data the disclosure will ask for. Furthermore, she bridges the gap with corporations so the sustainability information is usable and reaches audit approval.
Why it matters.: Funding a good project is the easy part. Making its outcome count means connecting the work, the evidence and the reporting requirements before anyone starts. That connection is Ellen’s job.

“Corporates know how to report on negative impacts, but reporting positive impacts is unique. It gives corporations the opportunity to report good and actually do good. I’m here to help make this possible.”

Rhianna Davies-Smith

Purpose & Partnerships Manager

She knows how ocean organisations work and how to build lasting partnerships.

What she has.: Rhianna has spent her career inside mission-driven organisations, including leading an environmental education non-profit as Director and knows the pressures our partners live with well. As a sustainability consultant, she worked with businesses turning good intentions into real action. She has sat on both sides of the table, and she understands what each side needs from the other.
What she brings.: She builds our network of ocean organisations, operators and technology innovators. She learns what each can deliver and what they need, then connects them with companies ready to fund the work.
Why it matters.: Real impact starts with people who can deliver it. Rhianna makes sure the work behind every claim is carried out by partners who are supported and can scale year after year.

“Your Devocean is the solution I wish I had when I was in the non-profit sector. I want to make that a reality for ocean organisations who need that support now. Ocean regeneration starts with the right partners on the ground and the right structures around them.”

Alexander König

Product Lead

He turns complicated systems into valuable products people actually use.

What he has.: A brand and product designer with 11 years of experience shaping how products look, work and feel. His experience ranges from inhouse work at Hästens, to agency work at Prime Weber Shandwick with brands like Ericsson and Arla. His focus has always been the same: enhancing customer experience through his aesthetic flair & deep comprehension of human psychology. With this, he discovers the product that people actually need.
What he brings.: He leads product day to day: turning what we learn from companies and ocean actors into what the platform does next. From the dive crew logging a recovery on a boat to the sustainability team reading a draft disclosure, he designs each step to be simple to use.
Why it matters.: Evidence only works if people actually record it, and only helps if people can read it. Alexander makes both sides easy, so the trail doesn’t break at the human end.

“We are connecting two different worlds, the one where ocean actors operate, and the corporate one that calculates; and in order to make these two worlds work in harmony, they deserve a product that reflects what we do; aligning capital to nature, for a truly regenerative future.”

Jan Lindblad

CTO

He builds data systems that can hold the complexity and remain stable where it matters.

What he has.: He was at Tail-f Systems from the start through to its acquisition by Cisco, working on the data models that let networks be configured reliably at scale.
What he brings.: He designs the data model at the core of Your Devocean: how every record, method version and result is stored and linked. That’s what lets a figure in a report be traced back to the moment it was recorded.
Why it matters.: A claim can only be followed back if the data underneath was built for it. Jan makes sure the trail is designed in from the start, not patched together afterwards.

“We aren’t just collecting ocean data; we make it count in CFO models and CSO reports. Climate and nature reporting is ana frontier. We’re building the open protocol so everyone can help draw the map. To bring your skills to save the planet is not a choice, it is my lifestyle.”

Sam Hincks

Tech Lead & AI

He uses AI where it helps, and keeps it away from where it shouldn’t decide.

What he has.: A PhD in AI/HCI, and experience at Google.
What he brings.: Sam leads Your Devocean's frontend and AI development, combining hands-on engineering with technical architecture and innovation. He develops useful features that help ocean organisations document their work, organise information and connect with stakeholders, while exploring how AI can accelerate development and open up new possibilities.
Why it matters.: Great ideas only create value when people can use them. Sam helps the team turn ideas into working software, making it faster and easier to develop, test and improve features that serve ocean organisations, companies and other stakeholders

“I think ocean regeneration is one of the great alignment problems of our time. We have extraordinary people, knowledge and capital, but struggle to connect them and align incentives. Now, with unprecedented intelligence at our fingertips through AI, I believe we have an incredible opportunity to unlock that potential, amplify the right voices and turn collective intelligence into action.”

Founder's story

The Ocean nearly took my daughter. Now my life's work is to heal it.

On boxing day 2004 I surfed the ocean on a beach in Thailand, when the tsunami hit. Unlike what can be seen in various movie productions from this dreadful day, the tsunami did not look like a normal wave with swell and foam tips...

Viewed from the ground, starting right into it, was a very different view. First, there was an almost one meter high black shelf of water with round edges, like mercury. It swept its way forward, around corners, into doors, taking us by surprise, and coming from the inland. The wall of water was 10-12 meters high black wall that shaped as a wave. Just a high dark wall moving inland, following the mercury-like shelf.

It wasn't only the size and speed of this dark wall of water that was terrifying, but the sight of everything it was carrying. Cars, debris, cats, dogs and humans. A black, liquid wall of death.

I only had one choice: to carry my 3 year old daughter Cordelia and fight our way out of the first part of knee high water and run. And run. And run. We made it to safety in the hills.

For 24 hours we were dispersed and terrified. Eventually we made it and found safety on the roof top of the hotel. All five of us survived and made it through this disaster with much more luck than so many others.

In the aftermath of this tragedy I felt deeply let down by my beloved ocean. I was scared to go close to it. I had no desire to go back to a beach. We no longer spoke.

A little more than a year later we decided to go to Hawaii and heal. I was building sand castles with my daughter at Lope Beach, Kauai Island, constantly looking over my shoulder, keeping an eye on the ocean. Then suddenly Cordelia pointed to the ocean: "Daddy, dolphins are there!"

And there they were. Three magnificent animals playing in the water. Flipping on their back. Waving their tails. Showing their fins. In that moment I became at peace. The ocean spoke to us, and we answered, in silence. Friends again.

I made a promise to Cordelia that I would save a whale for her, as fathers do. When whales are hunting krill, they come very close to the surface, and it is a pure act of trust, until they breach the surface. It's a perfect pattern in Nature. One of the magic views whales leave us humans to observe.

Our logo was born through our artistic expression inspired by this pattern: something unifying, healing and magnificent. Today I am more than a friend of the ocean. I am an ocean keeper. And yes, Cordelia, I still promise to save a whale for you...

THE BOARD

Board of directors

Robert Kornfeld
Chair · Founder & CPO, Your Devocean
Maj Grove
Board member · Founder & CEO, Your Devocean
Jonathan Hed
Board member · CEO, Adventurous Ideas
Magnus Eneström
Board member · Chairman, Stiftelsen Albert & Anna Göranssons minne
Cecilia Hjertzell
Board member · ESG expert and entrepreneur

OUR BACKERS

Backed by

Investors who believe restoring nature can become good business.

Lead investor