Class of 2015
For Brady O’Donnell ’15, his Eckerd story was defined by mentors—people across disciplines and departments who shaped his studies, worldview and eventual career.
Mentorship, in fact, is what brought him to Eckerd College in the first place. Growing up in landlocked Colorado, he dreamed of studying marine biology in coastal California. But a flyer from Eckerd coincided with a family vacation to Florida, and his mom convinced him to apply.
An admitted students weekend sealed the deal, when a marine science professor offered to provide comments on his senior thesis about climate change and the ocean.
“I was like, I’m not even like your student here, and you’re offering to review my presentation,” Brady recalls. “So I was pretty impressed by that.”
Brady was ECOS president for two years. Photo by Spencer Yaffe ’17
His time at Eckerd, where he double-majored in marine science and environmental studies and minored in political science, gave him additional mentors who helped him understand science as well as people. Both come into play today in his work in communications and legislative affairs with the Marine Mammal Commission, an independent government agency tasked with the protection of marine mammals.
At Eckerd, Brady conducted research on marine sediment after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill alongside Professor Gregg Brooks. Their fieldwork later took him to the Virgin Islands over two summers and to conferences across the U.S. Postgraduation, he found another mentor in Professor Tessa Hill ’99, whose lab he worked in during a master’s program at the University of California, Davis.
Brady celebrating Capitol Hill Ocean Week
Left to right (2014): Gipson Hawn ’15, Blake Borgeson ’15, Professor Gregg Brooks, Brady O’Donnell ’15 and Erika Fridrik ’15 prepare sediment samples gathered during a research trip to the Virgin Islands for analysis in an X-ray diffraction (XRD) machine. Photo by Sarah Richardson ’15
“It was, in my opinion, an unmatched research experience in an undergraduate career,” he says.
Brady also spent all four years working with the Eckerd College Organization of Students, including two as president, learning from Fred Sabota, Lova Patterson ’00 and President Jim Annarelli (then dean of students). He says he hopes he led an effective student government, but more than that, it helped him to connect with his Eckerd community.
“Whether it was through coursework or student engagement through ECOS, I recognized that the systems that we all work in are complex systems that have a lot of different perspectives … I felt like I was getting a really well-rounded education,” Brady, who was a Ford Scholar, says. “What I really valued was not just doing science for the sake of science, but science and people: How does the science affect people? How can it benefit people?”
Those questions are at the heart of his role with the Marine Mammal Commission, where he works to ensure that the best available science is being incorporated into federal government decisions. His work has taken him all over the country: to Alaska, supporting and advocating for Alaska Natives in their subsistence harvest of marine mammals; to Hawaii, where scientists vaccinate monk seals to preserve their populations; to Sarasota, where the world’s longest study of a wild dolphin population is ongoing.
When there are problems without a clear technical solution, he works with Congress and the Commission’s major stakeholders to gather as many perspectives as possible at the table, from conservationists to Indigenous peoples to commercial fishermen and fisherwomen.
Brady with colleagues at the U.S. Capitol for agency briefings for Congress
Their senior year, Brady joined Aya Matsunaga and Luke McKinnon to attend a presentation by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Sonia Nazario. Photo by Spencer Yaffe ’17
Sharing an Eckerd moment
“That’s where it gets really interesting, to be in these spaces to try to find those solutions together,” he says.
Eckerd has been a through line in Brady’s life personally as well as professionally: he and his wife, alumna Sadie Schulte ’17, met at Eckerd but started dating after a shared research expedition in Indonesia when he was in graduate school. Sadie works as an operations manager for the National Wildlife Federation, where they joke that she has the land covered and he has the ocean. They travel frequently with each of their college roommates, most recently on a hiking expedition to Peru with some of their Eckerd friends.
The mentors who shaped him at Eckerd still impact Brady’s approach to life and work, and he provides his own guidance to Eckerd students through the Career Mentor Program.
“I don’t ever view myself as a supervisor; I view myself as a mentor for the people that I work with,” he says. “Mentoring is a big part of my passion within my professional spaces because of the mentoring that occurred at Eckerd.”
Brady and Sadie at Machu Picchu in Peru
