Women Leaders from Across Texas Learn About Environment, Economy at HRI

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Women leaders from across the state of Texas gathered at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies (HRI) on the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi campus to learn about the connections between our Gulf of Mexico environment and the economy on Friday, June 4.

HRI welcomed Leadership Women Texas, a professional leadership program that takes a group of about 90 women leaders chosen from different professional backgrounds from all over the state of Texas to visit four Texas cities in a year. They choose two major market cities in Texas, a coastal or border community and a rural community, in order to get a glimpse of the diversity of issues in the state. In these cities, they attend a program that highlights the issues affecting those cities and the state of Texas.

“Our biggest piece of advice for women leaders wherever they are in their journey is to step outside their own box,” said Heidi K. Murray, chief operating officer with Leadership Women. “Women are gaining so many more positions of influence and prestige in the world, but they’re typically doing that within their own silos. It’s important to get to know the world outside their own sphere of influence, keep learning, and keep moving forward.”

Murray said they included Corpus Christi in their program this year to educate the women on the Gulf of Mexico’s role in Texas’s economy. The Gulf is considered by many to be a working sea with extensive energy, shipping, fishing and tourism commerce.

“It’s really important for women to know what is happening in the Gulf because it affects every part of Texas,” Murray said. “It impacts our weather, our coastlines, the economics of the state with the port here.”

HRI hosted a two-day program that walked the women through how one popular commercially fished species, the oyster, can have a huge influence on our environment and economy. HRI has been on the cutting edge of reef restoration and oyster ecology in recent years, running a more than decadelong successful oyster recycling program and providing the science needed to back legislation that allows oyster aquaculture for the first time in the state of Texas.

 The institute welcomed the group with an oyster-themed dinner at Water Street Oyster Bar in downtown Corpus Christi. The dinner featured oysters from different parts of North America, including Louisiana wild-caught oysters, aquaculture-grown oysters from Boston, and oysters from Prince Edward Island in Canada, so that the women could learn about the differences. They were also taught how to shuck their own oysters. Brad Lomax, founder and CEO of Water Street Restaurants and friend of the institute, spoke with the women about the potential future of oyster aquaculture in the state of Texas and why he’s getting into the business.

The next day, the women visited the HRI facility where they heard a presentation on the intersection between the environment and the economy in the Gulf of Mexico by HRI Associate Director Gail Sutton. HRI Research Specialist Natasha Breaux spoke to the group about the biology of oysters. Then they were walked through 15-minute hands-on demonstration booths relating to different aspects of oyster ecology with lessons about water quality, habitat resiliency, life cycle and disease, and the oyster recycling and reef restoration process.

“When you think about oysters you think about how much folks enjoy them, but you don’t think about all the work and research that goes into getting them from the Gulf, keeping our environment healthy, and getting them to your plate every day,” said Tashara Parker, a journalist in Dallas and a member of the 2020 Leadership Women Texas class. “There’s so much that goes on behind the scenes to make that happen.”

The booths were primarily run by students, Sutton said, which gave them a chance to work on their outreach skills and to interact with women leaders. Murray said the Leadership Women were impressed with the number of female graduate students at HRI — the institute’s student body is currently 80 percent women, which reflects larger trends in marine science.

“It is so important to promote women in STEM and to know the future of Gulf of Mexico science is in these women students is right up our alley,” Murray said.

The goal of the sessions was to teach women how to be active citizens through learning more about science and the environment, Sutton said. Sutton went through her own transition into environmental science leadership — she had a 19-year career in banking before coming over to TAMU-CC to finish her master’s degree in Fisheries and Mariculture science, work at the campus’ Center for Coastal Studies, and eventually help lead HRI. She is the co-founder and driving force behind the institute’s popular Oyster Recycling Program.

“We want these women to be active stakeholders in their environment, and we hope now that they feel better armed with knowledge about the coastal environment, its connection to the economy, and what some of the trade-offs are, they can make a difference in their own communities,” Sutton said.