Ninjas are said to be warriors especially skilled in unorthodox ways of waging war. Perhaps that's why Adriana Sánchez, aka Seafood Ninja, chose that alias. She has a personal and different approach to sustainability in the seafood industry. She is not a woman of sweet talk but rather of keywords. Collective, cost-effective, trust, storytelling, or handholding are some of the ones she repeats the most during our talk. Also, strategy and, of course people because, as she says, "responsible seafood is about people."
Those keywords and asking questions -as many as necessary to get to know her clients and adapt to their needs- are her main weapons. "It's not just development strategy but developing the story behind that strategy," she claims. Armed with words and knowledge is how this mother of four turned warrior intends to achieve her ultimate goal: democratizing access to sustainability for all seafood companies, whatever their size. Because "sustainability is not one-size-fits-all."
Adriana Sánchez's history with sustainability in the seafood industry began long before she became a ninja. In 2010, her father asked her if she wanted to join the family business, a seafood importer and distributor, to help with the supply chain and "this new thing about sustainability." He wanted her to help them understand what that meant. "So, I started working with him. It was mostly working with purchase orders and shipments, and then 20% of my time was dedicated to understanding what sustainable seafood was," she recalls.
They were getting customer requests, but what was being asked of the industry? A project, a certificate… "No one really understood what it meant," she looks back. So, she started networking with NGOs and learning about seafood sustainability, and, almost without realizing it, she was starting a career. Adriana Sánchez learned, and the next thing was a blog to share that knowledge. "Seafood Ninja started as a blog, a way of me talking about sustainability in the industry from my own experience," she remembers. Later, the blog evolved and became something more.
Working for the family business, Adriana realized that there was a disparity in access to sustainability for seafood producers. She would go to meetings where the people, the companies, and the conversations were always the same. Small companies that didn't have a sustainability point-person were left out. "It was very biased, and I felt that it was not fair that smaller companies were not invited to have this conversation," she says. She asked herself, "What if Seafood Ninja can create some sort of cost-effective solutions for companies to understand what sustainability is, what is it that we're talking about in ways that are simple for all?"
Adriana decided to take the plunge partly inspired by recruitment agencies – she thought that if there are so many different functions you can outsource within a company, why can't you do the same thing with sustainability? -. There's clearly a need, Darian McBain, the mentor of our previous TalentView, Tracy Murai – who described her as an "inspiring seafood sustainability leader" – also inspired this Seafood Ninja of sustainability.
"Darian McBain, which is amazing in the industry, started her own company. "It's called Outsourced Chief Sustainability Officer (OCSO) Asia" Adriana explains. But, what about those companies that are not even thinking about hiring their own CSO, but rather are still trying to answer questions like, What is sustainability? What do I need to know? What do my customers ask for? Or how do I make sure my products continue to have market access? They have found a strategic partner in Seafood Ninja, which was founded on August 2, 2017, as "a passion project."
When we ask Adriana Sánchez why it is so important that regardless of the size, everybody can reach this part of the industry, she doesn't hesitate. "Sustainability is not a one-size-fits-all," she answers. "And that's why it's so important to understand where the companies are developmentally in their process," she continues. Taking it one step at a time, she says, is fundamental for any company in its sustainability strategy, but even more so for medium-sized or small companies, which make a big investment effort to establish it.
"If they don't build a foundation and go from 0 to 100 and put all this money, they're expecting a quick return on investment," she says. If that return on investment doesn't come, they get frustrated and decide it's not worth their time or effort and drop out. "And as long as there's a market for non-sustainable products, we will still be spinning our wheels. So that's why I think it's important that everyone is engaged in conversation with the current sustainability movement, no matter how big they are, no matter if it's 100% of their products or just the top 10."
"As long as there's a market for non-sustainable products, we will still be spinning our wheels. So that's why I think it's important that everyone is engaged in conversation with the current sustainability movement"
– Adriana Sánchez, Seafood Ninja
Adriana explains her first steps upon arriving at a new company is trying to understand their end goal. She asks questions like: What are the values of your company? What do you want to do? Why do you do it? "Understanding what motivates them," Adriana says. Once she understands what commitments their current (and prospective) retailer customers have, she can work to help them meet them. However, she insists, you always have to set achievable goals. "It's just pushing them enough that they feel discomfort but not making ridiculous objectives because then they're going to be frustrated and drop out of the program."
"Having come from the industry, it's helpful because they understand that we all speak the same language," she continues. This Seafood Ninja not only asks questions. She also listens carefully to the answers. And with all that information, Adriana Sánchez provides her clients with what she calls "small wins" so that, little by little, they can take flight starting from achievable goals and be able to set more ambitious objectives as they progress in their sustainability journey. "It's a little bit of handholding, it's a lot of listening, and understanding what motivates them, because I want them to be motivated in the long-term."
Because regardless of whether her clients continue their sustainability efforts with her or another company or NGO, Adriana's ultimate goal is getting those companies engaged for the long term. First, she asks the questions – "I call it triage," she says -. Then, she places them exactly where they are in the sustainability space. And finally, she suggests their next steps. Her commitment is not only to her clients but to the sustainability of the entire seafood industry.
We said at the beginning that asking questions was one of Seafood Ninja's main weapons. The other is keywords: handholding, cost-effective, collective, trust… Companies, she says, should not be afraid of who their other competitors are; on the contrary, they should seize that opportunity and trust. As she sees it, many companies source from the same producers and, by engaging them collectively, they can share on the costs of improvement. Her connections can help them in their sustainability strategy because, by working with more than one company at a time, it is easier to identify opportunities for improvement and negotiate critical partnerships with industry and NGOs. "It's collective impact and collective action," she summarizes.
However, if there is one keyword for Adriana Sánchez, it is storytelling. For her, storytelling, in a way, humanizes the industry. "The seafood industry is not really great at talking about themselves," she says. "It's reactive," she continues, "there's always somebody attacking the industry and we are firing back and putting out fires." That's why it is so important to tell that story, "Because we have lost the connection to the people that harvest our food." And she gives an example of the problem of overfishing – How do we solve it? By banning it?
"From a place of privilege, of course, that makes complete sense," she admits, "but when you look at the millions of people whose livelihood depends on fishing activity or farming, the most vulnerable to climate change in coastal regions and countries, it's not that simple." Food, she says, is about people. "Responsible seafood is about people. So, why can't we tell that narrative instead of 'oh, this is good or it's bad'?" As she states, nothing is good or bad, there are so many shades of grey, especially in such a complex industry.
That's why storytelling is so important because it's not greenwashing. As she sees it, storytelling is much more powerful. "Why a fair-trade label is such powerful messaging?" she wonders. "Because there's a story behind it, and usually, the people producing our food are in the center of that." For her, "it's not just development strategy but developing the story behind that strategy, or how we can together work on improvement, or what that improvement looks like because it's not the same for everybody."
But this Seafood Ninja doesn't just battle with questions and keywords. She also does it by sitting at the table of organizations. Adriana is an advisory committee member at FisheryProgress, and a steering board member at Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI), she brings diversity as a Latin woman… But, above all, she brings what a friend of hers calls "the no-nonsense approach." Very pragmatic, her favorite sentence in those meetings is: "This is wonderful, but how do we land it?" As she says, "just reminding people that we don't live in a bubble and the seafood world is very complex."
A practical view of the world, and lots of passion, this is what Adriana Sánchez brings to the table of seafood sustainability. But this tireless warrior, this Seafood Ninja, already has her sights set on something else. "The newest thing I'm exploring is climate strategy," she tells WeAreAquaculture. "Now what we're seeing is that retailers mostly in the EU and some food service and retailers here in the U.S. are starting to think about their own climate strategy and are asking their vendors to set science-based targets, develop a climate strategy to calculate their greenhouse gas emissions, and have a decarbonization road map," she explains.
"Just when the industry was wrapping its heads around what is environmental sustainability and social responsibility, now we're being asked to tackle climate strategy. And it's not just about 'recycling' or improving packaging, it's a whole other monster." So, the warrior is back in the saddle. Adriana dove into the climate strategy space and connected with two companies to help her understand what data is needed. She won't be the one doing the calculating, but she will provide support and manage these projects for her clients. "I don't want to learn how to do the calculations I want to just digest the ask for the industry and how that translates into what do they need to know, what are actionable steps, and how do they communicate their climate strategy to their customers." Seafood Ninja, providing handholding again.
Things are changing, Adriana says. "We are in this pivotal moment that after 20-something years of the sustainability movement, there's not only fatigue but also retrospection." People and organizations are realizing that the sustainability landscape is evolving. Diversity and inclusion are now being addressed in the movement. The global North has traditionally pushed many of these policies and understanding of what is sustainable to the South, and conversations are starting to take place about what is feasible and what is not. It is time to check what has worked and what has not, to realign and reorient.
What does this mean for her and her project? "For Seafood Ninja understanding the current sustainability landscape allows me to better advocate for our industry in that space," she says. It's very easy to ask for more of everything – she tells us – but that doesn't necessarily translate into higher profit for producers. Her competitive advantage is that as a consultant she is a 'free agent.' She has the freedom to ask questions, push back on NGOs' asks, advocate for the industry, and be their ally by creating resources that give them the ability to catch up and get where they need to be. "I call it democratizing access to sustainability. And that really is at the core of everything."
As we said at the beginning, Adriana Sánchez is the Seafood Ninja, a warrior immersed in a fight to make sustainability more accessible, inclusive, and available to any company within the seafood industry, regardless of its size. Her recurring question is, "How do we continue to bring people to the table, and if there's no seat at that table, how do we make our own table?" And she has an answer, "You have to build a more equitable supply chain. You have to distribute the cost of sustainability. You can still be profitable. But be fair."