June 20, 2025
Washington Sea Grant (WSG) is excited to welcome two new staff this summer: Jubilee Cho is the new graphic designer, and Kaitlyn Kowaleski is a new postdoctoral scholar.
In Jubilee’s role, she works across several creative mediums in print, web, digital and experiential to promote WSG communications, outreach and campaigns.
Jubilee earned her double degree from the University of Washington in Law, Societies and Justice and Visual Communication Design, in effort to intersect her creative passion and advocacy. In her beginning years as a designer, Jubilee worked with local immigrant and refugee non-profits in the Seattle area, including the Japanese Cultural Center and Helping Link (Vietnamese Immigrant and Refugee Non-Profit). These opportunities deeply shaped her design philosophy, transforming her storytelling muscles, design research and accessibility efforts.
Jubilee worked across several social issues, her clientele consisting of Ad Council, National Domestic Workers Alliance, Google (Disabled Creators Event), United We Dream, Yoga Alliance, Welcome.US, Immigrants are Essential, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, CeasefirePA, FIA La Red, and more.
Most recently, Jubilee worked with Pixel NY where she served as the lead designer and junior art director, developing branding, and award-winning digital and social campaigns for Canon USA.
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Kaitlyn works at the intersection between marine invertebrates and the coastal communities that depend on them. She joins Washington Sea Grant as a postdoctoral scholar working to support scenario planning and decision making by the Willapa-Grays Harbor Estuary Collaborative. Along with the Collaborative’s facilitation team, Kaitlyn will be convening focus groups and conducting oral history interviews with diverse stakeholders, including shellfish aquaculture industry members, researchers, tribes, and state and federal partners. Insights from these meetings will be incorporated into conceptual social-ecological system models through an iterative feedback process with Collaborative members. The consensus model will be used for scenario planning and evaluating alternative management strategies for the coastal estuaries.
Beyond her research, Kaitlyn is committed to providing high-quality marine science education and outreach, particularly for K-12 audiences and undergraduate students. She has experience developing K-12 lesson plans and has led activities at numerous community education events. As a graduate student, she developed and taught two undergraduate seminars on the Fisheries and Fishing Communities of Chesapeake Bay and Marvelous Molluscs: Introduction to Malacology.
Trained as a fisheries scientist, Kaitlyn earned a B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic and a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Her early research experiences included conducting oral history interviews with marine worm harvesters in coastal Maine to document their local ecological knowledge and the social dynamics of this little-known fishery. Her Ph.D. research focused on the reproductive and feeding ecology of Atlantic sea scallops, particularly at high population densities. As part of that work, she developed decision tools to aid in the management of high-density recruitment events, a complex management challenge in the fishery. Outside of her work in marine science, Kaitlyn enjoys hiking, reading fantasy/sci fi novels, and fostering rescue animals.
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Washington Sea Grant, based at the University of Washington, helps people and marine life thrive through research, technical expertise and education supporting the responsible use and conservation of coastal ecosystems. Washington Sea Grant is one of 34 Sea Grant programs supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in coastal and Great Lakes states that encourage the wise stewardship of our marine resources through research, education, outreach and technology transfer.
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JUN
2025