Internationally recognized as a leader in the fields of coastal resilience and aquatic ecosystem restoration, Evelyn Tickle is the CEO and Founder of GRoW Reefs llc. Educated as an architect at SCI_Arc in Los Angeles, she is an expert in biomimetic design and concrete fabrication. Evelyn invented GRoW Reefs’ biophilic concrete and patented reef restoration products. Tested by VIMS, the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, these calcium carbonate rich products have been installed in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay, along the north-eastern seaboard of the United States and on the south coast of the UK, protecting shorelines, attenuating wave energy, and increasing biodiversity. Current multi-year research, funded by Schmidt Marine Technology Partners / The Schmidt Family Foundation, on the marriage of oysters and seagrasses, with VIMS, the University of Florida and Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, will establish carbon metrics and nitrogen burial statistics for hybrid, vegetated marine environments using GRoW substrate materials. Evelyn is actively involved in initiatives in the US Offshore Wind Industry, campaigning on the basis that Clean Energy must not be delivered at the expense of a Dirty Ocean. GroW is developing new products specifically addressing challenges posed by this matter of concern that demand immediate attention — reducing the need for dredging, providing scour protection for foundations, inter-array and export cabling, restoring the seabed.

Evelyn is an Architecture Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, was selected as a Solver by MIT in 2019, and a RISE Innovation Fellow in 2020. She has more than twenty years experience as an educator, teaching architectural design and construction studios around the United States.