25 years in branding & design
An award-winning career built on distilling complex ideas into clear, compelling communication, applied now to the most important brief I've ever worked on.
About the Founder
Not exactly what you'd expect.
MotherOceanBlue was founded by a woman, a designer, a mother and a scuba diver, who was frustrated about what her sons weren't being taught at school.
Zakia's Story
If schools weren't going to teach it, I will.
I grew up as far from the ocean as you can get in England. First generation, daughter of migrants. No one in my world dived. Nobody swam in the sea.
Then I got my scuba qualification on my honeymoon. And everything changed. The moment I took my first breath underwater I felt a deep and profound connection.
I fell completely in love with the ocean. The sounds. The colour. The fact that this extraordinary world exists right beneath us, and most people never get to see it. But I did, and it changed me for good.
A few years later, my son came home with a geography project. Two weeks on the great Pacific garbage patch. That was it. That was everything his school would teach him about the ocean and the problems humanity is facing.
I was absolutely incensed.
These students are going to inherit the planet. They'll be the voters, the decision makers, the business leaders, and nobody is telling them how the ocean, how the planet works. What we're doing to it. And vitally, what they could do to help it.
So I built MotherOceanBlue. Because if schools weren't going to teach it, I will.
I met the love of my life on my honeymoon. The marriage didn't last, but the ocean has remained a solid companion. The ocean healed me after the hardest period of my life. Now I've dedicated my life to protecting this vital environment. Ocean welfare is human welfare, and it's my job to make sure it's still there, and still extraordinary, when the next generation needs it.
"Ocean welfare is human welfare, and it's my job to make sure it's still there when the next generation needs it."Zakia Rashid, Founder
What I Bring
A founder built for this brief
A global science network
A global network of marine scientists and conservationists. Relationships built dive by dive, conversation by conversation, over years of showing up in the places where the real work happens.
A proven model
MotherOceanBlue grew from a local after-school programme into a global proposition. During the pandemic, virtual sessions reached schools and audiences across continents, including a pitch to the Education Minister of Monaco. The model is proven. The demand is real.
Independence
MotherOceanBlue is founder-funded and answers to no fossil fuel interests. That matters, in education, in conservation and in the science we support.
Values
What we stand on
Truth over comfort
We teach what the curriculum doesn't, because young people deserve accurate, clear information about the world they're inheriting. They leave the programme with the confidence to move forward in life with agency.
Science, always
Every session, every funded project, every partnership is grounded in verified, peer-reviewed marine and climate science.
Independence, non-negotiable
We will not accept funding from industries whose interests conflict with ocean health. Every corporate partner goes through due diligence.
Hope, earned not assumed
We don't pretend the ocean is fine. We don't leave students in despair either. We show them what's possible, and equip them to help make it happen. Hope and resilience are the veins that run through the Ocean Academy.
Bring the Ocean Academy to your students
Real ocean science, real conservation challenges, and real reasons for hope, for students aged 13-24.