Caitlin Hardy is the Founder and Managing Director of Ness Sea
Consulting. She began her career as a naval architect, focusing on
workboats, commercial fishing vessels, sealifts, passenger vessels,
and salvage.
Utilizing her engineering background, she moved into project
management roles for new vessel construction. As her experiences
shifted from engineering on a single vessel to building a class of
multiple vessels, she moved to the cruise industry to oversee
continuous improvement across fleet operations for four lines. This
experience of navigating the considerations for an operating
company from a single vessel to looking across an operating
company’s entire fleet has given her unique insights into navigating
the value propositions and challenges at each decision-making
point.
After completing her MBA, she spent time in two Series A startups
focused on different aspects of the maritime and defense industries
in cybersecurity and vessel analytics in product and leadership
roles. Most recently, she led the US entity of Kongsberg Discovery,
focused on expanding the company’s offerings across all four
product centers in the US, including establishing a US AUV team.
Since establishing Ness Sea, she is proud to have served start-ups,
foreign governments, large primes, and non-profits around
maritime and defense innovation that are providing capabilities to
support the urgency of issues we face today.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in Naval Architecture from the US
Naval Academy and an MBA from the University of Washington,
Foster School of Business. Currently, she serves as the Co-Vice
Chair on the Board of Washington Maritime BLUE and on the
Editorial Board of Lloyd’s List. In her free time, she loves to explore
the Pacific Northwest with her family and friends, from sailing and
kayaking on the water to skiing in the mountains.