Our Team

Julian Aguon

Founder and president

Julian Aguon is the visionary behind Blue Ocean Law and an Indigenous Chamorro human rights lawyer from Guam. He founded the firm in 2014 to build Pacific-led legal capacity capable of confronting the overlapping crises of climate change, colonialism, and environmental destruction—in deep partnership with Indigenous peoples and frontline communities.

Julian is internationally recognized as a principal architect of the Pacific’s most ambitious climate accountability effort to date: the historic request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on states’ legal obligations in respect of climate change. Beginning in 2019, he served as lead counsel to Vanuatu, helping design and argue the case in close collaboration with Pacific partners and laying the groundwork for the proceedings themselves. The case is already rewriting the rules on state responsibility for climate harm under international law.

Across the Pacific, Julian has partnered with Indigenous communities and governments to defend land, ocean, and self-determination. His work includes advancing legal strategies to resist deep-sea mining, strengthen ocean protection, and challenge U.S. military expansion in Guam and elsewhere, particularly where militarization threatens biodiversity, sacred sites, and cultural survival. Through this work, Julian has helped center Indigenous consent and stewardship as core legal principles rather than peripheral considerations.

Julian’s leadership is guided by a clear ethos: that Indigenous peoples are not only among those most harmed by the climate crisis, but among those holding essential knowledge and practices for charting a way forward. At Blue Ocean Law, this ethos translates into a distinctive legal practice—one that treats law not only as a tool for accountability, but as a means of restoring relationships between people and planet.

Julian is also an acclaimed writer and public intellectual. He is the author of No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies and The Properties of Perpetual Light, works that braid law, lived experience, and Indigenous worldviews to illuminate what justice demands in a time of planetary crisis. His leadership has been recognized globally, including with the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes referred to as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.”

Autumn Bordner

Senior associate

Autumn Bordner is a senior associate at Blue Ocean Law. She plays a central role in the firm’s Pacific-led climate justice, decolonization, and accountability portfolio. Autumn’s practice with Blue Ocean Law has spanned a variety of issue areas, including climate justice, nuclear justice, deep-sea mining, de-militarization, and decolonization. Autumn was deeply involved in the historic climate change advisory proceedings before the International Court of Justice. In addition to a leading role in developing written and oral submissions, she co-led Blue Ocean Law’s testimony collection and evidence development across Melanesia on behalf of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, working closely with governments, community groups, and advocates to ensure that the experiences and perspectives of frontline communities were rigorously documented and reflected in the record before the Court.

Autumn is also the co-founder of the Allies for Micronesia Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization focused on addressing the unique justice challenges facing the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands. She has also worked as a consultant for national and local governments across the Pacific on issues of climate and environmental justice.

Autumn brings strong interdisciplinary training to her legal work. She recently completed her PhD candidature at the University of Melbourne, where she studied the effect of colonial governance on climate change adaptation. More broadly, Autumn scholarship brings together social science and legal methodologies to identify pathways to support Indigenous-led efforts to decolonize the climate justice space and redress contemporary colonial harms. Before entering law, Autumn trained as an environmental scientist and statistician and worked as a data scientist specifically focused on environmental health. All of these interdisciplinary experiences continue to inform her legal practice and approach to climate justice.

Autumn has previously served as a Research Fellow in Ocean Law and Policy at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment; a Lecturer in International Relations at Stanford University; and a law clerk for a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii. She holds a JD from Stanford Law School, a Master of Science from Stanford University, and a BA from Columbia University.

Johanna Chao Kreilick

Chief Strategy Officer

Johanna Chao Kreilick is Chief Strategy Officer of Blue Ocean Law, who brings more than twenty years of experience advancing mission-driven work at the intersection of climate science, legal advocacy, human rights, and institutional change.

From 2020 to 2023, she served as President and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, leading a major organizational transformation and five-year strategy reset. Under her leadership, the organization strengthened alignment across research, advocacy, partnerships, and governance—driving high-impact policy, regulatory, and litigation outcomes across climate, clean energy, food systems, and democratic accountability.

Johanna has deep experience advancing public-interest legal strategies in partnership with scientists, advocates, and affected communities. Her work includes senior leadership at the Open Society Foundations, where she helped launch the Climate Action Initiative and supported early global climate litigation efforts, as well as advisory roles with NYU Law’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice.

A trusted advisor to nonprofit leaders, boards, and philanthropies, Johanna has guided organizations through growth, transition, and strategic repositioning. Earlier in her career, she worked as a community organizer alongside smallholder farmers, workers, and informal vendors in the U.S. and internationally.

She holds a BA with distinction from Stanford University and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she was named a Lucius N. Littauer Fellow. Johanna serves on the boards of the Climate Policy Initiative and Zen Center North Shore.

Theresa “Isa” Arriola

Director of Operations

Theresa “Isa” Arriola is Director of Operations at Blue Ocean Law, where she plays a central role translating ambitious legal strategy into durable, movement-grounded impact. An Indigenous Chamorro anthropologist from the Northern Mariana Islands, Isa brings deep expertise at the intersection of Indigenous rights, environmental justice, and militarization—the very terrain where Blue Ocean Law’s work is most catalytic.

Isa holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from University of California, Los Angeles. Her work analyzes how U.S. military power, environmental governance, and colonial rule converge in Oceania—and how those systems can be transformed to advance climate justice and Indigenous sovereignty. She is a steering committee member of the Network to Dismantle the Military Industrial Complex, where she collaborates with scholars and organizers nationwide to build strategy, narrative, and alliances challenging militarization’s role in driving climate harm and democratic erosion across the United States and its overseas territories.

At Blue Ocean Law, Isa operates at the nexus of strategy, operations, and movement alignment. She has helped design and institutionalize a community-accountable operational model for the firm—developing protocols for Indigenous consent, cross-regional coordination, and long-term relationship stewardship that allow Blue Ocean Law to work effectively across jurisdictions while remaining deeply grounded in frontline realities. Her leadership reflects what makes Blue Ocean Law distinct: rigorous, values-driven legal work rooted in lived experience and accountability to island peoples and the planet.

Maureen Penjueli

strategic advisor

Maureen Penjueli is a strategic advisor to Blue Ocean Law and a Fiji-based advocate for the Pacific. A thought leader with more than three decades of experience advancing climate justice, ocean protection, and community-led development across the Pacific Islands region. Widely recognized for her leadership in building Pacific-driven responses to climate change that center frontline communities, women’s leadership, and regional solidarity. She has played senior roles in advancing regional and global climate and ocean policy, including through long-standing engagement with Pacific civil society networks, intergovernmental processes, and international advocacy spaces where Pacific voices have historically been marginalized or excluded.

As an advisor to Blue Ocean Law, Maureen brings deep regional insight and movement intelligence to the firm’s litigation, advocacy, and international engagements. She advises on strategy, partnerships, and positioning to ensure Blue Ocean Law’s work remains responsive to Pacific realities while contributing to long-term, Pacific-led solutions to the climate crisis. Maureen’s leadership reflects a core principle shared by Blue Ocean Law: that the Pacific is not simply a site of climate vulnerability, but a source of vision, leadership, and solutions for a just and livable future.