Honoring Marine Log’s Top Women in Maritime 2021

Written by Heather Ervin
Top Women in Maritime 2021
Dr. Virginia Harper

Dr. Virginia Harper, Chief Academic Officer, NavtechUSSurveyors

Harper has been on or around boats most of her life. The daughter of a Navy officer, she was raised in various duty ports, including Washington, D.C., Florida, South Carolina, California and Rhode Island.  She is a fifth generation Floridian on her mother’s side and has taught at the post-secondary level in Florida permanently for over 50 years. In the mid-80s, she spent five years in the Caribbean writing, publishing, chartering and directing with her former husband, a captain’s license school.

In 1987, the commander of the Marine Safety Office in Puerto Rico suggested that they write curriculum for marine surveyor training specifically targeting the recreational and small commercial sector. Over the next 20 years, Harper expanded the curriculum to include seven courses that offer the experienced professional mariner codified learning and examinations to meet the knowledge requirements for vessel inspections for finance, sales, and insurance underwriting for the maritime industry.

In 2006, she earned a Doctorate in curriculum and instruction from the University of Central Florida and was encouraged to author uniquely published papers on maritime online distance learning and training marine surveyors as part of her degree track. A lifelong learner, she is a passionate advocate for the empowerment of education.

ML: What successes are you most proud of in terms of your maritime career? 

VH: The greatest success of Navtech is serving by providing open source learning. I am grateful for over 34 years as co-founder, director, professor, and now chief academic officer of NavtechUSSurveyors. Furthermore, I am extraordinarily proud of our ability to have built a recognized learning community. Since 1987, we have provided instruction to hundreds of practicing surveyors who have either begun or expanded their surveying knowledge base with us.

We are honored to help maritime professionals, who share the same lifelong love of oceans and waterways, to expand and acquire knowledge that leads to a new or second successful maritime career.  

I recently received a personal thank you note from one of our longest practitioners who is about to retire. He wrote “Never doubt that you and Navtech have helped so many of us find a home in the maritime business, added to our incomes, and kept us involved even we are too old to sail on ships.” Our success is truly built on service to the boating business.

Midshipman X

Midshipman X, Anonymous Cadet, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy

We can’t tell you much about our final Top Woman in Maritime selection, Midshipman X. What we do know about her is that her disclosures of rape and sexual assault underline the urgent need for action to eliminate violence in the workplace across the entire shipping industry.

In 2021, she bravely wrote an anonymous letter to a whistleblower blog, shedding light on sexual assault and harassment in the maritime industry. According to those who nominated her, Midshipman X has led the way in making shipping safer for all male and female mariners.

Last month’s International Transport Federation (ITF) Seafarers’ Section Women’s Representation Lena Dyring’s comments on Midshipman X sums up her experience better than we can:

“Sadly, this is not an isolated incident, but a reality for many seafarers, both male and female, regardless of flag or company. We know that women’s experiences in the shipping industry, ashore and at sea often do not match the best intentions laid out in policies. Although many women seafarer trainees have great support during their education ashore, including as part of mentoring programs. It is an all-too-common an experience that too many women seafarers suffer from harassment and bullying. Too many encounter discrimination in the workplace, and in the worst cases, assault.”

As Dyring noted at the end of her statement, everyone in maritime has a responsibility to change the male-dominated culture and remove obstacles and barriers faced by women in the industry.

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