Aan Ortiz joined ASLC as the Director of Community Engagement in November 2024 to advance ASLC's support for the Seward community, Alaska, and our professional networks. In that capacity, Aan is being welcomed into the Community Organized Restoration and Learning (CORaL) Network, a partnership of six organizations in the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill impacted areas collaborating innovative pathways to advance understanding and stewardship of the affected maritime communities and the marine systems to heal the past harms to the lands and waters, its peoples, and the animals on which everyone relies.

Aan's passion and great respect for nature and its processes stem from her experience being raised in a subsistence lifestyle in Akiachak, Alaska. Aan now embraces her Alaska Native Yup'ik culture, 1st language, and traditions. Aan loves all animals. and inherited that love and compassion for people, the land, and animals from her family. Her favorite memories are of her parents, Tutmaralria “Tutaq” (Eddie, Sr.), Cucuaq (Elizabeth) Pasitnak, and siblings working together to prepare, hunt, gather, process, package and finally, eat the healthiest diet that nature can provide! Through this ‘learning from being in community,’ her parents, grandparents, great-grandfather, and elders of the community are excited to share those stories! Aan and her teenage son Christian revere Asiqtuq (Tuq), the Alaska SeaLife Center harbor seal whose joy and presence in the exhibition areas help them heal from the loss of a loved one. They value ASLC’s recent rescue patient Uki, the baby walrus, for walking similar to healing before moving to a forever home. Both Uki and Tuk help us all experience the joy of caring for all of nature including ourselves.