On Leaving FWI and Reflections Over The Last Six Years

Thomas Billington
5 days ago
5 min read

The Headlines:

I (Tom) have formally left FWI as a paid team member as of May 5th.
I will continue on as a trustee of the board, and expect to still be involved in some decision-making and projects.
This shouldn’t affect FWI at all, really, as we have been operating with me in limited capacity for the last 9 months as I have been phasing out.
I am going to be spending more time on developing a new project for making change for farmed animals in LMICs. I will also be continuing on in my part-time capacity with The Mission Motor.

Hey folks!

This post is going to be written in a bit of a different format to our usual ones. For those of you that may not know, I (Tom, co-founder of Fish Welfare Initiative—yes, there were two of us this whole time!) have decided to step down after almost six years of service to the fishes in order to pursue new frontiers in making the world a better place for animals.

The main reason for my stepping down is because the organization has stopped needing me to function well. It’s what every co-founder dreams of: FWI is all grown up. As time has gone on, day-to-day questions at FWI have become less about “what should we do?” and more about executing on the existing plan. The wild years of needing to fundamentally shift our plan every third quarter seem (mostly) behind us, with much relief. But with a more stable ship comes less need for crew, and so my eyes started drifting to the horizon. I have been slowly phasing out for the past 9 months, and now feels like the time where if I want to seriously invest in other projects, I need to say a final goodbye to being a paid staff member at FWI.

That’s the main content. For those who are still interested, I wanted to take a fairly self-indulgent trip down memory lane and reflect on the experience of fighting for fishes.

I met the wonderful, quirky, and ever-committed Haven King-Nobles in 2019, about 4 weeks before we started a charity together. At the risk of sounding like we’re married, I hit it off with Haven pretty much instantly. What really struck me was how genuinely committed he was. I have seen Haven do everything for fishes: sleeping on floors as he travels across the world, working until ridiculously late to help me hit a deadline, sacrificing his personal life in America to work in rural India, working on pages and pages of deathly boring administrative tasks. I genuinely believe that there is little to nothing that he wouldn’t do if he thought it was the right thing. Seeing Haven move through the world has been a genuine inspiration for me.

Haven and I in 2019 (left), when we first started FWI, and 2025 (right). (Editor’s note: It remains unclear whether Tom has grown taller or Haven has grown shorter.)

Those first few months of FWI, honestly, we had no clue what we were getting ourselves into. I did not know I was going to be spending half of the year in India. I did not know how novel the problem we were trying to solve really was (fishes, in LMICs, as part of the informal market, without the ability to use corporate campaigning, with a group of species with barely any research done about them, and without any standardization in farming practices). Honestly, if you had explained to me back then what FWI was going to really be, I’m not sure I would have started it. That would have probably been the biggest mistake of my life—thank the lord nobody told me.

I have learned so much about making change for animals through co-running FWI. We have visited hundreds of farms and have seen both the suffering of animals and the trials that farmers go through to earn a living. We have grown from 2 to roughly 25 people, and I have had the amazing fortune to work with some of the most dedicated and impact-first people I have met. I have also had the opportunity to build a workplace culture of which I am extremely proud: The ferocious pursuit we take to making change, the unwaveringly critical eye we apply to our work, the standards we set for ourselves to be top-level doers, and the way that we are always looking to help others who want to make change. I am completely in love with the way that FWI does things.

The first ever “team picture” (left) of FWI (Haven and our then comms volunteer, Sophia, could not be there in person), and our latest team picture (right).

Running FWI has also been extremely hard at times. Pushing into new ground inevitably means uncovering unpassable stones, and we have had a lot of lessons we had to learn the hard way. I am also saddened by the intense pain that our team witnesses with such regularity. There is a certain numbness that you feel when you are standing on an earthy bank, chatting to the team and to farmers, as in the middle distance tens of thousands of mouths gasp for breath that will not come. The pain that is inflicted on you does not hit you all at once, but I expect I’ll always carry it around.

The future for Fish Welfare Initiative is one of optimistic uncertainty. At this point, our team is used to the work of finding new ways to make change. But over the last year, our research into novel approaches (such as satellite imagery for water quality detection), as well as the continual pushes forward in our Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture, has made it feel like a large-scale impact is within reach. Fish Welfare Initiative is, in my humble opinion, one of the most innovative, rigorous, and transparent animal organizations, and I feel very proud of the standard the FWI team is building and honoured by the continual support we have received.

For my own personal future, I continue to be passionate about two key areas I believe our movement can expand:

The level of rigour we take to monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL). I intend to keep pursuing this through my work at The Mission Motor, a non-profit providing free MEL support for animal organizations.
Finding new ways to make change for farmed animals in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). I intend to pursue a new venture that is yet to be finalized. Some of the ideas are written here.

At FWI, I will be continuing as a member of the board, plan to still visit the team, cheerlead for their wins, and support in any way that I can.

Co-founding Fish Welfare Initiative has probably been the most meaningful thing I have ever done. A large part of this has been seeing how my work has allowed for the cultivation of a team of people who have both the skill and determination to make meaningful change for a group of animals so easily forgotten. I deeply appreciate all of you, and I deeply appreciate all those who have made our work possible either through financial support or any other kind of support—thank you for giving me the opportunity to make the world a little brighter.

I’m going to end with some of my favourite pictures from the past 6 years.

With love,

Tom

Co-founder and Board Member, Fish Welfare Initiative