Our Founder
Reef Without Borders
Our Founder
We go where the reefs need us.
There is a reef in the Philippines that Clarisa Strohmeyer first dove twenty-five years ago.
The water was warm and impossibly clear. The coral was alive with color and movement.
Fish threaded through staghorn colonies.
She went back recently. The water was still warm. But the reef had changed.
Reef Without Borders exists because of that change and because simply filming it and posting it was no longer enough.
Our Founder
Clarisa Strohmeyer
Founder & Executive Director
Filipina-American. 25-year diver. Single mother. Founder of a nonprofit built on one belief: the reefs of the Philippines are worth saving, and the people who love them are the ones who have to do it.
Philippine waters
operations leadership
6 countries
incorporated in Texas
She fell in love with the reefs before she knew what they meant.
Her first dive in Gilutungan Island off the coast of Cebu, a school of enormous batfish appeared the moment she entered the water and followed her the entire dive hovering, turning, watching with the kind of calm confidence that only exists in a reef that has never been afraid. She was in her early twenties. She did not know yet that she would spend the next two and a half decades chasing that feeling across every significant reef system in the Philippines.
Moalboal gave her her first shark and her first sea turtle in the same dive. Malapascua showed her a pygmy seahorse no larger than a thumbnail, clinging to a sea fan in twelve meters of water a creature so small and so perfect it still stops her breath when she thinks about it. Manta Bowl off Malapascua was where she descended into a cleaning station and watched a devil ray glide past her silent, immense, utterly indifferent to her presence and felt something shift permanently in how she understood the ocean. Masbate was where she first swam alongside whale sharks, the largest fish on earth, and understood for the first time what it means to be small in a world that is mostly water.
"The reef was alive in a way that is very hard to describe to someone who has never been inside it. Every surface was covered. Every current carried something. You did not dive through the reef. You dived with it."
That was 2003. By 2019 she was back in those same waters and what she found was different in ways that went beyond science or statistics. The colors were muted. The coral structures that had taken decades to build were broken or bleached to white. The fish were fewer. The silence was louder. The reef was not gone but it was diminished, visibly, measurably, in the span of a single lifetime of diving. She had watched it happen in real time, dive by dive, year by year, and she had done nothing. That was the year she decided she was done doing nothing.
A dive log written in memory.
Where giant batfish followed her from entry to exit on her earliest dives an escort she has never forgotten.
Her first shark. Her first sea turtle. One dive, one reef, two encounters that changed how she saw the ocean.
A pygmy seahorse no larger than a thumbnail clinging to a sea fan at 12 meters. Her first dive with a thresher shark at dawn.
A devil ray glided past her at a cleaning station silent, immense, majestic. A moment she describes as one of the most profound of her life underwater.
Where she first swam alongside whale sharks. The largest fish on earth. She understood for the first time what it means to be small in a world that is mostly water.
Where the reefs told her what was at stake. The site that moved Reef Without Borders from an idea into an organization.
The reefs were dying. She decided that was not acceptable.
In 2019 she returned to the reefs she had been diving for nearly two decades. What she found was not catastrophe it was something quieter and in some ways harder to witness. The reefs were not dead. They were fading. Bleaching events had stripped color from formations she remembered as vivid. Coral structures that had taken decades to grow were fractured. Fish populations that had once made certain dive sites feel like aquariums were thinned out, shy, scattered.
She was already running a career in operations and communications. She was already a single mother raising Wolfgang in Houston. She had every reasonable excuse to observe, feel sad, and move on. But she had been watching these reefs for too long to pretend that watching was enough. She had seen what they were. She knew what they were becoming. And she had the organizational experience managing teams across six countries, running communications programs for Catholic institutions, building systems from scratch to actually do something about it.
"I did not start Reef Without Borders because I thought I could save the ocean. I started it because I could not think of a good reason not to try."
Reef Without Borders was incorporated in Texas in May 2026. It is not a large organization. It does not have a big staff. It has a founder with a camera, a dive kit, a science partner in Cebu, and a board of directors who believe the same thing she does: that the reefs of the Philippines are not gone yet, and that the window to act is still open, but it will not stay open forever.
A letter written in coral and saltwater.
Her son Wolfgang is sixteen years old and brilliant in the way that makes a parent quietly terrified of wasting his potential. He is a sophomore at Strake Jesuit in Houston, a 4.36 GPA student who will likely spend his career reshaping something important in the world of technology or science. He did not grow up on the reefs. He grew up watching his mother talk about them.
What she wants him to understand is simpler than any mission statement. She wants him to understand that the world he will inherit still has extraordinary things in it living things, ancient things, things that existed long before any of us and that deserve to exist long after and that one of the most important choices a person can make is to decide that those things are worth protecting even when protecting them is inconvenient, even when it costs something, even when there is no guarantee it will work.
"I want him to understand that doing good is not a special occasion. It is just what you do when you see something broken and you have the ability to help fix it. The reefs are broken. I have the ability to help. So I help."
She also wants him to understand that balance matters not just in ecosystems, but in the way a life is lived. The ocean sustains billions of people. Coral reefs protect coastlines, feed communities, support biodiversity that the entire marine food chain depends on. When reefs collapse, the ripple effects reach people who have never dived, never seen a sea turtle, never heard of Moalboal. Reviving the ocean is not a hobby project. It is one of the most consequential acts of stewardship available to anyone with the knowledge and the willingness to try.
And more than anything, she wants him to know that his mother looked at something that was dying and decided simply, stubbornly, without apology that she would rather spend her life trying to bring it back than explaining to herself someday why she did not.
The experience behind the mission.
Reef Without Borders is not Clarisa's first organization. Before she built this one she spent 15 years building systems, managing teams, and running communications for mission-driven institutions across multiple countries.
Former Operations Director at International Business Times, managing a fully remote team of 50+ staff across six countries including the USA, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and Australia. Built the coordination infrastructure for a global editorial and marketing organization from the ground up.
Communications and Marketing Director at St. Michael Catholic Church in Houston since March 2025, managing website, social media across five platforms, donor communications, and board reporting. Freelance communications and administrative coordinator for the Diocese of Dallas and multiple Catholic nonprofits since 2016.
Experienced in HubSpot CRM, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, and Asana across multiple organizations. Led the fundraising administration for the UPAAH Houston annual gala that raised $100,000 in scholarships for students in the Philippines. Manages donor records, engagement analysis, and reporting for leadership on a daily basis.
Vice President, University of the Philippines Alumni Association Houston Chapter since January 2024. Leads member communications, quarterly newsletters, board meeting coordination, and scholarship fundraising for UP students in the Philippines. Holds a BS in Tourism with a Minor in Marketing from the University of the Philippines WES-verified US bachelor's equivalent.
Proficient in WordPress and Elementor Pro, Adobe Creative Suite, Canva Pro, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Ads Manager, Zapier, and HTML/CSS. Built and manages the Reef Without Borders website independently. Google certified in Project Management, Data Analysis, Digital Marketing, and Analytics.
25 years of active scuba diving experience in Philippine waters. Has dived Tubbataha Reef, Malapascua, Moalboal, Masbate, Gilutungan, Manta Bowl, Maribago Bay, and dozens of sites across the Visayas and beyond. Completed formal firearms training with a retired US Army veteran. Holds multiple safety and emergency certifications.
From the water she is protecting.
These images were taken across Clarisa's 25 years of diving Philippine reefs. Every site pictured is part of the ecosystem Reef Without Borders exists to restore.
To replace a placeholder: click the widget in Elementor, find the image URL in the HTML, and replace the placeholder div with an img tag pointing to your uploaded photo.
The reefs are still here.
So is the window to act.
If her story resonates with you if you have dived these waters, love these reefs, or simply believe that some things are worth protecting there is a place for you in this work.
Reef Without Borders
borderless. relentless.
Houston, Texas • reefwithoutborders.org
info@reefwithoutborders.org
501(c)(3) Status Pending
© 2026 Reef Without Borders