January 22, 2021 By Shelley Byrne
As it moves into 2021, the Seamen’s Church Institute (SCI) has repositioned its legal advocacy arm and updated its website to better serve brown-water mariners.
Following the retirement of Doug Stevenson after a 29-year career as director of SCI’s Center for Seafarer Rights, based in Port Newark, N.J., the organization has hired Phillip C. Schifflin Jr. as its new director of the Center for Mariner Advocacy, which now makes its home in Schifflin’s adopted hometown of New Orleans, La.
The name change and move are designed, in part, to enable Schifflin to serve both brown-water and blue-water mariners. Schifflin is working out of donated office space from Turn Services and has been on board with SCI since November. He comes to SCI after a 30-year Coast Guard career that included serving as staff judge advocate (senior legal counsel) for Coast Guard District 8 and, prior to that,