Mr. Spyros Capralos serves since July 2014 as the non-executive Chairman of our Board of Directors and as a director.  He is also the Chairman of the Compensation Committee. From February 2011 to July 2014, Mr. Capralos served as our Chief Executive Officer, President and director. Effective as of January 1, 2015, Mr. Capralos also serves as Chief Executive Officer of Oceanbulk Container Carriers LLC. From October 2004 to October 2010, Mr. Capralos served as Chairman of the Athens Exchange and Chief Executive Officer of the Hellenic Exchanges Group and for the period from 2008-2010 was also the President of the Federation of European Securities Exchanges. He was formerly Vice Chairman of the National Bank of Greece, Vice Chairman of Bulgarian Post Bank, Managing Director of the Bank of Athens and has a ten-year banking experience with Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche Bank) in Paris, New York, Athens, Milan, London. Mr. Capralos is a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) , the President of the European Olympic Committees (EOC) and the President of the Greek Olympic Committee (HOC). He has also served as Secretary General of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and Executive Director and Deputy Chief Operating Officer of the Organizing Committee for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. He has been an Olympic athlete in water polo and has competed in the Moscow (1980) and the Los Angeles (1984) Olympic Games. He studied economics at the University of Athens and earned his Master Degree in Business Administration from INSEAD University in France.

Mr. Petros Pappas serves since July 2014 as our CEO and as a director on our board of directors. Mr. Pappas served from our inception up to July 2014 as our non-executive Chairman of the board of directors and director. He served as a member of Star Maritime’s board of directors since its inception. Throughout his career as a principal and manager in the shipping industry, Mr. Pappas has been involved in approximately 300 vessel acquisitions and disposals. In 1989, he founded Oceanbulk Maritime S.A., a dry cargo shipping company that has operated managed vessels aggregating as much as 1.6 million deadweight tons of cargo capacity. He also founded Oceanbulk affiliated companies, which are involved in the ownership and management sectors of the shipping industry. Mr. Pappas serves on the Board of Directors of the UK Defense Club, a leading insurance provider of legal defense services in the shipping industry worldwide and is a member of the Union of Greek Ship Owners (UGS). Mr. Pappas received his B.A. in Economics and his MBA from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Mr. Pappas was awarded the 2014 Lloyd’s List Greek Awards “Shipping Personality of the Year”.

Mr. Mahesh Balakrishnan has served as a director on our board of directors since February 2015 and is also the Chairman of the ESG Committee. Mr. Balakrishnan has extensive financial and business experience, as well as in depth knowledge of the dry bulk shipping industry. Until August 2019, Mr. Balakrishnan was a Managing Director in Oaktree’s Opportunities Funds. He joined Oaktree in 2007 and focused on investing in the chemicals, energy, financial institutions, real estate and shipping sectors. Mr. Balakrishnan has worked with a number of Oaktree’s portfolio companies and has served on the boards of STORE Capital Corp. (NYSE:STOR) and Momentive Performance Materials. He has been active on a number of creditors’ committees, including ad hoc committees in the Lehman Brothers and LyondellBasell restructurings. Prior to Oaktree, Mr. Balakrishnan spent two years as an analyst in the Financial Sponsors & Leveraged Finance group at UBS Investment Bank. Mr. Balakrishnan graduated cum laude with a B.A. degree in Economics (Honors) from Yale University.

Mr. Koert Erhardt serves and has served as a director on our Board since the Company’s inception. He is also the Chairman of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. He has served as the Managing Director of Augustea Bunge Maritime Ltd. of Malta. From 1998 to September 2004, Mr. Erhardt served as General Manager of Coeclerici Armatori S.p.A. and Coeclerici Logistics S.p.A., affiliates of the Coeclerici Group, where he created a shipping pool that commercially managed over 130 vessels with a carrying volume of 72 million tons and developed the use of the Freight Forward Agreement trading, which acts as a financial hedging mechanism for the pool. Prior to these positions, Mr. Erhardt served in various management positions in the shipping industry. Mr. Erhardt received his Diploma in Maritime Economics and Logistics from Hogere Havenen Vervoersschool (now Erasmus University), Rotterdam, and successfully completed the International Executive Program at INSEAD, Fontainebleau

Mr. Nikolaos Karellis serves as a Director on our Board of Directors since May 2016 and as Chairman of the Audit Committee since May 2020. Mr. Karellis is currently a Director of the Advisory firm Marininvest Advisers Ltd and has more than 35 years of experience in the shipping sector at various financial institutions. Until 2013, he served as the Head of Shipping of HSBC Bank plc in Athens, Greece for 28 years, where he built a business unit providing a comprehensive range of services to Greek shipping companies. Prior to HSBC, he worked at Bank of America. Mr. Karellis received his Msc in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens and received a Master of Business Administration in Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Blystad serves as Director on our Board of Directors since July 6, 2018. He is an independent investor located in Oslo, Norway. The Blystad Group, which is 100% owned and controlled by Mr. Arne Blystad and his immediate family, has a long history in international shipping. Mr. Blystad began, after high school, his career as a shipbroker in London and New York. He later started various ventures within the shipping and offshore drilling space. This has involved both private and public listed companies, where he has held various board and management positions over the years. The Blystad Group has today investments in various shipping segments such as dry bulk , chemical tankers, container feeder  and semi sub heavy-lift, real-estate and securities.

Mr. Raffaele Zagari serves as director on our board of directors since August 2018. In his career he has developed approximately 25 years experience in the shipping business. Since 2010, as CEO of Augustea Group Mr Zagari engineered and implemented the expansion and consolidation of the dry bulk business that has led to the incorporation of Augustea Atlantica, and its subsidiaries in Argentina, Singapore, London and Malta (“Augustea Group”). He has actively promoted the incorporation of CBC, AOM, ABML and ABY, the joint ventures in which Augustea Atlantica is a shareholder. He has funded the towage company Augustea Grancolombia in the Santa Marta area in Colombia and he has, over the years, worked closely with Drummond Coal and Glencore on their logistical/maritime needs for their local coal loading operations which have a combined 60 million tons yearly throughput. During this time he supervised in excess of 50 sale and purchase projects (both new building and second hand), and more than a dozen long-term ship leases primarily with the support of Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co. Since 1997 he has been actively leading the Chartering Department of Augustea Dry Bulk Division, and directing the other business of  the Augustea Group. In 2017, Raffaele was  appointed Chairman of   Augustea Group Holding SpA, in addition to his role as the Group’s CEO. He is also appointed as   non-executive director in Steamship Mutual, one of the largest P&I marine insurance, where he also chairs the Underwriting and Reinsurance Committee. Prior to joining  Augustea, and for the period 1993-1995, Mr Zagari  worked for Blenheim Shipping (a company of the former Scinicariello Augustea Group)   during which time he gained extensive experience in the Japanese shipyards, Sumitomo Yokuska and Sanoyas Mitsushima,  as assistant site supervisor. In 1996 -1997 ,  he worked   at Zodiac Maritime Agencies with the operations department before joining the Augustea Group. Mr Zagari  holds a Diploma in Commercial Operation of Shipping at Guldhall University London.

Eleni Vrettou is the Chief Executive Officer of Attica Bank since September 2022 and has more than 20 years international experience in Banking, specializing in the areas of Investment, Corporate and Commercial Banking. Prior to her present position, she held the role of Chief Strategy and Investor Relations Officer for Lamda Development. From April 2019 to April 2022 Ms. Vrettou served as the Executive General Manager, Chief of Corporate and Investment Banking at Piraeus Bank Group and she has also acted as Chairman of the Board of Directors for Piraeus Factors S.A, Piraeus Leasing and Piraeus Leases, as well as a Director for ETVA Industrial Development Zones. Previously, she had worked for 14 years at HSBC Bank Plc (“HSBC”) in Greece and the United Kingdom. In her most recent role at HSBC, Ms Vrettou was a Managing Director and Head of Wholesale Banking Greece, while prior to that, she had served as the Head of Multinationals and Business Development for HSBC in CEE, CIS, Mediterranean and SubSaharan Africa regions. Prior to her employment with HSBC, she had worked for Greek and foreign financial institutions in Athens and New York in the fields of Credit and Risk Management and Investment Banking (M&A). Ms. Vrettou holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania.

Gary Weston serves as a director of the Company since April 2024 . Previously he was a director  of Eagle Bulk Shipping Inc. Mr. Weston has also served as  the Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of C Transport Maritime S.A.M., a provider of commercial, operational, technical and logistical management of drybulk vessels.  Mr. Weston was also a director and Chief Executive Officer of various affiliated companies controlled by the Ceres Group of Companies, including CBC Holdings Ltd., DryLog Ltd., Carras Ltd. and Tara Ltd. Prior to that, Mr. Weston was the Executive Chairman of H. Clarkson & Co. Ltd. and Chief Executive Officer of Clarksons PLC, the world’s largest shipbroker and a leading provider of integrated shipping services. Mr. Weston currently serves as a non-executive director and member of the Audit, Compensation and Finance Committees of Wah Kwong Transport Holdings Limited, a privately-owned shipping company and previously served as a non-executive director and a member of the Audit, Regulatory and Risk Committee of the United Kingdom Freight Demurrage and Defence Association Limited, a leading provider of legal defense services in the shipping industry. Mr. Weston is a member of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. He received a B.Sc. in Maritime Studies from the University of Wales, in Cardiff.

Ms. Milena Pappas serves on the Board since August 2024 as Class B Director. She is a Commercial Director of  the Company and under her capacity she is responsible for S&P, for Commercial Projects and for Investor Relations. She also acts  as a consultant of INTERCHART SHIPPING INC., the exclusive chartering broker of the Company. Ms. Pappas also serves on the Board of HELMEPA, a non profit organization aiming to reduce ship-generated pollution and increase educational environmental awareness and on the board of Just World International, a non profit organization that provides access to education, nutrition and health programs for children around globe. She has also served previously on the Company’s Board as Director during 2009 – 2014 and has worked in the Finance Department of Oceanbulk Maritime S.A. Prior to that, she was trained at Merrill Lynch in the Private Wealth Department and thereafter at the CoeClerici Group in the Risk Management Department. In 2004, whilst at Merrill Lynch, she assisted in founding the “Women’s Milestones” program. She holds a dual Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Sociology from Cornell University, N.Y, where she graduated with honours and an M.Sc. in Shipping, Trade and Finance from Cass University, London.