Someone to Earthwatch Over Me

President and CEO of Earthwatch Institute.

First, we help gather objective science-based information that allows us all to understand complex environmental and social issues and make informed and sustainable management decisions. We support over 130 research expeditions in 55 countries that help inform important agendas, such as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

We're using media to help kids teach kids about the environment. (Any parent knows they never listen to grown-ups!) Our Live From the Field education programs have been a great success, but we wanted to go beyond the classroom. So last year, we sent three high school students on 12 Earthwatch expeditions and filmed the experience. The film, called A Year on Earth, follows them as they do things like catch crocodiles in the Okavango Delta and dig up ancient burial grounds in Thailand. The film will debut on Discovery channels this fall, and we are very excited about seeing that multiplier effect.

I do drive, but in my defense, I did move so that I am fewer than five miles from my office.

As a military kid, I grew up nomadic and lived in Pakistan and Hong Kong among other places, though I was sent to boarding school in Britain when I was seven. Before entering college, I took a gap year, which I spent in South Africa with Dr. Ian Player. He started the Wilderness Leadership School in Natal, and it was the simplicity and power of his model that stuck with me. He saw the connection between wildlife and communities, and brought South African inner-city kids to the national parks, where many of them had never been. Working with him made a big philosophical impact on me, showing the importance of getting people engaged, which still influences me today.

I was born in Shropshire, England. My wife, Imogen, and children, Titus and Tallulah, and I now live in Concord, Mass. (We are part of a secret British attempt to take back the Old North Bridge.)

In the mid-80s, during the famine in Sudan, I was visiting some friends and was able to see some of the refugees displaced from the South. Talk about how bad things can get -- it was a real disaster on so many levels.

In my time at Earthwatch, I've participated in several expeditions as a volunteer, doing everything from catching snakes in the Tian Shan Mountains to digging up mammoth bones to riding camels in the Gobi desert. I still really love that feeling of making a difference and would head out on another expedition at the drop of a hat (though that is seldom possible these days).

Complacency about the ocean -- the idea that we can just dump whatever we want and there are no consequences.

My secondhand convertible Saab.

I try to devote any spare time I have to my family. I've been traveling so much recently, my staff actually made a cardboard cutout of me to sit at my desk when I'm gone.

Curries -- probably a relic from my youth in Pakistan.

I am a manic recycler. We have four large bins and a compost pile, and I drive my family nuts with what goes where.

The African savannah. Or my parents' farm in Vermont.

Everyone would be obligated to do a local environmental-service project each year. It need only be a weekend, but it would start to build communities and a whole new social movement from the bottom up.

The Clash. Still The Clash.

The Big Chill, The Blues Brothers, This Is Spinal Tap, The Third Man, and Ice Cold in Alex.

The Geico Insurance gecko, or maybe Hugh Grant at a stretch.

Join an Earthwatch expedition and tell all your friends about Earthwatch, of course. It may seem like a self-serving answer, but I really believe in the value of what we do. It's also a hell of a lot of fun!