Grant Nel

Grant Nel is an enthusiastic disciple for biodiversity conservation, continually travelling the globe to experience and study our planet’s myriad wildlife. After qualifying as a Zoologist Grant opted for a career as a field naturalist. He received his ranger training at the world-renowned Mala Mala Game Reserve and has been working in the African wild for the past thirty years. Living a few hundred meters from the confluence of the Chobe and Zambezi Rivers, makes the Victoria Falls and Chobe National Park virtually his back yard. A highly respected conservation advocate, he sits on the board of two local environmental organizations and frequently consults on national ecotourism and conservation policies.

Robyn Keene-Young

Zimbabwean-born Robyn Keene-Young is an Emmy-nominated film producer and a widely-published travel and nature writer. For more than 25 years, she’s explored southern and east Africa, producing magazine features, books, and television documentaries. Her films appear regularly on PBS, National Geographic and BBC. Her work allows her to spend her waking hours in the close company of some of the earth’s wildest and most fascinating creatures.

Robyn attended the University of the Witwatersrand during South Africa’s turbulent transition to democracy, where she graduated with Bachelor of Arts and Law degrees. She worked as a human rights attorney among farmworkers in the Cape winelands, before leaving the profession to live in a tent and document the African wild with her photographer husband. When she’s not filming in remote wilderness, Robyn lives on a farm near South Africa’s Kruger National Park. To read a story written by Robyn for Smithsonian magazine click here.

Tempe Adams

Dr Tempe Adams is an Australian conservation ecologist who has been based in northern Botswana since 2012 and has worked in elephant conservation and research throughout the savannah elephant range in Africa.

She obtained her PhD in 2016, specially investigating how humans and elephants can coexist in Africa from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in collaboration with Botswana based wildlife NGO Elephants Without Borders. She has a deep passion for human- wildlife coexistence and how we can use and combine modern technology, indigenous knowledge, ecology knowledge and strong communities’ relationships to build meaning conservation polices.

Tempe is currently the co-existence & education manager a Botswana based wildlife NGO dedicated to the protection and conservation of Africa’s elephants through a variety of innovative research and educational studies and information sharing with all people, they strive to encourage mankind to live in harmony with wildlife and the natural world.

She also currently holds adjunct scholar positions with the Okavango Research Institute from the University of Botswana and with UNSW. In these positions she teaches, and supervisors post graduate students from both Botswana and Australia in their conservation research projects within Botswana.

Tempe’s work has been published in several scientific publications and featured in an array of media platforms including the BBC, The Times, CNN and National Geographic.

Melissa Hawkins

Missy is the Curator-in-Charge and Research Zoologist in the Division of Mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Missy has conducted research on small mammals around the world, particularly in Africa and Asia. She has active research in Uganda and Malaysia, and spends her days trapping rodents everywhere from mountains to grasslands. She is an expert in genomics, and works on advancing methods to extract, amplify and sequence DNA from long-stored museum specimens. Her work has taken her around the world, and she is a capable naturalist eager to discuss wildlife, ecology, evolution and behavior with anyone willing to listen. Her interests stem from a background working with snakes and birds, and enjoys wildlife watching. Missy got her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Western Illinois University and her PhD through George Mason University while working at the National Zoo’s Center for Conservation Genomics and the National Museum of Natural History.