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.

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.

Tiiu Lukk

Tiiu Lukk first fell in love with Africa when she was on assignment there as a foreign correspondent for ABC News.  During her years there, Tiiu became intimately acquainted with the culture, people, politics, geography and wildlife of South Africa.  Tiiu’s assignments took her from filming wildlife in Kruger National Park, to covering the pursuit of rhino poachers in the Aberdares National Park of Kenya. She poled makoros through the Okavango Delta, and followed elephant trails, on foot, across the savannah. Since then, Tiiu has served as a naturalist and enrichment lecturer on board cruise ships, as well as on land, most recently covering territory from Namibia to East Africa.  Her experience has taken Tiiu to 115 countries around the world, to habitats ranging from the mountains of the Drakensberg range, to the grasslands of Masai Mara, from the coral seas of Zanzibar, to the fjords of Alaska.  Her interests range from the behavior of animals in the wild, to the dynamics of the interactions between humans, creatures, and the environment they have to share, to the art, architecture and culture of the destinations she visits. Tiiu received her B.A. degree in Art from St. Olaf College, and her M.S. degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.  Her work on the PBS anthropological film, “Trobriand Cricket,” earned her an Emmy Award. Tiiu brings the sensibility of a naturalist, the eye of a documentary filmmaker and art historian, the insatiable curiosity of a journalist, and the appreciation of a world traveler to all of her encounters, which she happily shares with her Smithsonian Journeys fellow travelers.