Talk to an Expedition Specialist
1.800.EXPEDITION (1.800.397.3348)
Our team is the key to your incredible adventure
Explore the Arctic in the company of top experts. Benefit from their expertise—marine and terrestrial biology, botany, geology, and more—and benefit from their passion to share the wonder of this incredible region. Enjoy their company; you’ll find our Arctic expedition team highly engaging and fun to share a drink or dinner with, as well as a hike.
Assistant Expedition Leader
Alexandra is an explorer at heart. She has had the opportunity to visit over 50 countries and has been lucky enough to call several of them home. Born in Iceland, she grew up spending most of her childhood outdoors in the wilderness, observing wildlife, hiking up mountains, and being out at sea with her grandfather on his larc boat.
Naturalist/Expedition Diver
Colin grew up scuba diving with his family, and fell in love with the ocean at an early age. He has been fortunate to dive in many exotic corners of the world, and to work on a number of undersea research projects studying whale sharks and several deep water fish species. After graduating from the University of Vermont, he began working in various capacities aboard expedition ships. During his travels he photographed and shared his adventures as a way of making remote areas and cultures more accessible. It was in Santa Barbara, California that he learned how to photograph underwater, and combined two of his great passions, photography and the sea. Exploring and documenting the vast richness, diversity, and beauty of the underwater world continues to be a lifelong endeavor.
Naturalist
Conor Ryan is a congenital ecologist. His career began in the late 1980s, when he developed a keen interest in intertidal ecology, undertaking almost daily field trips to the seashore across from his home in Cobh, Ireland. Though he logged significant hours searching beneath barnacle-studded rocks for eels, his publication record on this seminal research was sorely lacking because he was five years old. As he grew, so too did the size of the marine creatures that he was preoccupied with.
Naturalist
David is an accomplished professional guide and polar Expedition Leader from Sweden. He has spent a big part of his life traveling between the Arctic and Antarctic, working as a full-time adventure guide. David has a wide range of experience having led expeditions in Svalbard, Greenland, Scotland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, South Georgia, the Falkland Islands and of course Antarctica. In May 2016 David completed an unsupported crossing of Greenland’s inland ice following the footsteps of one of his heroes, Fridtjof Nansen. The 600 kilometer long journey across the ice totaled 27 days. Furthermore, he has spent several winters driving snowmobiles and guiding for Sweden’s IceHotel, often in temperatures dropping down to minus 40 degrees.
National Geographic Photographer
Filmmaker, photographer, and producer David Wright has worked in over 65 countries on projects commissioned by National Geographic, PBS, and the BBC, among others. Originally from the United Kingdom, he started out producing natural history content at Oxford Scientific Films. For the last 20 years, David has worked in the Arctic on a wide variety of stories. A two-year assignment filming a National Geographic special on the polar bears and other iconic species of Svalbard led to other film projects in the region, as well as in the Alaskan Arctic and the Bering and Beaufort Seas. Subjects have included an extensive study of walruses, migratory seabirds, and the impact of the changing Arctic ice conditions on native peoples. On other ocean-based adventures, Wright has accompanied National Geographic Explorer-at-Large Bob Ballard (of Titanic fame) on expeditions to search for the sunken U-boats and documented the natural history of the great white shark.
Naturalist
Elise’s passion for travel and interpretation is evident when you learn about the places she has chosen to live, work and travel. A degree in environmental studies introduced her to the world of interpreting nature, which has evolved into both a passion and profession.
Naturalist
Eric began work with Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic in 2006 as a means to see the world, work with great photographers and engage his environmental studies degree beyond the classroom. His initial years with the company were spent working the waters of Southeast Alaska and Baja California. His move to the National Geographic Explorer in 2008 helped earn him the experience and knowledge needed to establish himself as a trusted boat handler, naturalist and respected photographer in nearly all the environments Lindblad-National Geographic travels.
Video Chronicler
Eric began his life on the far western edge of Chicago, where the concrete meets the cornfields. His inspiration has always drawn from the expansive beauty of the natural world, as well as the endless forms that populate it.
Undersea Specialist
James is a home-grown, free-range Pacific Northwest outdoorsmen. Born in Seattle and reared nearby on Vashon Island, he grew up in and surrounded by the Salish Sea. James has saltwater in his veins, but would be quick to point out we all do, echoing Carl Safina " We are, in a sense, soft vessels of seawater." Born with the travel bug, James was fortunate enough to spend time on four continents before graduating college. During his studies at Western Washington University's Huxley College of the Environment, James went to Australia and visited the Great Barrier Reef. He was never the same. A lifetime of playing in the productive, but opaque green water of the Northwest had offered him little firsthand experience of the creatures below its depths, but with a clear view of the colorful dramas playing out across the bottom of the tropical Pacific, he was hooked. Scuba diving and underwater ecology were solidified as his passion and after college, it took him to a dive shop in Seattle fixing gear, tidepooling with local middle school students, and generally making a spectacle of himself in the surf.
Naturalist
Jennifer Kingsley is a Canadian journalist, a National Geographic Explorer, and the Field Correspondent for Lindblad Expeditions. She has travelled extensively in the global Arctic and throughout the temperate rain forest of the Pacific Rim. After completing her biology degree, she worked in Canada's Rocky Mountain National Parks before moving to British Columbia to specialize in grizzly bear ecology. Jennifer spent several seasons sailing among the whales, bears, and wolves of the Great Bear Rainforest.