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Add an extra layer of insight and interest to our team’s expertise
Our Global Perspectives Guest Speaker program, exclusively on every National Geographic Explorer expedition, pairs engaging, knowledgeable experts with fascinating geographies to enrich your experience, and add extra levels of perspective and insight to our expedition team’s expertise. Taken from the top tiers of world affairs, journalism and exploration, these are people that you might have seen on TV talk shows, or in a lecture hall—suddenly available to you in person. Each global speaker has chosen to voyage with us to be part of the expedition community, to go exploring along with our staff and guests, and to provide perspectives to enhance your overall experience. You’ll share adventures, drinks, dinner, deck time and activities with these intriguing individuals.
Global Perspectives Guest Speaker
With a strong passion for both scientific discovery and exploration, Gregg founded Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation in 2011, a nonprofit organization connecting outdoor adventurers with scientists in need of data from the field. The ASC’s goal is to build a bridge between the scientific and outdoor communities. Adventure athletes contact the organization and volunteer to collect data on their travels. ASC matches them with researchers who need help getting expensive, time-consuming, hard-to-reach information. More than a hundred scientific organizations and a thousand adventurers have already participated. Gregg also organizes his own expeditions, contributing to research on wildlife-human interaction, fragmented habitats, and threatened species.
Global Perspectives Guest Speaker
Mike Libecki is a 2013 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year for his commitment to exploring the world’s most remote places, including Antarctica, Baffin Island, Greenland, other remote exotic islands, and even unnamed spots on the globe. An accomplished climber, Mike has planned and succeeded on 60 expeditions and established multiple first ascents. He led a National Geographic-sponsored trip (with the dream team of Freddie Wilkinson, Cory Richards, and Keith Ladzinski) to the eastern stretches of Antarctica’s Queen Maud Land, where they battled extreme cold and furious katabatic winds in an epic, ten-day climb to the summit of the untouched Bertha’s Tower at the bottom of the world, which was featured in the popular National Geographic Live! film series. Mike has received numerous grants and awards, and has been in movies/TV shows that have aired on PBS, the National Geographic Channel, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel and more.
Global Perspectives Guest Speaker
Bob Jacobel is a glaciologist and Professor of Physics Emeritus at St. Olaf College in Minnesota and has been doing research on ice since 1987 when he first went to Greenland to help select the site for the US deep ice core there. His interests are in the evolution and response of ice masses to climate change, and he uses the tools of ice penetrating radar and satellite remote sensing in this research on glaciers and ice sheets around the world. In addition to projects in Greenland and Scandinavia, he has participated in numerous field expeditions in Antarctica with funding from the National Science Foundation.
Global Perspectives Guest Speaker
A trek along Asia’s “hippie trail” in 1972 led to the creation of the Lonely Planet guidebook company while the New York Times declared Tony “the trailblazing patron saint of the world’s backpackers and adventure travelers.” Since the sale of Lonely Planet, Tony has collaborated with the Planet Wheeler Foundation’s work on more than 50 projects in the developing world.
Global Perspectives Guest Speaker
Jared Diamond is a Pulitzer-prize-winning author of five best-selling books, translated into 38 languages, about human societies and human evolution: Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; Why Is Sex Fun?; The Third Chimpanzee; and The World until Yesterday. As a professor of geography at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), he is known for his breadth of interests, which involves conducting research and teaching in three other fields: the biology of New Guinea birds, digestive physiology, and conservation biology.
Global Perspectives Guest Speaker
Andrew Evans is an author, travel writer, and TV host. Embracing all media, he shares his stories from around the globe on pixel and paper.