Ask Steve Sanderson


CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society



The CEOs and Presidents

  • If you had US$10 million to spend on a conservation project - what would you spend it on?
  • How did you get to where you are now?
  • What advice would you give to someone wanting to work for you?


    • If you had US$ 10 million to spend now on a conservation project – what would you spend it on?
    I am not sure I would choose a specific project. I would like to split it across many of our activities in the field.

    How did you get involved in conservation? What path did you take?
    I was an academic and worked on issues of rural poverty in Latin America for over 20 years. And in the middle of that I went to Brazil as a staff member of the Ford Foundation.

    I was charged with creating a programme on rural poverty and resource use…I proposed and started a programme in the Amazon. It was the first time an essentially socially oriented philanthropy had worked in the Amazon. And it continues today in a much bigger way than when I started it.

    But as I got to know more about the Amazon, though my programme development responsibilities, I fell in with some conservation biologists. That was in the mid-80s and that’s when I first started paying attention to these things and ultimately through my writing and my academic engagements turning in that direction myself.

    Back to the top

    What advice would you give to someone who wanted to work for your organisation?
    Find out if you have a deep commitment to living in difficult circumstances far away from home, whether that’s in the United States or in Gabon.

    The emphasis that we have is placing people in the field to work pragmatically in very complicated settings. In Yellowstone our people spend long periods of time in the mountains. It’s quite lovely on one level, but it’s not an easy living. So I would emphasize an excitement about the field and also a willingness to change your cultural environment and language as well.

    And I think that is something that tests a person.

    When I was training graduate students, the first thing they had to find out was when they went outside their own country whether they loved it or couldn’t wait till they got home. If they loved it, then we could go to a next step. If not, then perhaps they should think of something else.

    I think field-based conservation is really a vocation. And most of the people who we encounter are really remarkable people who get fulfillment out of being in these wonderful circumstances where they work trying to make a change. Their social life is framed by that vocation. So it’s not a job as much as it is a life path.

    Back to the top

    < Go back




design & technology by getunik.com