Proposed by: The Southampton Garden Club, Zone III

Cristián Samper is a global authority on conservation biology and environmental policy. As a graduate student at Harvard in 1989, he received a GCA scholarship—The Garden Club of America Award in Tropical Botany. He credits this award with “changing his life.”  His leadership skills enable him to inspire others and effect global change, and he has devoted his life to preserving and protecting the world around us.

A native of Colombia, he has served as director of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute in Bogota, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, and president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in New York City. Under Cristián’s leadership, WCS created over 265 terrestrial and marine conservation areas and forged partnerships with non-governmental organizations, foundations, and government leaders. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2015.

Currently, Cristián is Managing Director and Leader for Nature Solutions at the Bezos Earth Fund, where he oversees a grants portfolio of grants to protect and restore nature, as well as transform food systems. He also designed and leads the Protecting Our Planet Challenge, a coalition of private foundations that has pledged to invest $5 billion to protect 30 percent of the planet by 2030.