At summer’s end 1978 I left home for college. A straight shot from Georgia to New Jersey in my Pontiac Sunbird, with Marshall Tucker, The Allman Brothers, and Van Morrison keeping time on my 8-track player. I dreamed of becoming an archaeologist or an architect, but ended up majoring in history, focusing on civil rights.
I came to love history in part because of my curiosity about those who came before us, and also because history reveals why things are the way they are and offers lessons learned for what comes next. I’ve also become equally curious about the history of institutions, and find myself thinking about the DNA that is often baked in from the beginning and the first things they did.
WWF was founded in 1961 by individuals seeking to harness the world’s attention and resources to keep the most important landscapes and species intact. Their vision encompassed a global perspective that manifested itself in the local conservation of places like the Serengeti, the Galápagos, and the Amazon. From the beginning, two-thirds of our budget was devoted to landscapes, seascapes, and watersheds—with about 15% devoted to capacity-building, particularly local institutions and leadership.
WWF-US was also founded in 1961, and our founders included Russell and Aileen Train—a true power couple. They were old-school Republicans, devoted to the environmental movement. Russ became our first vice president, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower chaired the first appeal. Aileen brought an abundance of relationships that cut across both aisles of Congress. Russ was the first chair of the Council on Environmental Quality and the second administrator of the EPA. And when Russ became president and chairman of WWF-US in 1978, he and Aileen set the tone for our work, our values, and the way we operated.
Russ led the creation of WWF field programs in places including Bhutan, Nepal, the Philippines, and Brazil. Under his guidance, WWF-US grew from a small, primarily grant-making organization into a global conservation force with over 1 million members. He also hired key staff, including our first scientist, Tom Lovejoy, and many others who became pillars of the conservation movement. Because the Trains believed strongly in the importance of people managing their own natural resources, the Education for Nature (EFN) program was created in 1994 to help train local conservation leaders in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
People are WWF’s calling card—the extraordinary staff, partners, and volunteers who make our work possible. The people who have been supported by EFN are no exception. Grantees include Laos’s first primatologist, Gabon’s only female national park warden, and Peru’s leading orchid expert. Over the past 30 years, EFN has supported more than 3,700 individuals and 600 institutions in 60 countries. You can read more about EFN and
its remarkable impact here.
Building upon the success of EFN, WWF has established BRIDGE (Building Relationships, Inclusivity, Diversity, Growth, and Excellence), a paid internship that embeds in our most exciting programs individuals from underrepresented populations. Our work is stronger and more durable when our team includes individuals from the communities we aim to serve. We’re also launching the Boundless Fellowship, an innovative, experience-based program which invests in rising leaders from across the Americas to help them develop a holistic approach to the conservation of critical landscapes and seascapes and build a network of committed colleagues.
The vision and values of Russ and Aileen Train taught us that conservation should be grounded in the reality of landscapes and seascapes and the people and species living there, and that the best form of conservation relies on the knowledge, devotion, and genius of local leaders. By continuing to center and ground our work on those two ideas, I believe we rightly honor the vision of Russ and Aileen Train, and all of our founders, and stand the best chance of delivering conservation that lasts.
Carter Roberts
President and CEO
