Craig Kirkpatrick

He/Him

I am gay and I am an ecologist. //

I started as an academic, spending 10 years in the high forests of the easternmost Himalayas of southwest China, studying the feeding ecology of snub-nosed monkeys Rhinopithecus. I got my PhD from University of California, and post-doc with the National Science Foundation. Over time, my journey shifted to a career in conservation as a science advisor, mainly for nonprofits like The Nature Conservancy, TNC, or the World Wildlife Fund. I’m currently with the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, based in Bangkok, working on biodiversity projects. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones; I’ve been out my entire professional career, from my days of field research in the mountains of China to my current post with the U.S. government. I haven’t been denigrated for it. I’ve been respected for it. (Praise be to allies!) It’s been a wonderful ride, sometimes hard, but as Maya Angelou penned, “Wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.”