Advisory Board

Honorary Advisor

Jimmy Chin

Academy Award-winning filmmaker, National Geographic Photographer, Mountain Sports Athlete

Jimmy Chin is an Asian American professional mountain athlete, National Geographic photographer, Academy Award-winning film director, and New York Times Best Selling author. Respected in his careers as a photographer, cinematographer, storyteller, and artist, he is equally renowned for his groundbreaking climbing, mountaineering, and skiing achievements.

Jimmy has been a professional climber and skier on The North Face Athlete team for over 20 years. His travels have taken him to all seven continents and he has led and participated in cutting edge expeditions around the world, building a resume of historic climbing and ski mountaineering achievements.

As an artist, Jimmy’s work documenting expeditions and climbs from the Sahara to the Himalaya has been featured in numerous publications, including National Geographic Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Outside Magazine. Jimmy co-directs with his wife Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. Together they have directed numerous award-winning films, some titles include Meru (2015), Free Solo (2018) – which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2019 – The Rescue (2021), and Wild Life (2023). Chin and Vasarhelyi are currently working on their first scripted feature, Nyad, starring Annette Bening and Jodie Foster about Diana Nyad’s historic swim from Cuba to Florida.

Jimmy’s full profile can be found here.

Deirdre Brennan

President / Producer, Castletown Productions

Deirdre Brennan is an Emmy award-winning decorator for television, film and theatre. Her passion for wildlife and conservation led her to form Castletown Productions to make films about rare and endangered wildlife. Her first films, Bermuda’s Treasure Island and Sceillig and Bermuda, A Last Refuge, highlight the amazing rediscovery of the once thought extinct Bermuda petrel, or Cahow. Both films won awards at the International Wildlife Film Festival in Missoula. For the past 8 years, she has traveled throughout the North Atlantic with an award-winning team to tell the story of the disappearing wild Atlantic salmon. She partnered with the Atlantic Salmon Federation and other key international salmon organizations, salmon scientists and conservationists to make the film and hopes it will raise awareness and inspire audiences. Atlantic Salmon: Lost at Sea was released in 2018.

Constance Bruce

Event & Film Program Producer

Constance Bruce has enjoyed a career in multimedia production, exhibition and events. Joining the television division at National Geographic in 1984, Bruce pursued her passion for storytelling through film and conservation, and later at the National Geographic Channel, she led the program acquisitions unit for the launch of the international channel in 1998. In 2005, Bruce became the Outreach Director at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker project and went on to create and implement the Lab’s strategy for collaborating with film & television producers and renowned artists who feature Lab scientists and research projects in their films and artworks. More recently as Director of External & Academic Events at NYU Shanghai, Bruce produced special events featuring acclaimed scholars, world leaders and celebrities in the arts and sciences. In 2018, she joined the New York WILD Film Festival as its executive director, where she now advises the WILD team on special programs for universities. Throughout her career, Bruce has collaborated with independent production companies on dramatic films, shorts and documentaries. Bruce lives in Washington VA where she partners with local foundations on screening events. In 2009, she co-founded the Wharton Studio Museum dedicated to the silent movie history of Ithaca, NY and continues to serve on its board. Bruce studied literature at Georgetown University.

Natalie Cash

Executive Producer, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)

Natalie Cash is the Executive Video Producer for the Wildlife Conservation Society, a global organization that harnesses the power of its worldwide conservation programs and its zoos and aquarium in New York to save wildlife and wild places.

Cash produces powerful, short-form programming about WCS projects for multiple platforms.

Prior to joining WCS, Cash served as a Series Producer and Writer at the Emmy Award-winning documentary production company Pangolin Pictures and sold her short film, Blues in C, to the Arte Channel for broadcast in France and Germany.

Cash holds an MFA in Screenwriting from Stephens College, is a Fellow of The Explorers Club and co-chair of its Conservation Committee, a member of New York Women in Film & Television, and serves on the Advisory Boards of Jackson Wild and the New York WILD Film Festival.

Tatiana Kaletsch

Health Behavior & Community Health

Tatiana is a Master of Public Health with a Behavior Sciences & Community Health focus. She is an Organizational Health and Wellness Specialist and National Board-Certified Health Coach with 22 years of experience implementing healthy habits systems for individuals and groups in corporate, clinical, educational & community settings. She has lived all over the world and currently resides between New York City and Kent Lakes, NY where she is the Chair of Slow Food Hudson Valley. She additionally serves as Advisor to Westchester Land Trust’s Urban Conservation Program, Advisor to American Farmland Trust’s Farm-to-Institution NYS, and a Board member at NYC Audubon Society. She has expertise in collaborative, interdisciplinary strategies to prevent chronic disease. Her special interests are in equal access to local, farm-fresh food, and she is an active conservationist supporting nonprofits in land preservation, farmland protection, urban conservation, reforestation, and wildlife.

Rebecca Martin

President, Exploration Connections

Rebecca Martin currently serves as an expert consultant in the field of exploration and explorer talent development through her new business, Exploration Connections. Prior to this, she worked for National Geographic, most recently as Senior Director of Explorer Programs, where she oversaw high profile explorers. In addition, she expanded National Geographic’s prestigious awards program, and launched a specially-tailored Explorer Mentorship Program. As founding director of National Geographic’s Expeditions Council, Rebecca developed the organization’s first storytelling grant program. She also created and directed Nat Geo’s highly successful Young Explorers Grant Program. Rebecca serves as a board member of Machik – an organization dedicated to strengthening communities on the Tibetan Plateau – Around the World in 80 Fabrics, Save Wild Orangutans Project as well as on the advisory boards of New York WILD and Mountainfilm in Telluride. She has served on film juries for the Trento (Italy), Autrans (France), Telluride, and Bilbao Mendi mountain film festivals.

Nancy Moon

Marketing and PR, Moon PR

Nancy Moon has put her marketing and PR touches on decade’s worth of high profile events. She worked with ABC Sports on top events and three Olympic Games. Moon later became Director of Communications at Madison Square Garden with focus on sporting events and 500 rock concerts! She later created Moon PR which included projects ranging from the Hampton Classic Horse Show (30+ years) to companies that needed high level media placement.

Moon introduced her client Microsoft to the Explorers Club’s for the world-renowned BioBlitz. Microsoft provided sponsorship, marketing and tech support for scientists. A documentarian at heart and passionate about conservation, Moon PR has added photography and video to her mix. She had exhibitions about life in Cuba, African culture and wildlife. Moon had a lengthy award-winning outdoor museum exhibition in Miami with seven life-sized images.

She is now a proud member of the Explorers Club and has held seats on several boards including a land trust (13 years). Moon is a beekeeper, osprey steward, Audubon Master Naturalist, and works on projects where there is a story to be told.

Richard Wiese

President Emeritus of The Explorers Club, Field Scientist and TV Host

Richard Wiese is the host of Born to ExploreTM with Richard Wiese, a travel and adventure program which is broadcast on PBS. He is a world-class explorer, Emmy-winning producer and author of the book, Born to Explore: How to Be a Backyard Adventurer. Since he climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro at age 11, Richard has circled the globe, capturing stunning images and living one adventure after another—from traveling with Bedouins in Africa to skiing to the North Pole. As a respected field scientist, Richard became the youngest president of The Explorers Club in 2002 where he served until 2006. He was elected as President of The Explorers Club for a second time in 2018. Richard believes the most memorable aspect of any journey is not the destination, but the people you meet along the way.

Linda Worrell

International Tax Lawyer & Literary Translator

Linda worked for several decades in international tax law and finance, lastly as Vice President and General Tax Counsel for American Express. Prior to joining Amex, she worked with law firms in New York and Washington, D.C. and focused on the taxation of not-for-profit organizations. She has recently embarked on a second career as a literary translator from Italian to English and her translations of works by Rossella Milone, Giuseppe Pontiggia and Ada Negri have appeared in The Common and The Southern Review. She hopes to introduce more Italian writers, particularly women, to an English audience.