Kristine Tompkins

Kristine Tompkins

President and Co-founder, Tompkins Conservation

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins is the president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation,  an American conservationist, and former CEO of Patagonia, Inc. For nearly thirty years, she has committed her career to protecting and restoring wild beauty and biodiversity by creating national parks, restoring wildlife, inspiring activism, and fostering economic vitality as a result of conservation.

As the president of Tompkins Conservation, Kristine Tompkins oversees a multitude of projects rewilding the Americas. Having protected approximately 14.7 million acres of parklands in Chile and Argentina through Tompkins Conservation and its partners, Kristine and Douglas Tompkins, her late husband who died in 2015, are considered some of the most successful national park-oriented philanthropists in history.

Kristine Tompkins serves in various positions of global leadership in conservation, including as Chair of National Geographic Society’s Last Wild Places campaign. She was the first conservationist to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. In 2018 she was named the United Nations’ Global Patron for Protected Areas. Her 2020 TED Talk, "Let's Make the World Wild Again," has over two million views.