Cristián Samper

Samper was born on September 25, 1965 in San José, Costa Rica, the youngest child of Armando Samper Gnecco, an agronomist and economist from Colombia, and Jean Kutschbach, an American from New York State. He was raised in Colombia, the country of his father, Armando Samper, from one year of age. His other siblings were Marta, Belén, and Mario.[5]

Samper graduated in 1987 from the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, with a B.Sc. in Biology. He then moved to the United States to attend Harvard University, where he graduated in 1989 with a M.Sc., and received his Ph.D. in Biology in 1992 with his dissertation Natural disturbance and plant establishment in an Andean cloud forest.[6]

Back in Colombia, Samper collaborated in the creation of the Colombian Ministry of Environment in 1993 and was successful in conceiving the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, a public funded research institute of which he became its first Director from 1995 to 2001. In 1999 he was appointed Chairman of the Subsidiary Body of Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, a post he held until 2001.

He was recruited to serve as Deputy Director and staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama in 2001,[7] and became the Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. in 2003. During his tenure at the Smithsonian, he raised more than $300 million in private philanthropy. While leading the National Museum of Natural History, Samper shepherded many new programs, improved business practices, and completed facility and exhibit additions and upgrades. In 2008, the museum launched the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based global partnership to provide on-line access to knowledge about life on Earth. In addition, Samper developed the Recovering Voices initiative, aimed at working with indigenous communities to document, preserve, and revive endangered languages and cultural traditions. Some of the important renovations under Samper's leadership included the Behring Family Hall of Mammals (2003); the Butterfly Pavilion (2007); the Sant Ocean Hall (2008); the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins (2010); and the Q?rius Education Center (2013).

Other important improvements led by Samper were the upgrading of collections storage facilities, including a $100 million expansion and renovation of the Museum Support Center; a state of the art collections facility; and expansion of digitization of collections. A major interest of Samper has been efforts to mentor and guide the development of future leaders and scientists. While at the museum he developed a succession plan for research scientists, including a major recruitment of the next generation of scientists across the Museum, and established the Buck Fellowship Program to train the next generation of scientists.

In 2006, he made some controversial changes to an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, "Seasons of Life and Land".[8] Following the resignation of Secretary Lawrence M. Small in the wake of inquiries into personal expenditures, the Board of Regents appointed Samper as the Smithsonian's Acting Secretary in 2007 and 2008.[9] He returned to the museum in July 2008 upon the appointment of G. Wayne Clough. In July 2012, he stepped down from the directorship of the museum to assume the position of president and CEO of WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society).[10]

At the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Samper oversees the world's largest collection of urban parks—including the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Zoo, Queens Zoo, and Prospect Park Zoo—and a global conservation program in nearly 60 nations and across all the world's oceans. WCS is forging partnerships with NGOs, foundations, governments, and zoos and aquariums in the United States and across the world to address a range of conservation issues, including ending elephant poaching[11] and all illegal wildlife trade[12] and advancing nature-based solutions to climate change.

In his tenure leading WCS, Samper has helped the organization to pursue its conservation mission on many fronts—both at its New York City parks and in its field work across the globe. He led the rebuilding of the New York Aquarium following its destruction by Hurricane Sandy, including a new exhibit, Ocean Wonders: Sharks!,[13] which features the science and conservation work in the nearby Hudson River Canyon. In 2013, WCS took the lead in bringing together African elephant range states, fellow conservation NGOs, government leaders, and the Clinton Global Initiative for a multi-year commitment to stop the killing, stop the trafficking, and stop the demand for elephant ivory. Samper was named to President Obama's Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking the same year. WCS created and led the 96 Elephants Campaign, which helped spark actions in the U.S. and around the globe to save elephants—including state ivory bans in New York,[14] New Jersey, California, and Washington, as well as in China and Europe.

Samper is a leading champion of the role of zoological parks in educating the public and inspiring them to protect wildlife and wild places. With more than 200 million visitors every year, Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) institutions are in a unique position to connect people to nature and solve problems like wildlife trafficking and climate change. Addressing the Association of Zoos and Aquariums as the keynote speaker at its annual meeting in 2014, Samper noted: "All the zoos and aquariums -- the AZA members – have more than almost 3,000 conservation projects that are happening right now as we speak. And they take place in a hundred and twenty-seven countries and every one of them is starting to make a difference. Together, we as a community are investing $160,000,000 a year in field conservation. That is larger than the budget of most of the other conservation groups in this country and makes AZA one of the largest investors in field conservation."[15]

In July 2020, Samper issued a public apology for the treatment of Ota Benga,[16] a young Central African from the Mbuti people of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo who was exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair and later displayed at the Bronx Zoo. WCS also established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Council and adopted a DEI plan covering staff and visitors.

The WCS 2030 strategy builds on this vision, and includes bold initiatives to build a global network of Nature's Strongholds to save the most important places for biodiversity; the protection of intact forests to help solve the climate crisis; and a One Health initiative to promote the link between wildlife and human health, with the goal of preventing future pandemics. It also includes an initiative to use the Bronx Zoo as a gateway for conservation and education, while expanding the use of digital tools to connect a global audience to wildlife.

In September, 2014, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos presented Samper with the prestigious Order of San Carlos for his contributions to the conservation of biodiversity and environmental policy, and he served on the "Mision de Sabios" for the government of Colombia in 2018. In April 2015, Dr. Samper was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Samper currently serves on the boards of the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Biodiversity-CIAT Alliance for Agricultural Research, and the Joyce Foundation. He also serves on the advisory boards of the Stanford Woods Institute, the Wilson Center, and the Explora Museum in Colombia. He previously served on the Harvard Board of Overseers; the boards of the American Association of Museums, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and The Nature Conservancy (TNC); the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF); and the IUCN Species Survival Commission.

In 2002 Samper married Adriana Casas Isaza, an environmental lawyer from Colombia with whom he has two children, Carolina (b. 2006) and Martín (b. 2009).[17][18] They established the Colombia Biodiversa Fund to provide fellowships for university students doing research on biodiverstiy. He belongs to an influential Colombian family of politicians, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals that includes Colombian ex-president Ernesto Samper, who is his cousin.[19][20]

• "A Conversation With: Cristián Samper; A Fascination With Forests Finds Fulfillment at Smithsonian", The New York Times, Alicia Ault, June 17, 2003
• "Luncheon Cristián Samper Acting Secretary Smithsonian", The National Press Club, October 22, 2007
• 'Martha's Legacy: The past, present and future of species, ecosystems and human livelihoods," a keynote speech at the 2012 IUCN World Conservation Congress in Jeju, South Korea, WCS, September 6, 2012
• "Cristián Samper Delivers Keynote at AZA Annual Meeting", WCS Youtube Channel, September 16, 2014
• "Earth Day: How the Colombian Jungle Inspired a Latino Conservationst," NBC News, April 22, 2016
• Cristián Samper Huffington Post Blog, Huffington Post
• "Five Transformative Actions," World Wildlife Day Remarks by WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper, United Nations, March 3, 2020
• Statement by Wildlife Conservation Society President and CEO Cristián Samper, One Planet Summit, January 11, 2021