James Elder

Dr. Elder is a leading authority on environmental education, with three decades of experience in founding and managing creative organizations that seek to advance environmental literacy. In 1980, he founded The School for Field Studies, which he built into the nation's leading international environmental studies field program for undergraduate students and one of the largest environmental education programs in the country. Dr. Elder currently serves as Executive Director of the Global Environmental Alliance - China, a bilateral environmental and sustainability education organization that seeks to bring new thinking about development into the mainstream of Chinese society through education. He also serves as Executive Director of The Ocean Foundation, a new community foundation which is supports, strengthens, and promotes those organizations dedicated to reversing the trend of destruction of ocean environments around the world.

Dr. Elder recently co-founded a national alliance of the thirty leading environmental education organizations (the Environmental Education Coalition) to advance environmental education policy on the national level. He has counseled a number of foundations on their environmental literacy grantmaking. He was also recently engaged by the foundation community and others to write "A Field Guide to Environmental Literacy: Making Strategic Investments in Environmental Education", the definitive guide to environmental education for grantmakers.

To create new sources of support for environmental education, Dr. Elder conceived and successfully executed the world's first "debt-for-environmental education swap" with the government of Mexico in 1994. Dr. Elder also co-founded an internet company which provided information, analysis and software tools designed to assist large institutional clients in reducing their environmental footprint and increasing productivity. Dr. Elder was awarded an honorary doctorate for his pioneering environmental literacy work, and is a former Watson Fellow. He has held long-standing appointments to numerous Boards including EPA's National Environmental Education Advisory Council and the North American Association for Environmental Education.