Megan Epler Wood

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Megan Epler Wood

Born: November 7, 1952

Birthplace: Montclair, New Jersey

Nationality: American

Occupation: Leader and founder of innovative, sustainable tourism and ecotourism leadership organizations that have carried out extensive research, publications, and consultancies. Writer of books and author of reports with essential analyses of global sustainable tourism and sustainable development trends.

Epler Wood is an ecotourism pioneer who from 1990 to 2002 spearheaded a global movement to establish a leadership institution to create a body of knowledge that built vital momentum behind the creation of the field of ecotourism. She led the meeting of international experts in the Washington, D.C. area in 1990 that defined ecotourism as, “Responsible travel to natural areas that sustains the well-being of local people.” Since that time, she has been a primary advocate in the effort to build social equity and conservation value into tourism development worldwide. In 2010, she took her extensive field experience to the classroom at Harvard University Extension School, Department of Sustainability and has led university-based research at Harvard and Cornell Universities on the most applicable, academically-tested methods for managing global tourism development sustainably in destinations around the world.

She is currently Principal of EplerWood International, Director of the International Sustainable Tourism Initiative, Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and Managing Director of the Sustainable Tourism Asset Management Program through Cornell University’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Biography

Megan Epler Wood was born on November 7, 1952 in Montclair, New Jersey to Thomas K. Wood and Janet E. Wood. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations and Filmmaking in 1974, and from Iowa State University with a Master’s in Wildlife Biology in 1980.

Epler Wood combined filmmaking and research efforts in her early career. She undertook her thesis in remote Patagonian Chile in 1979-80 under Dr. William Franklin, while also producing an award-winning documentary entitled The Guanaco of Patagonia, the subject of her thesis research. In 1987, she undertook field research in Narino Province of Colombia, with support from a Fulbright Science Communications Research award, to produce a Spanish language film, Un Destino Nublado, on the endangered biodiversity of the tropical Andean region of Colombia. This documentary was shown on national Colombian television for Earth Day in 1988. These expeditions and films were undertaken together with her husband, Gregory Epler Wood who acted as cinematographer and was a co-recipient of the Fulbright Award.

In 1982, Epler Wood joined World Wildlife Fund U.S. where she worked to develop communication campaigns for major wildlife conservation programs, including Save the Panda.

In 1990, she founded The International Ecotourism Society via support from a coalition of organizations dedicated to conservation and sustainable development, including World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, the Nature Conservancy and private foundations.

In 2003, Epler Wood founded her own consulting firm, EplerWood International (EWI) to undertake consulting projects for a wide variety of major agencies including the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, and USAID. EWI began its work with the IFC/World Bank as Ecotourism Finance and Market Analysts to develop the report, Ecolodges: Exploring the Opportunities for Sustainable Business. The firm’s focus on business fundamentals for the ecotourism field continued in a wide range of assignments including Senior Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Specialist for Sustainable Tourism, under the Foreign Investment Advisory Service of World Bank/IFC working on peaceful reconstruction and commerce for Sierra Leone, and with a 4 year contract supported by USAID on developing peaceful commerce in El Salvador.

In 2010, Epler Wood began teaching at Harvard Extension’s Sustainability Graduate Department. Her course, Environmental Management of International Tourism Development, was the first online, open-enrollment class in the world to deploy a curriculum on sustainable tourism that investigated the sustainability practices of each major sector of the tourism industry.

In 2015, Epler Wood founded The Harvard International Sustainable Tourism Initiative (ISTI) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health under the supervision of Dr. Jack Spengler. ISTI has undertaken research on Tourism and Climate Change to help industry and government understand and measure the implications of rapid tourism growth on increasing carbon emissions and unsustainable resource uses. ISTI also launched a collaboration with Dr. Stephen Ervin, Assistant Dean for Information Technology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; and Dr. Vicente J. Molés, a Spanish sustainable tourism expert and former Inter-American Development Bank executive to develop a GIS based Geodesign system to manage data for SMART Destinations which is also a course at Harvard Extension School. This visualized data and mapping system sets out to replace outdated tourism master planning systems.

In 2016, she spoke at the Harvard Natural History Museum on the research from her Harvard class, which inspired her to write her 2017 book, Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet. The research at Harvard ISTI and the publication of her book in 2017 led to many keynote speeches at events throughout the world, including COP 22 in Marrakech, Morocco; the Banff Center, in Alberta, Canada; the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, Bogota, Colombia; the Responsible Tourism Summit in New Delhi, India; and the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group Summit, Scotland.

In 2017, Epler Wood founded The Sustainable Tourism Asset Management Program (STAMP) under the supervision of Mark Milstein at Cornell University, and is presently its Managing Director. STAMP was designed to address the need for new holistic accounting models that explicitly recognize the costs and impact of tourism on critical social and environmental assets; evaluate and support investment that helps manage and mitigate conservation of destinations; nurture supply chains that reinforce socially (including historic and cultural), ecologically (including water, soil, and air) and economically robust destinations; and account for true, full cost of tourism impacts.

Recent Books, Articles, & Reports

Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet: Environmental, Business, and Policy Solutions, published in 2017 by Routledge, outlines the skills, tools and investments required to protect irreplaceable global resources from the impacts of escalating tourism demand over the next 50 years. It documents how technology and the growing global middle class are driving a travel revolution which requires a new paradigm in managing tourism destinations.

Wilderness Safaris: Ecotourism Entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School Case, 2018, with co-authors James Austin and Herman B. “Dutch” Leonard. This HBS case on the Wilderness Safaris firm details the history and evolution of this pioneering conservation company that operates in 7 countries in Africa, and is considered to be the largest ecotourism company in the world. Wilderness Safaris is built on a business model of providing high-end, premium-priced wildlife safaris, while deploying integrated annual reports that allow for year on year comparisons of key performance indicators in conservation, commerce, culture, and community.

Destinations at Risk: The Invisible Burden of Tourism, 2019, was commissioned by the Travel Foundation and co-published with Cornell University’s Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise and EplerWood International. Authors are Megan Epler Wood, Mark Milstein (Clinical Professor of Management at Cornell University), and Kathleen Ahamed-Broadhurst (Senior Writer & Researcher, EplerWood International). The report describes how destinations must uncover and account for tourism’s hidden costs, referred to as the “invisible burden”, to protect and manage vital destination assets worldwide. Its message is that failing to do so puts ecosystems, cultural wonders and community life at increasing risk, and places the tourism industry on a weak foundation that could crack under its own weight.

Epler Wood’s Early Career

1982-1986: World Wildlife Fund – U.S, Broadcast and Audiovisual Manager

Epler Wood designed and produced U.S. Public Service Announcement television campaigns with David Attenborough, Jimmy Stewart, and Sylvia Earle. She designed and managed Evening with World Wildlife — a series of live, big screen, illustrated events in major museums in the U.S. featuring presentations by Prince Philip, Russell Train, Dr. Thomas Lovejoy, Dr. Russell Mittermeier, and Dr. Mark Plotkin; and, supported the Save the Panda press campaign and the U.S. Endangered Species Act reauthorization campaigns as PR and Communications Officer.

1987-1991: EcoVentures Owner and President

EcoVentures, owned by Epler Wood between 1987 and 1991, produced environmental films and videos. The firm produced the hour-length documentary, "The Environmental Tourist, a National Audubon Special" in 1990 for Turner Broadcasting and the PBS, shot in Belize, Kenya, and Montana. It was the first broadcast documentary to explore the pros and cons of using ecotourism as a sustainable development tool. It featured Dr. Richard Leakey and Dr. David Western, and was hosted by Sam Waterston.

Her firm also produced "Amboseli Lion" for the National Geographic Channel on lion behavior in the Masai Mara (1989), using video excerpted from another Ecoventures production, the home video series Armchair Safaris, narrated by George Plimpton. The Armchair Safaris series was selected as the 1990 Home Video of the Year by People Magazine (1990).

1990-2002: The International Ecotourism Society (TIES)

Founded in 1990 by Megan Epler Wood, this organization was the first global NGO to review the wide range of academic and best practice methodologies to achieve sustainable tourism in natural areas. In 1989, Epler Wood met with Dr. David Western in Kenya with the idea for TIES, and he became the pivotal first Chair of the Board.

The organization continued with developing research-based standards; conducting university accredited workshops together with George Washington University under the supervision of Dr. Don Hawkins; holding conferences, including the first event in the world dedicated to developing “ecolodges”, held at Maho Bay Camps in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and publishing and editing books including Ecotourism: Guide for Planner and Managers (Volumes 1 and 2), and the Ecolodge Sourcebook and the International Ecolodge Guidelines.

In 2002, TIES co-organized the International Year of Ecotourism with the UNWTO and UNEP, and Epler Wood wrote the book, Ecotourism: Principles, Practices and Policies, commissioned and distributed worldwide by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Epler Wood stepped down as President of TIES after the completion of the International Year of Ecotourism in late 2002.

References

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