Carter Roberts

Carter Roberts’s enduring connection with the natural world was first kindled in the streams and piney woods surrounding his childhood home in Georgia. As a climber and birder he has seen the devastation of nature and its impact on both people and biodiversity. That connection now drives his efforts to protect the future of nature around the globe as President and Chief Executive Officer of the World Wildlife Fund, the nation’s leading international conservation group.

Roberts joined WWF as Chief Conservation Officer in 2003 and was named to his current position the following year. Under his leadership, WWF has sharply focused its efforts on twenty of the world’s ecosystems most important to both people and biodiversity, and launched a new strategy that integrates place-based efforts with global teams influencing institutions and markets to reduce their impact on the natural world.

This “local-to-global” strategy has already sparked the commitment of corporate giants like Wal-Mart, Staples and Coca-Cola to change their business practices to reduce their impact on climate change as well as source their raw materials according to sustainability standards. It has advanced certification programs for forests, fisheries and aquaculture. It also spurred the creation of models of ecosystem management – local programs that capture the innate value of intact ecosystems for people in improving fisheries, water availability, and carbon storage – often through the conservation and sustainable management of vast landscapes in places ranging from Mozambique, Nepal, and Borneo to the Congo and Brazil. WWF’s private fundraising revenues have doubled during the past two years in support of these efforts.

Roberts’s pursuit of lasting conservation results has taken him to more than 30 countries on six continents. He has visited with Aleut elders in the Bering Sea, local fishermen in East Africa, Native Americans leaders in the northern Great Plains, and the indigenous peoples of Amazonia. An accomplished amateur ornithologist, Roberts has tracked thousands of species of birds throughout the world and over 700 species in North America alone.

Before being recruited to WWF, Roberts had a distinguished 14-year career at The Nature Conservancy, serving first as State Director of the Massachusetts chapter and then Vice President of the Conservancy’s Central America Division. In his capacity as head of Strategic Planning and the Conservancy’s Global Priorities Group, he led two organization-wide planning efforts that charted TNC’s aggressive growth strategy of the past decade.

Prior to business school, Roberts also held management positions at a number of multinational corporations – including Procter and Gamble, Dun and Bradstreet and Gillette, managing diverse teams in designing and bringing products to market around the world.

Roberts received his undergraduate degree from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard University. He is married and has three young children--all of whom love animals and the natural world.