President and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, Kris Tompkins is an American conservationist and the former CEO of Patagonia, Inc. For thirty years, she has committed 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. Kristine and her late husband, Douglas Tompkins, have protected approximately 14.8 million acres of parklands in Chile and Argentina through Tompkins Conservation and its partners, making them among the most successful national park–oriented philanthropists in history. Through Tompkins Conservation and its offspring organizations she has helped to create or expand fifteen national parks, including two marine national parks, in Chile and Argentina, and works to bring back species that have gone locally or nationally extinct, such as the jaguar, red-and-green macaw, and giant river otters in northeastern Argentina, and Darwin’s rheas and the extremely endangered huemul deer in Chile. As president of Tompkins Conservation, she works closely with the organization’s now independent offspring, Rewilding Argentina and Rewilding Chile. Named the United Nations’ Environment Patron for Protected Areas in 2018, Tompkins has also served in various positions of global leadership in conservation. She was the first conservationist to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. Her 2020 TED Talk “Let’s Make the World Wild Again” has had over two million views.