Our Team

John Childress

Our Advisory Council

John Childress

John R. Childress began his career as a tropical biologist and marine ecologist, with studies at Harvard University and the University of Hawaii in the early 1970s. John had the good fortune of learning with E.O. Wilson at Harvard as well as Dr. Ernest Reese at UH. In 1968 John spent a year at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon where he learned to Scuba dive and developed a field guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of Lebanon.

With a marine biology career on the horizon, life took a big left turn and John entered the world of management consulting. In 1978 he co-founded what became an international leadership and culture change consultancy with offices in Los Angeles, New York and London. One of his early assignments was to help build a safety culture after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. John served as President and CEO for 23 years until the firm was sold and he retired.

In 2001 John and his family moved to a 13th Century chateau in the south of France where he wrote several thriller novels and enjoyed helping raise his young daughter, who is now a professional orchestra and opera conductor in the US and Europe. After several years in France the family moved back to London and John spent his time as a senior advisor to global leadership teams. During the next 20 years he wrote five business books on culture and leadership. His latest work, Fly Fishing for Leadership, combines his two passions, leadership and fly fishing.

John’s fishing addiction has taken him to many exotic parts of the world, where he has witnessed first-hand the impact of man and economic development on rivers, lakes and coral reefs. You can take the boy out of marine ecology, but you can’t take marine ecology out of the boy. John brings his 40 years of experience in leadership, culture, and ecosystem modelling to Island Conservation to help save the marine environment he so loves.