Louise Leakey

Paleontologist, conservationist, educator and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Louise Leakey is the youngest member of the famous Leakey family of fossil hunters in East Africa. With an adventurous spirit and unwavering focus on the advancement and understanding of human origins, she has spent much of her life leading expeditions into the remote badlands of northern Kenya. From these groundbreaking forays, Dr. Leakey and her team have yielded some of our deepest insights into what it is that makes us human.

Her team, The Koobi Fora Research Project, has made discoveries that have shaped modern thinking on the journey of humanity over the past 4 million years. One of the most publicized discoveries, Kenyanthropus platyops, challenged the straight-line story of human evolution.

From her earliest childhood spent among the nomadic desert people of Lake Turkana, Leakey has developed a deep attachment to the wildlife and cultural heritage of northern Kenya. Today she draws on her scientific background in human origins to work with the local communities in building a future for this region in a dramatically changing world.

Having developed a state of the art research center in the Turkana Basin, Leakey has gained a unique perspective on the protection of the desert environment in Africa. She was recently selected to participate in the World Economic Forum in Davos, the aim of which is to understand the problems and risks the world faces in the future.

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• paleoanthropologist
• national geographic explorer
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