Kris Tompkins

Image: Robby Klein

The president and co-founder of Tompkins Conservation, Kristine Tompkins is an American conservationist, and former CEO of Patagonia, Inc. For over three decades, she has committed to protecting and restoring key ecosystems and biodiversity by creating national parks, bringing back wildlife, seeding activism and creating economic vitality. 

Kristine and her late husband Douglas Tompkins helped create or expand 16 parklands, protecting over 16 million acres in Chile and Argentina, in addition to three marine protected areas of over 31 million acres, a legacy that continues through now-independent Rewilding Argentina and Rewilding Chile. Considered the foremost conservation philanthropists in history, the couple’s story is told in Wild Life by Oscar-winning directors Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi.

To address global biodiversity loss and climate change, Kristine advocates for a continental vision for rewilding in South America through the Jaguar Rivers Initiative and the Andean Corridor. Rewilding is bringing back over two dozen species that have gone locally or nationally extinct, including the jaguar, red-and-green macaw, and giant river otter in Northeast Argentina, and Darwin’s rheas and extremely endangered huemul deer in Chile. 

Kristine was the first conservationist to be awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and served as Patron for Protected Areas for the UN Environmental Programme from 2018-2022. In 2024, she followed up her 2020 TED Talk, "Let's Make the World Wild Again," with over 2 million views, with “A Bold Plan to Rewild the Earth—at a Massive Scale,” on the TED mainstage in Vancouver.