Join the Explorers Club April 13th for a deep dive into this year’s three amazing New Explorer Awardees – from saving endangered tree species in the depths of the Darién Gap, to researching primates in Uganda’s jungles, to developing groundbreaking systems equitably bridging cultures worldwide – these three awardees are redefining exploration in the 21st Century.
For the first time in club history, there are three recipients of our New Explorer Award: conservationist Alexandra Climent, primatologist Elodie Freymann, and entrepreneur/artist/cartographer Rebecca Hui. During this special Monday night lecture at the Explorers Club, you will get to meet them and hear from each about their groundbreaking work.
Scroll down for more information on each of the awardees.
This in-person event at the Explorers Club Headquarters will include an audience Q&A.
RESERVATIONS
This will be an in-person lecture at Explorers Club Headquarters.
In-person tickets are $20 for Members, and $35 for the General Public.
Check-in will begin at 6:00 pm, with a beer and wine reception from 6:00 – 7:00 pm
Alexandra Climent
Alexandra Climent is a rainforest conservationist, sculptural artist, and fine furniture maker with more than a decade of hands-on fieldwork in Panamá’s Darién Gap. Her work centers on the creation of the Chucunaque River Corridor, one of the last missing links in the lowland tropical rainforest connecting North and South America. This ecological corridor safeguards remaining primary forest, restores native forest on degraded land, and reconnects two intact Indigenous lands, reopening a continental pathway that allows jaguars and other wide-ranging species to once again move freely across the Americas.
Alexandra’s conservation work began through years of independent expeditions in the Darién, where she mapped endangered tree species, collected native seeds, and documented forest fragmentation in one of the most biologically important regions on Earth. In 2022, she founded Endangered Rainforest Rescue, followed by the locally based Fundación Rescate Selva Tropical in 2024, to formalize and scale long-term land protection, restoration, and corridor creation in the region.
Her approach integrates applied science, land acquisition, community collaboration, and native forest restoration, including the establishment of Indigenous-run tree nurseries that grow locally sourced species for long-term ecological recovery. Alongside her conservation work, Alexandra maintains a sculptural and fine furniture practice using materials from naturally fallen rainforest trees encountered during fieldwork. Many of these woods are among the densest and most long-lived materials on Earth, formed over centuries in intact tropical forest. By working with these rare materials, her practice highlights both the extraordinary beauty of rainforest ecosystems and the urgency of protecting the living systems that produce them.
Elodie Freymann
Elodie Freymann is currently a Voss post-doctoral research fellow at Brown University, where she works in a field called Zoopharmacognosy–the study of how animals use medicine in the wild. During her PhD at the University of Oxford, she specialized in botanical self-medication among the wild chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest in Western Uganda. As part of this work, she discovered several medicinal tree barks that chimpanzees appear to selectively target when sick and documented chimpanzees tending to their wounds with medicinal resources. Her current project expands this research into a new ecosystem in the Central Peruvian Amazon, examining how both animals and humans interact with and share medicinal plants. She has also conducted fieldwork in the Ecuadorian Amazon and in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique.
Rebecca Hui
Rebecca is a social entrepreneur, artist, and cartographer passionate about bridging cultures globally. For a decade, Rurban (formerly Roots Studio) has created a cultural arts library with IP licensing and remuneration systems traceable to 52 Indigenous and rural communities from the Amazon to the Loess Plateau. Partnership collections include Patagonia, Chanel Foundation, Cartier Women’s Initiative, increasing artists incomes on average from 23% – 300% annually. Through her work, Rebecca has been recognized as a Vogue Business 100 Innovator, Forbes Under 30, Cartier Women’s Initiative Laureate, and Echoing Green Fellow. Rurban was featured as a keynote at The Business of Fashion as the “Antidote to Cultural Appropriation,” and their approach to creating economic prosperity through equitable approaches has also been featured in i-D, PBS , Stanford Social Innovation Review, Cultured, amongst others.
Rebecca is also a cartographer. She has worked extensively with communities facing transitions in agriculture, water, and climate, building projects utilizing satellite data to equip communities and governments to be more disaster resilient. She devised a mapping policy called, “Rurban” with the Government of India and The World Bank to expand water and infrastructure planning. Through art and design, she supports scientists mapping the ocean floor to utilizing global satellite data to determine coral reef health. She started her journey as a Fulbrighter and National Geographic Explorer mapping human-animal coexistence in India. She released her first children’s book, “Old Enough to Make a Difference,” distributed through Abrams Books.
In her free time, she is in the wilderness painting animals and landscapes as a free diver and kayaker around the world.
