It takes a certain kind of leader to succeed here.

Working in nations with gun-toting bandits, kidnappers, cartels, dangerous wildlife, uncontrolled areas of COVID, and major storms, Natasha has taken her share of bumpy rides on the way to planting trees. Whether she is hiking up the side of a steep, stormy mountain or driving through miles of thick mud, Natasha does not give up.

Inspired by our mantra of "people first," Natasha sees her main role as being a servant to others who are experiencing extreme poverty and living in a world in danger of environmental self-destruction. Her sense of urgency for families caught in this situation is amplified by the consequences of the COVID pandemic that is poorly addressed in some of the areas where she is bringing our work to life. Fortunately, Natasha knows just how to solve every problem — break it up, little by little. In critical parts of the Americas, her planning and implementation are accomplishing large, complex goals by focusing on one job, one tree, one community at a time.

"This is how many trees I want to plant," someone will say, and Natasha helps the locals turn their visions into reality.

No car of their own. Covered in mud. With the COVID pandemic limiting people's ability to work and people losing jobs in the surrounding community, Alex and a committed team of Eden diehards found themselves at a remote police station loading 800 seedlings onto a trailer, all in the effort to create a handful of jobs in the midst of a global crisis. Because this team had one goal - to employ people to plant trees - and at Eden, no matter the circumstances, you find a way to get the work done.

Alex focuses on turning overwhelming challenges into viable opportunities, which is how Eden Kenya has become the largest reforestation organization in the country. As she expands the Eden model from an average of 2,000 hectares (7.7 square miles) sized projects to 50,000 hectares (193 square miles) of landscape-sized restoration projects, she always starts by instilling Eden's organizational values as a way to build teams to accomplish large-scale restoration goals. She doesn't wait for lots of random options; she finds "the one" person or solution. Then, Alex passes down the strategy, direction, and resources for success.

In every country she works in, Alex identifies leadership potential and skills in non-traditional places and then offers people the opportunity to ignite their passion and capacity to change their landscape for the better. She has found that educational background or current occupation is not as important as an unwavering commitment to apply local knowledge to develop local solutions. This is how Alex turns a seed of opportunity into a forest and a community full of jobs.

For most people, "elephants" isn't the answer they would give to the question, "what are your significant operating challenges?" But Andrew Kinzer is not most people. And his work, directing Eden in his homeland of Kenya and across Africa in some of the world's most remote and unstable places, is inspiring and transformational.

Andrew works with the local community to creatively solve unexpected challenges. This is seen when a herd of elephants came in the night to eat the cement off the posts of a brand new nursery fence protecting over a million seedlings. How'd they deter the elephants? A big moat, planting elephant-repelling chili peppers, and a nightly bonfire. Creative solutions are at the heart of our growth, scaling up in each new nation with its own new challenges while always putting people first.

For Andrew, the inspiration behind his unwavering commitment to the mission is seeing the local community have the opportunity to control their own economic futures by planting millions of trees with their own hands.

As Director, Andrew knows that the strength of Eden is the people and their drive to build a better future. As he starts new projects in each new nation, he builds teams and programs, taking on all challenges, including desperate poverty, decimated forests, washed-out roads, extreme weather, pythons, lions - and those fence-eating elephants.

Born and raised in Madagascar as a missionary kid, Jamie learned early on how to handle himself in a tough situation. So he didn’t flinch when he was held at gunpoint by thugs whose loan sharking business he had damaged by providing jobs and economic self-sufficiency to people through our Employ to Plant program. Eventually, local leaders who strongly support Eden because of our contributions to the community intervened to free Jamie. And the next day he went back to work.

Jamie works directly with Malagasy communities and local leaders to support the restoration of the local environment and economy. The jobs, community development, and habitat restoration that come from our projects help keep families together, enable them to raise healthy, educated children, and to shield girls from predators, while also enlisting the whole community to protect the forests from poachers and natural threats to the trees’ survival.

Our simple planting techniques are easily replicated and implemented, empowering the community to plant and protect millions of trees every month. Through Jamie’s leadership and our Malagasy team’s commitment, we have planted over 776 million trees in Madagascar and are continuing to grow rapidly.

Overseeing teams in 10 countries who are restoring degraded landscapes by planting hundreds of millions of trees each year, in extremely remote areas, with wild animals, poor roads, spotty internet service, extreme weather, and civil unrest, there are no typical days for Sehr.

Having spent time in over forty countries, she understands the need to be flexible and to work with local teams to develop solutions that will actually work on the ground, not just in theory or in a conference room in the US. She helps bring to life our mission of planting trees and saving lives by putting the community first, then empowering them to heal their environment and create hope and opportunity for themselves and their families.

Sehr also oversees our Monitoring & Evaluation team, which tracks the ecological and socioeconomic impacts of our work, ensures we meet our commitments, oversees our compliance with scientific standards and best practices, and communicates with our funders the ways in which their money is being put to the best possible use.

In the face of all those technical challenges, Sehr maintains a connection and commitment to our people. One example came after a major earthquake in Haiti in August 2021. Some leaders' first reaction would be to initiate a damage assessment of their infrastructure. Instead, Sehr first took the time to ensure that all team members and their families were safe and had enough food and water. She then guided those teams through a damage assessment across our project sites so we could restart operations, return people to their jobs, and continue restoring the environment and the local communities.