Will Steger

Explorer, Educator and Environmental Activist
Will Steger is a recognized authority for the Polar Regions, and is an eyewitness to the effects of global warming. He has spent more than 45 years traveling through the Arctic regions, advocating for the Earth’s preservation and advising on permanent solutions to our climate crisis.

In 2006, the world-renown explorer established the Will Steger Foundation to promote change through education and advocacy, and to foster international leadership and cooperation through environmental education and policy. The Foundation’s Global Warming 101 initiative engages and empowers individuals and policy makers to translate their climate concern into action.

Steger draws on his explorations to contextualize effects of global warming, galvanize youth leaders and policymakers, and drive climate change solutions. With his ability to blend extreme exploration and cutting-edge technology, Steger pioneered online education during his 1995 expedition – reaching more than 20 million students via online daily journals and delivering the first-ever transmission of digital photography from the North Pole.

Steger has been invited to testify before the United States Congress and has advised world leaders on the environmental protection of Antarctica.

As an educator, Steger taught science for three years at the secondary level.  He founded a winter school and developed an innovative wilderness program in Ely, Minn. Steger also established the Global Center for Environmental Education at Hamline University, St. Paul, Minn., and the World School for Adventure Learning at University of St. Thomas.

Steger holds a Bachelor of Science in geology and Master of Arts in education from University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn., in addition to a couple Honorary Doctorates.

Notable Explorations
Steger is a witness to the diverse and harmful effects of global warming to indigenous cultures, wildlife habitat and Arctic topography. His notable explorations include:

• 1986: First dogsled journey to the North Pole without re-supply
• 1988: 1,600-mile, south-north traverse of Greenland
• 1989–90: First International Trans-Antarctica dogsled expedition
• 1995: First dogsled traverse to Arctic Ocean in one season from Russia to Canada via North Pole
• 1997: Solo From the Pole Expedition
• 2004: Arctic Transect Expedition, an exploration of Nunavut
• 2007: Baffin Island Expedition to study affects of global warming
• 2008: Ellesmere Island Expedition to study receding ice sheets
• 2008: Greenland Kite-Ski Expedition to document rising summer thaw level and changes to the ice sheet
• 2008–09: Western Antarctica Kite-Ski Expedition

Awards and Acknowledgements

• Outsider of the Year; “Outside Magazine”; 1986
• Honorary Doctorate of Letters; University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.; 1991
• Honorary Doctorate of Science; Westminster College, Salt Lake City, Utah; 1991
• John Oliver La Gorce Medal; National Geographic Society; 1995
• First Explore-in-Residence; National Geographic Society; 1996
• Finn Ronne Memorial Award; Explorers Club; 1997
• Lindbergh Award; Lindbergh Foundation; 2006
• Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group; Gov. Tim Pawlenty appointment; 2006
• Lowell Thomas Award; Explorers Club; 2007
• Lifetime Achievement Award; “National Geographic Adventure”; 2007

Publications
“North to the Pole” (Crown, 1987); “Saving the Earth” (Knopf, 1990); “Crossing Antarctica” (Laurel, 1993); “Over the Top of the World” (Scholastic, 1999)

Abby Fenton

Education Program Manager
Abby Fenton is the Education Program Manager for the Will Steger Foundation and a former member of the 2007 Baffin Island expedition.

Fenton, a native of Boston, Massachusetts, developed a love of wilderness early in life.
A graduate of Earlham College, with a bachelor’s degree in Human Development Social Relations, Fenton has spent over 10 years working in the field of outdoor and experiential education. Combining her love of people and wilderness, Fenton has worked as a camp counselor, high-ropes instructor, and program director for various outdoor education centers including the Farm and Wilderness Foundation, the Hulbert Outdoor Center and Genesee Valley Outdoor Learning Center. Fenton spent five years working for the Voyageur Outward Bound School leading backpacking, climbing and dogsledding expeditions for all ages in northern Minnesota and the Rocky Mountains of Montana.

Loyal to her urban roots, Fenton is committed to meeting the needs of urban youth and has, most recently, launched the Will Steger Foundation’s emerging leaders program which aims to increase involvement with the next generation to confront global warming, specifically targeting young people, or ‘emerging leaders,’ ages 17-28. Over the past year Fenton has worked to foster the level of youth involvement in climate change solutions, empower and support youth in their own global warming work and through the Will Steger Foundation’s programs, and provide access to prominent decision-makers.

Tobias (Toby) Thorleifsson

Young Explorer
Toby Thorleiffson is an avid polar historian, explorer, writer, lecturer and mountain guide who focuses on environmental issues. Over the past year, his writings and lectures have focused on the political consequences of global warming in the Arctic and the politics of sovereignty over the Arctic Ocean and North Pole. Thorleiffson’s recent expeditions include dog sledding 2000km across Ellesmere Island, kite skiing across the Greenland ice cap and, most recently, conducting a lecture tour of his eyewitness account of global warming to more than 90 schools throughout Norway (in collaboration with the Norwegian Ministry of the Environment).

Thorleiffson earned a Master of Arts in polar history and politics at Simon Fraser University in 2006, where he wrote a thesis on the Sverdrup Islands. In addition, he assisted the opening of the world’s first education base in Antarctica and has circumnavigated most of the North Atlantic by sailboat, including sailing to Franz Josef Land in the Russian Arctic. When Thorleiffson is not traveling he splits his time between the city of Oslo and Finse in the Norwegian mountains.

Timothy Denherder-Thomas

Featured Youth Climate Leader
Timothy DenHerder-Thomas is a senior Environmental Studies major at Macalester College, focusing on taking local climate solutions global by linking and integrating community sustainability projects. DenHerder-Thomas is the founder and serves on the board of the Clean Energy Revolving Fund (CERF), a Macalester financing mechanism to support sustainability projects and use the cost savings they generate to expand the fund – a tool now nearing $100,000 and yielding over 30% annual returns. DenHerder-Thomas has also managed a rough campus carbon inventory, and helped coordinate the development of campus projects including heating adjustments, green buildings, biodiesel, urban gardening and the Macalester EcoHouse. He now serves as an advisor to the student, faculty, and staff committee implementing The President's Climate Commitment, Macalester's commitment to carbon neutrality.

DenHerder-Thomas was the first coordinator of the Minnesota College Energy Coalition, which has since evolved into a coalition of 18 schools known as the Transcampus Energy Action Movement (TEAM MN). After serving as a primary coordinator for the 16-campus, February 2007 campus energy competition known as “Campus Wars,” Timothy has brought together a team of students to create the nationwide National Campus Energy Challenge for February 2008. Based on this work, Timothy was recognized as a Goldman Sachs Global Leader, a Morris K. Udall Scholar and a Young People For Fellow in 2007.

As a national leader in the Sierra Student Coalition and the national youth climate movement as a whole, DenHerder-Thomas seeks to take the sustainability models students develop here and spread them nationwide while assisting in the coordination of increasingly powerful national campaigns. In the long term, DenHerder-Thomas seeks to link international climate policy to local sustainable development and infrastructure redesign through carbon-based economic incentives and an ever expanding network of citizen-leaders from all aspects of societal decision-making.