W
hen Michael Jenkins ’74 enrolled at
Jenkins and his brothers were part of the tennis dynasty Mac Jacoby built at Landon in the 1970s.
Landon in the seventh grade in 1968, he
had seen more of the world than most. He and his brothers Peter ’71 and Tim ’75, P ’06 ’08, had lived in Russia, Germany
and Thailand because their father worked
in the U.S. Foreign Service. The family had spent the past three years
in Venezuela, where the boys were nationally ranked age-group tennis
players. But even with all this worldly experience, Michael remembers the challenges he faced to adjust to life within the White Rocks.
“My English and my reading weren’t very good when I got to
Landon. That made academics a challenge and also made it hard to
make friends, especially since most of the kids had been best buddies
since fourth grade,” Michael said. “But through tennis I learned to form friendships, and [English teacher] Ann Sundt tutored me and helped my reading and writing improve.”
The ability to build relationships has been critical to the success
of Forest Trends, the international nonprofit organization Michael founded in 1998 to find solutions for environmental conservation.
Guys like Mac Jacoby and Tom Dixon… recognized the light that was in every one of those Landon kids and helped them find ways to let it be expressed — and break the mold.
Forest Trends (forest-trends.org) works specifically to battle
of acres of forest globally each year as a result of agriculture, logging
chefs in Peru, as well as 20 conservationists, business leaders and
The players involved — from governments and conservationists to
was to figure out ways to use the popularity of Peruvian cuisine to
deforestation, a process that results in the loss of hundreds of thousands and urban sprawl, the repercussions of which include global warming. local residents and banks — often find themselves at odds on the issues and the potential solutions.
“To me, what is really critical in conservation is when you can forge
coalitions between different, unusual partners,” Jenkins said. “To solve
– Michael Jenkins ’74
financial backers, for a boat trip down the Amazon River. Their goal conserve the natural ecosystems of the Amazon, improve the lives of
the indigenous people who live along the river, and supply restaurants with the necessary food products.
Forest Trends pioneered this environmental initiative, which aims
the climate change problem, you need to be working with business,
to take the natural services that forests provide — such as filtering and
with local communities, indigenous peoples, financial institutions... I
and preserving fertile soil — and make them a financially valuable part
you need to be working with governments, and you need to be working like to say that our guiding principles at Forest Trends are to be small, global and nimble.”
A NATURAL MARKETPLACE Michael’s relationship-building prowess impresses longtime friend David Laird ’73, P ’11 ’14. “When you consider how diverse and
obstinate and recalcitrant to compromise the participants in that
supplying clean water, slowing global warming, promoting biodiversity, of our economic system by delivering unbiased information about the markets and payments for these services.
“The goal is to create markets around the functions that forests and
wetlands provide,” Jenkins said. “We build out models where you can
make those natural services financially valuable and, in giving them real value, you conserve them.”
whole debate are, Mike has always been a man who, by his own pure
CREATIVITY HAS ITS REWARDS
said. “He got to know elements from the factions of this debate —
one of the Schwab Foundation’s Social Entrepreneurs of the Year. And
personality, is able to bring these disparate interests together,” Laird
In 2015, Jenkins’ work with Forest Trends earned him recognition as
the companies, the banks, the countries and people involved, and the
Forest Trends received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective
environmentalists — and he was able to bring them together.”
For example, in November 2015, Jenkins convened 10 of the finest
SPRING 2016 | LANDON SCHOOL
Institutions, a prestigious $1 million grant the MacArthur Foundation gives annually to a handful of organizations that embody its mission:
25