Cristián Samper

Cristián Samper (born September 25, 1965) is a Colombian-American tropical biologist specializing in conservation biology and environmental policy. He is the Managing Director and Leader of Nature Solutions at the Bezos Earth Fund. He served as President and CEO of WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) from 2012 to 2022. He was the Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, the world's largest natural history collection, from 2003 to 2012, and served as acting Secretary of the Smithsonian from 2007 to 2008, the first Latin American to hold the position. In April 2015, Samper was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Early life and education
Samper was born on September 25, 1965, in San José, Costa Rica, the youngest child of Armando Samper Gnecco, an agronomist and economist from Colombia, and Jean Kutschbach, an American from New York. He was raised in Colombia, from one year of age and spent part of his childhood in Chile. His other siblings are Marta, Belén, and Mario.

Samper graduated in 1987 from the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, with a B.Sc. in Biology. He then moved to the United States to attend Harvard University, where he graduated in 1989 with a M.Sc., and received his Ph.D. in Biology in 1992 with his dissertation Natural disturbance and plant establishment in an Andean cloud forest.

Career
In Colombia, Samper became the first director of the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, a public funded research institute from 1995 to 2001. He led the Colombian delegation to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, and served as Chairman of the Subsidiary Body of Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) from 1999 to 2001.

Smithsonian
He became deputy director and staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama in 2001, and became the Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., in 2003.

In 2006, he made changes to an exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, "Seasons of Life and Land". Following the resignation of Secretary Lawrence M. Small, the Board of Regents appointed Samper as the Smithsonian's Acting Secretary in 2007 and 2008. He returned to the museum in July 2008 upon the appointment of G. Wayne Clough. In July 2012, he stepped down from the directorship of the museum to assume the position of president and CEO of WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society).

Wildlife Conservation Society
Samper served as president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for a decade from 2012 to 2022, where he oversaw the world's largest collection of urban parks—including the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium, Central Park Zoo, Queens Zoo, and Prospect Park Zoo—and a global conservation program in 60 countries and across all the world's oceans. He advocated for ending elephant poaching and all illegal wildlife trade. Samper advocated for a state ivory ban in New York.

In July 2020, Samper issued a public apology for the treatment of Ota Benga, a young Central African from the Mbuti people of present-day Democratic Republic of Congo who was exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair and later displayed at the Bronx Zoo.

Bezos Earth Fund
Samper joined the Bezos Earth Fund as principal advisor in 2021, and became its managing director and leader of nature solutions in 2022.

Affiliations and honors
The Smithsonian Board of Regents awarded the Gold Medal for Exceptional Service to Samper in 2008, and he was also awarded the Joseph Henry Medal when he left the Smithsonian in 2012. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos presented Samper with the Order of San Carlos in September 2014.

In April 2015, Samper was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is also a member of the Columbian Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Personal life
In 2002 Samper married Adriana Casas Isaza, an environmental lawyer from Colombia with whom he has two children. Former Colombian president Ernesto Samper is his cousin.