THE EXPLORERS CLUB HONORS 50 UNHERALDED EXPLORERS WITH 2ND ANNUAL EC50 PROGRAM

NEW YORK, March 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Explorers Club today announced the winners of its second annual Explorers Club 50: Fifty People Changing the World that the World Needs to Know About.

The Explorers Club 50 (EC50) was established to reflect the great diversity of individuals on the cutting edge of exploration, and to help amplify the voices of these trailblazers. The EC50 winner profiles are available here.

The original EC50 was conceived of in July 2020, with winners representing 17 different countries. This year, the honor roll has spread beyond 20 countries, including Kenya, Greece, South Korea, Papua New Guinea, Bhutan, and more. The program is supported by Rolex as part of its Perpetual Planet initiative.

Among the many fields covered in the inaugural EC50 class, the honorees have led groundbreaking conservation efforts in Iraq, promoted environmental stewardship to facilitate inter-tribal relations in Africa, produced leading research on orbital debris and space junk, decoded the secrets of Egyptian animal mummies, organized efforts to conserve large parts of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, and studied the prehispanic Maya and contemporary perceptions of self-identity on Maya communities.

As part of this new class, which will continue to transform the composition of The Explorers Club and increase access to explorers from around the world,  EC50 winners will receive complimentary Club membership for three years, access to a network of explorers, a notable mention in a new special issue of The Explorers Journal, lecture opportunities and more.

"The Explorers Club 50 may well be the most important initiative our club has ever undertaken," said Richard Garriott, President of The Explorers Club. "I do not make this statement lightly. For 118 years now, we have promoted exploration by all means possible, and as important as it is to get the history right, it is even more important to build on that foundation for the future."

After four decades of conflict in Iraq, it was thought that the Persian leopard had become locally extinct - but Kurdish conservationist Hana Raza and her team found evidence of the rare leopard in the mountains of northern Iraq, and now lead conservation efforts in a land scarred by war.

The second EC50 class also includes Moses S. Pulei, Ph.D., a Tanzanian Masaai community organizer, climber, and educator working across East Africa to bring peace and economic stability to rural farmers; Moriba Jah, Ph.D., an Aerospace Engineer who is tackling the huge problem of space junk, developing programs such as ASTRIAGraph, the first knowledge graph database for space traffic management; Salima Ikram, Ph.D., a leading Egyptologist and former director of the Animal Mummy Project; Cassandra Brooks, Ph.D., an Environmental Scientist whose efforts helped drive the adoption of the world's largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea, Antarctica; and Adolfo Iván Batún Alpuche, Ph.D., a Mayan Archaeologist and native Maya speaker, who has dedicated himself to working at a local level, living and teaching in the Yucatan communities whose prehispanic agrarian economies he studies.

About The Explorers Club:­
Since its inception in 1904, members of the Club have traversed the earth, the seas, the skies, and even the moon, on expeditions. First to the North Pole, first to the South Pole, first to the summit of Mount Everest, first to the deepest point in the ocean and first to the surface of the moon - all accomplished by Explorers Club Members. Notable members include Teddy Roosevelt, Neil Armstrong, Jane Goodall, Edmund Hillary, John Glenn, Sally Ride, Bob Ballard, and more. https://www.explorers.org/

SOURCE The Explorers Club