Tshewang Wangchuk is the Executive Director of the Bhutan Foundation. He started out as an intern working with Bhutan’s first conservation NGO, the Royal Society for Protection of Nature in 1988, working with Dasho Paljor ‘Benji’ Dorji. While pursuing his undergraduate studies in the United States, he worked in Yosemite and Grand Teton National Parks during the summers. After graduating from the University of Maryland, College Park, he returned to Bhutan and worked for the Bhutan Government’s Nature Conservation Division. He was actively involved in its extensive protected area management system as one of the first Park Managers in the country. Later, he coordinated WWF International’s Global Tiger Program covering many tiger-range states in Asia from 2003-2005. For his doctoral research in Wildlife Biology at the University of Montana, he traversed the mountains of Bhutan collecting snow leopard scat for genetic analyses. He continues to stay connected with the many mountain communities he has visited over the years. He is also the first National Geographic Explorer from Bhutan, a member of the Explorers Club, and serves on the board of the Snow Leopard Conservancy