Leadership Transition at Nature and Culture: Celebrating Matt Clark’s Eight Years of Impact
03/12/2026
A Message from the Board Chair:
After eight years of remarkable leadership, Matt will be moving on from Executive Director of Nature and Culture International. While this is a moment of transition, it’s also a moment to celebrate everything he has helped build.
When Matt joined NCI, the organization looked very different. Over the years that followed, he helped shape and elevate NCI’s programmatic vision, launching regional, even binational conservation initiatives like the Andes-Amazon Conservation Corridor, the Amazonian Platform, the Amazon Future Fund, and the Water Protection Areas program. And with Matt’s leadership, we built the internal foundations that allow Nature and Culture to do its work well: the systems, structures, and culture. Through periods of growth, challenge, and change, Matt has led with steadiness, integrity, sensitivity and humor, and that has made a lasting difference.
After careful deliberation, Matt and the NCI Board of Directors agree that this is the right moment to transition executive leadership and usher in a new chapter for the organization. This decision reflects a shared confidence in the enduring strength of what Matt and the entire NCI team have built, and a collective commitment to ensuring that NCI continues to grow, innovate, and deliver on its mission. The groundwork laid over the past eight years provides an exceptional foundation from which incoming leadership can drive the organization’s next phase of strategic success.
Over the next four weeks, Matt will hand off day-to-day leadership to NCI’s Chief Development Officer, Karina Copen. He’ll then stay connected in an advisory role for three more months to help ensure a smooth transition and provide continuity during the handover. In parallel, the Board of Directors will launch a formal executive search to identify NCI’s next Executive Director, a leader who will be well-positioned to build upon the organization’s achievements and advance its mission with vision and purpose.
Charles Smith, Board Chair
Message from Matt:
It has truly been the privilege of a lifetime to lead Nature and Culture over the past eight years. When I reflect on what we have accomplished together — the programs we have built, the landscapes we have protected, and the partnerships we have forged — I am filled with an immense sense of gratitude and pride. I cannot imagine more meaningful or important work, and I am deeply thankful to each and every one of you for being part of it. And I am deeply grateful to the NCI Board of Directors, current and past, for having entrusted me with such a wonderful organization.
As Charles mentioned, I will be here for the next four months, fully committed to ensuring a smooth and stable transition for Karina and the entire NCI team. There is important work still to do in that regard, and I intend to give it everything I have.
But I also want to say this: long after my formal role here has concluded, I will always be one of NCI’s biggest fans. I lived and worked for NCI in Loja, Ecuador for three years before I became Executive Director. I know firsthand how incredible NCI staff, all NCI staff, are. They are the most committed people I know and among the kindest. I consider them not just colleagues but dear friends.
I have watched this organization grow, adapt, and rise to meet some of the most complex conservation challenges of our time. I have no doubt that the best for NCI is yet to come. I already look forward to cheering loudly as NCI moves boldly into its next 30 years. The mission is too important, and the people carrying it forward are too talented, for anything less than extraordinary things to come.
Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart. And I look forward to keeping in touch!
Matt Clark, Executive Director
