Kate Harris is a young scientist, wilderness conservationist, adventurer and writer hailing originally from rural Ontario. A nomad who loves unfenced countries and unguessed-at life, Kate has lived, researched and expeditoned in some of the harshest places on all seven continents. Mountains and deserts are the magnets for all her movements. Kate's greatest joy is exploring the alien and extreme, wherever it may be found, and then writing about it. Her greatest fear is having to get, heaven forbid, a cubicle job.

Kate studied biology and geology as an undergraduate Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She then won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University, where she wrote a Master's thesis on transboundary conservation and conflict resolution, with a focus on the Siachen glacier dispute. Kate recently earned another Master's degree in earth and planetary sciences at MIT. She now spends her days advocating for conservation across borders; reporting on biodiversity and environmental issues for IISD; cultivating a genius for sauntering, per Thoreau's counsel; attempting to write a single sentence as good as any of Annie Dillard's; and planning a really long bike ride.

Kate is a member of the IUCN-WCPA and Transboundary Conservation Specialist Group, and an associate member of the International League of Conservation Writers (ILCW). She is a fellow of The Explorers Club and was named a 2010 "Woman of Discovery" by Wings WorldQuest. Kate was recently awarded a 2010 Polartec® Challenge Grant for the Cycling Silk expedition.

"I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down."  -Annie Dillard