Directors and Advisors

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Living on Earth is a project of the World Media Foundation, Inc. World Media's board of directors represent a broad range of skills and expertise. The program's staff gains valuable guidance and constructive criticism from the board on coverage of environmental science, politics, business, and economics.

Steve Curwood, President, is Executive Producer and Host of Living on Earth. He created the first pilot of Living on Earth in the Spring of 1990, and the show has run continuously since April 1991. Today, Living on Earth with Steve Curwood is aired on more than 300 National Public Radio affiliates in the USA. Mr. Curwood's relationship with NPR goes back to 1979 when he began as a reporter and host of Weekend All Things Considered. He also hosted NPR's World of Opera. He has been a journalist for more than 30 years with experience at NPR, CBS News, the Boston Globe, WBUR-FM/Boston and WGBH-TV/Boston.

He shared the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as part of The Boston Globe's education team. Steve Curwood is also the recipient of the 2003 Global Green Award for Media Design, the 2003 David A. Brower Award from the Sierra Club for excellence in environmental reporting and the 1992 New England Environmental Leadership Award from Tufts University for his work on promoting environmental awareness. He is president of the World Media Foundation, Inc. and a Lecturer in Environmental Science and Public Policy at Harvard University.

Deborah Stavro Lapides, Clerk, a 20-year veteran public radio producer, directed the first pilot of Living on Earth in 1990. She was with Living on Earth from its first broadcast in 1991 until 1996, serving as show director, marketing director and as a producer. She was responsible for the debut of Living on Earth on 200 public radio stations in April 1991, the largest number of stations for any new program on public radio at that time. She produced numerous on-location reports with Host and Executive producer Steve Curwood, including riding a tractor through a Midwestern dairy and buffalo farm, hiking the Menominee ancient woodlands in Wisconsin and munching on a gourmet bug lunch in Manhattan, which included three worm stir fry and cricket frittata on the menu.

Ms. Lapides began her broadcasting career at WBGH-FM in Boston, where she was a producer of programming in cultural affairs, international affairs and music. Her work has been honored with the coveted Ohio State and Corporation for Public Broadcasting awards. Ms. Lapides was the creator and producer of the Ford Hall Forum's weekly national radio series, The New American Gazette, hosted by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. She produced over 100
documentaries on topics ranging from human rights violations and the Guatemalan civil war to American small press publishing. Ms. Lapides is one of the founding members of the Public Media Foundation, an organization founded in 1979 to support the work of independent radio, video and film producers. Today Ms. Lapides is active on numerous civic and educational boards and committees in the Greater Boston area.

Michael B. McElroy began his research career as an atomic physicist, graduating at age 22 with a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Queens University Belfast. Following a post-doctoral appointment in the Chemistry Department at the University of Wisconsin, he served as a Staff Scientist at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, before he was appointed as the Abbot Lawrence Rotch Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Harvard University.

At Harvard, McElroy has served as Director of Center for Earth and Planetary Physics, as founding Chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, as Chair of the University-wide Committee on the Environment and as first Director of the Center for the Environment, an organization linking faculty from eight of Harvard's 10 professional schools. He was appointed as the Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Sciences in 1997. McElroy is the author of a major textbook and more than 200 technical papers on topics ranging from planetary atmospheres, to stratospheric ozone, to the chemistry of the troposphere, to changes in biogeochemical cycles and factors underlying both natural and human-induced changes in global climate.

Janet Rodriguez is Vice President for Corporate and Social Responsibility at J.P. Morgan Chase in New York. She was a program officer at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation from 1993-2000. Her career has also included positions as Producer for Public Programs at the New York Public Library Center for Research in Black Culture, Program Director for the Kentucky Arts Council, and Managing Director at Aaron Davis Hall in NY. She has served as a consultant to various organizations including Kentucky's African American Theatre, New York Philharmonic Music Assistance Fund, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Caribbean Cultural Center. In addition to the World Media Foundation, affiliations include relationships with Rutgers Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and The David C. Driskell Collection, and the Alliance for Artists Communities.

Henry Rosovsky, whose fields of interests are economic history, Japanese economic growth, and higher education, is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor, Emeritus at Harvard University. He has been Professor of Economics at Harvard since 1965, and became Geyser University Professor in 1984. Mr. Rosovsky has served as a Fellow of Harvard College, as Chairman of the Economics Department and as Associate Director of Harvard's East Asian Research Center. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and also served as Acting Dean for an academic year. He was a member of the faculty of the Graduate School of Education and also served as Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics.

Born in the Free City of Danzig in 1927, he attended the Cherry Lawn School, Darien, Connecticut, received the A.B. degree in 1949 from the College of William and Mary, and the A.M. (1953) and the Ph.D. (1959) degrees from Harvard. Professor Rosovsky served with the U.S. Army to the rank of First Lieutenant from 1946 to 1947, and again from 1950 to 1952. In 1963 he received the Schumpeter Prize in Economics from Harvard University. In 1969 he became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1987. He is the author of numerous books and articles and the recipient of more than a dozen honorary degrees.

Benjamin Taylor, Chairman is a former executive editor and publisher of The Boston Globe, where he worked for 28 years before leaving the paper at the end of 1999. During his career at The Globe, he spent 18 years on the news side as a reporter and editor, including a stint in The Globe Washington Bureau where he covered Congress and the Reagan White House. In addition to the World Media Foundation, he currently serves on several non-profit and for-profit boards and is involved with two different magazines, and tutors high school students in writing at an inner city high school in Boston. Born in Boston, Taylor graduated from Harvard College in 1969 with a BA in American History. He and his wife, Kate, live in Brookline, Ma. They have three children. Kate has worked for the better part of three decades at WGBH-TV where she is the director of children's programming.

Juan Williams is the senior correspondent for NPR and the political analyst for Fox Television. A former prize-winning columnist and editorial writer for The Washington Post, he has also authored three books. In 2000, NPR selected him to host their afternoon talk show, Talk of the Nation, and in two years Williams brought the show's ratings to record heights. He is senior correspondent for NPR's Morning Edition and host of America's Black Forum, a nationally syndicated weekly news program.

Prior to writing bestsellers, Williams was a political analyst and national correspondent for The Washington Post. In a 21-year career at The Post he served as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist and White House reporter. He won several journalism awards for his writing and investigative reporting. He also won an Emmy Award for TV documentary writing. He was given widespread, critical acclaim for a series of documentaries including Politics-The New Black Power. His documentary on A. Phillip Randolph was featured on PBS.

George M. Woodwell founded the Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1985, and served as its director until 2005. He is currently Director Emeritus and Senior Scientist at the Center. Dr. Woodwell holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Duke University. In 1975 he founded and became Director of the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. He was a founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the World Resources Institute. He has published more than 300 papers in ecology and is the author and editor of books on the effects of nuclear war, the global carbon cycle, biotic impoverishment, and satellite imagery used in measuring the area of forests globally.

Dr. Woodwell is a member of the Boards of Trustees of the Ocean Conservancy, the Grand Canyon National Park Foundation, the Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon Basin (IPAM), the World Media Foundation, and serves on the advisory board of the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the recipient of the 1996 Heinz Environmental Prize, the John H. Chafee Excellence in Environmental Affairs Award of 2000, and the Volvo Environment Prize of 2001.

Board of Advisors