Paul's Open Road

  • INTERVIEWED BY:

    STEM Roadtrip

PAUL SALOPEK

Foreign Correspondent & Journalist

“I got to where I was by no sort of pre-plotted line, no sort of career-orientated well-thought-out plan-I was going where the story was.”

INTERESTS:

Environment & Nature Journalism

THEMES DISCUSSED:

Exploration Planning Chance Education Passion Experience Confidence Failure Hard Work Individualism Culture Fear

FOUNDATION:

Communicating / Sharing Stories

BIOGRAPHY:

  • Spent much of his youth doing odd jobs-from installing refrigerators to working in a gold mine.
  • After he graduated from UC Santa Barbara with an environmental biology degree, he took a summer job on a shrimp boat in Mexico.
  • During the motorcycle ride south, his bike broke down in Roswell, New Mexico.
  • He was stranded with very little money, so he had to take a job at the local newspaper to try to earn enough to get out.
  • That job actually turned out to be the catalyst to a long, illustrious journalism career that took him all over the world.
  • He is currently a correspondent for National Geographic and his work has won two Pulitzer Prizes.
  • His current mission is a 21,000-mile, seven-year-long walk across the globe.
  • Says for this journey, like in life, he'll do some planning, but since he believes in the power of serendipity, he'll leave much of it up to chance.

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