Darron Collins graduated from COA in 1992 and won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship that year, which brought him to New Zealand, Chile, and the Amazon Basin. After guiding rafts for a bit, he went on to get his master’s degree and PhD in cultural anthropology from Tulane University. When he graduated in 2001, he began a career with the World Wildlife Fund that lasted for ten years. He became COA president in 2011.