Holly Morris

Change agent, Filmmaker, Global soul, Idea generator, Journalist, Producer, World traveler, Writer/Editor

Holly Morris is a modern-day explorer, writer and storyteller who covers human stories in the most difficult places. She is the author of Adventure Divas: Searching the Globe for a New Kind of Heroine (Random House) and writer/director and EP of the companion PBS series, “Adventure Divas.†A former National Geographic Adventure columnist and widely anthologized essayist, Morris is also a regular contributor to The New York Times among other national publications. She presents the PBS television series “Globe Trekker,†and “Treks in a Wild World,†and also hosted “Outdoor Investigations - a series in which she investigates the scientific side of today’s environmental and natural world mysteries. Morris has reported on the illegal caviar trade from Iran's Caspian Sea, sex trafficking from the brothels of India, and the global diaspora of Black Panthers from Cuba. Whether she’s exploring underground Soviet missile silos, or the ship breaking yards of Bangladesh, Morris goes to the grassroots to tell a global story. Her recent print journalism, “A Country of Women,†about a surprising group of survivors living in the shadow of Chernobyl, won the Meredith Editorial Excellence Award, was reprinted in London’s Daily Telegraph, and The Week, and was selected for the book The Best Travel Writing (2012). The story is being made into a documentary film.

The scariest story of my entire career has landed me on the TED stage. I thought it would take 1 day; it's been 3 years. Chernobyl is a dark, traumatic story - but the resilient, spirited occupants of the "dead zone," and their unlikely story of survival, has me in a vice-grip...

Birling. Betting the horses.