"I don’t like to do the same old thing or follow what people tell me to do," Wallace J. Nichols tells California's Santa Cruz Weekly. "I’m not a rebel. I just like to do stuff."
Nichols -- a marine biologist, environmentalist and 1989 graduate of DePauw University who goes by his middle initial -- "first gained notoriety when, in 1996, he used a satellite transmitter to track a sea turtle from Baja to Japan," writes Georgia Perry. "Now he is the owner of an impressive 22-page resume, which plainly bullet-points the many organizations he has founded over the years. He says he’s never even applied for a job, aside from a high school gig making deep-dish pizzas in the Chicago suburbs."
The piece previews the second annual BlueMind Conference, which Dr. Nichols will host this weekend. Access the article at the weekly newspaper's website, and watch a webcast of the conference here.
J. Nichols, research associate at the California Academy of Sciences, will receive the 2012 "Wave Saver Award" from the Save The Waves Coalition on Friday, June 15. His work has been featured in National Geographic, Scientific American, TIMEand Newsweek, and he was seen in Leonardo DiCaprio's documentary, The 11th Hour.
He regularly returns to DePauw and delivered the principal address to the University's Class of 2010, "You Are Lovers and Fighters."