Emily K Goodheart
During her childhood in Seattle, Washington, Emily developed a deep love for the natural world while horseback riding through wildflower meadows in the Cascades, camping by bioluminescent beaches, hiking past waterfalls in the temperate rain forests and building fairy houses in her backyard. After writing an essay on green sea turtles in 5th grade and coming face to face with one in Hawaii later that year, Emily discovered the wonder of travel and has since explored more than 20 countries across six continents.
At 16, she traveled to Ecuador and the Galapagos for a wildlife conservation and photography student expedition with National Geographic. Eager to continue studying animals and world cultures, she spent a gap semester focused on wildlife conservation and photography in South Africa and Zimbabwe. She then traveled through five countries in Southeast Asia, exploring the wonders of Angkor Wat and thousands of golden stupas in Myanmar while staying with local Hill Tribe people and in floating villages.
Emily graduated from Colorado College with a degree in anthropology. She spent a month with the Colville Confederated Tribes in Eastern Washington pursuing research for her thesis on traditional foodways and Indigenous environmental education. She took courses in Italy and India where she wrote about culture, cuisine and folklore, studied primate behavior at the Lemur Conservation Foundation and completed a wildlife rehabilitation internship at the Jaguar Rescue Center in Costa Rica. While a student, she traveled with her family to France's castle-filled Loire Valley, explored England's regency past and wandered through Japan's historic mountain villages. Following graduation in 2017, Emily spent a summer as an environmental educator at the Denver Zoo before landing her dream job at Natural Habitat Adventures, the perfect workplace in which to combine her passions for animals, writing and travel. She has since traveled with Nat Hab to the far North in search of polar bears and Tanzania, where she met the Maasai, explored the Ngorongoro Crater and came face to face with lounging leopards, feasting cheetahs and Great Migration river crossings in the vast Serengeti. Most recently, she joined Australia South: Tasmania, Kangaroo Island & the Great Ocean Road, encountering echidnas, emus, wallabies, wombats, pademelons, possums, potoroos, sea lions, splendid fairy-wrens, tiger quolls, Tasmanian devils, kookaburras, kangaroos and koalas along the way. When she's not writing, exploring the world or working with animals, you can find Emily immersed in a fantasy book, enjoying the performing arts and horseback riding.
