Board of Trustees

The Leakey Foundation’s Board of Trustees is committed to advancing the science of human origins. Our trustees meet three times yearly to discuss scientific developments, review business matters, and award grants and fellowships.

Life Trustees

Scientific Executive Committee

At the heart of The Leakey Foundation’s scientific direction is the Scientific Executive Committee (SEC). Outstanding paleoanthropologists, archaeologists, primatologists, geologists, and leaders in related fields serve on the SEC on a voluntary basis. The members of the SEC advise and make recommendations to the Board of Trustees for our granting programs and provide guidance for our outreach and educational programs.

Dr. John G. Fleagle
Co-Chair
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Dr. Fleagle is known for his expertise on the early evolution of monkeys, apes and humans, and brings together a knowledge of primate behavior, morphology, and functional anatomy in addition to his extensive primatological and paleoanthropological work in Asia, Africa, and North and South America.

Dr. John Mitani
Co-Chair
University of Michigan
Dr. Mitani is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is a primate behavioral ecologist who investigates the behavior of our closest living relatives, the apes. His current research involves studies of an extremely large community of wild chimpanzees at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda.

Dr. Zeresenay Alemseged
University of Chicago
Dr. Alemseged is a paleoanthropologist and Donald N. Pritzker Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago. His research interests include human evolution and the exploration of factors that shaped the evolution of humans and extinct ancestral species.

Dr. Alemseged undertakes extensive fieldwork and employs cutting-edge imaging techniques to investigate the evolutionary process and mechanisms that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens. He explores both the biological and cultural transformations that occurred over the past 6 million years since humans diverged from the apes.

Dr. Brenda Bradley
The George Washington University
Dr. Bradley is a geneticist and molecular anthropologist whose work bridges behavioral ecology and evolutionary genomics. Her research interests include molecular anthropology, comparative primate genomics, molecular ecology, population genetics, sensory ecology, pigmentation, color vision, and the evolution of hair.

Dr. Craig Feibel
Rutgers University
Dr. Feibel is a geologist at Rutgers University, where he runs the Paleoenvironmental Research Laboratory. Feibel’s research focuses on the investigation of the geological context for evolution in terrestrial ecosystems, particularly those related to hominid evolution. His primary research area is the Turkana Basin of Kenya, where he has worked for over thirty years in association with the National Museums of Kenya and the Turkana Basin Institute.

Dr. Kristen Hawkes
University of Utah
Dr. Hawkes is a distinguished professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah. A sociobiologist, her research and theoretical interests lie in evolutionary and behavioral ecology, and she is a leader in the study of contemporary hunter-gatherers and human life history evolution.

Dr. Richard G. Klein
Stanford University
Dr. Klein is a Professor of Anthropological Sciences. Dr. Klein’s scientific interests lie in the interrelationship of cultural, biological and environmental change in human evolution, especially the reconstruction of environment, ecology and human behavior from animal remains.

Dr. Steven Kuhn
University of Arizona
Dr. Kuhn is Professor and Co-Director of Graduate Studies in Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He is currently conducting collaborative archaeological fieldwork and laboratory projects investigating Paleolithic sites and assemblages in Turkey, Greece, and Tucson. His work focuses on Paleolithic archaeology and human evolution; social and ecological contexts for evolutionary change in hominid technologies.

Dr. Nina Jablonski
Pennsylvania State University
Dr. Jablonski is Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University. A biological anthropologist and paleobiologist, she studies the evolution of adaptations to the environment in primates, including humans. Her paleoanthropological research concerns the evolutionary history of  monkeys and currently includes an active field project in China. Her research on the evolution of human adaptations to the environment centers on the evolution of human skin and skin pigmentation and includes an active field project examining the relationship between skin pigmentation and vitamin D production.

Dr. Meave Leakey
National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi
Living in Kenya since 1965, Dr. Leakey’s research has focused on fossils recovered from long-term fieldwork in the Turkana basin and includes the evolution of monkeys, apes, carnivores, and mammalian fauna. She continues to find evidence of the very earliest hominins.

Dr. Daniel Lieberman
Harvard University
Dr. Lieberman is Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and Chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. Dr. Lieberman is recognized as a leading expert on morphology and is especially interested in when, how and why early hominins first became bipeds, and then became so exceptional as long distance endurance runners.

Dr. Martin N. Muller
University of New Mexico
Dr. Muller’s research combines behavioral ecology and reproductive endocrinology. He conducted the first studies of hormones and behavior in wild chimpanzees and, since 2004, has served as co-director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project. He has also done fieldwork with Hadza foragers and Datoga pastoralists in Tanzania. He is particularly interested in what comparisons between chimpanzee and human behavior and physiology can tell us about human evolution.

Dr. Thomas Plummer
Queens College, City University of New York
Dr. Plummer’s research focuses on reconstructing the behavior and ecology of extinct members of our biological family, the Hominidae. Dr. Plummer’s fieldwork focuses on investigating paleontological and archeological occurrences in late Pliocene and Pleistocene sediments on the Homa Peninsula, southwestern Kenya. He is also involved in investigating the paleoecology of a number of South and East African hominid localities, including Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.

Dr. Robert Seyfarth
University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Seyfarth is an expert on primate social behavior, communication, and cognition. In 1977, together with his wife and collaborator Dorothy Cheney, he began an 11-year field study of vervet monkeys in Kenya, which led to the publication of How Monkeys See the World. From 1992 through 2007 Dr. Seyfarth and Dr. Cheney studied baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. In 2007, they published Baboon Metaphysics.

Dr. Joan Silk
Arizona State University
Dr. Silk’s research interests are wide-ranging and include biological anthropology, primate behavior, and evolutionary biology. She is especially interested in how natural selection shapes social evolution in primates. Her recent focus is on behavioral and reproductive strategies of female bonnet macaques and baboons. Joan is a prolific writer, an author of over 80 publications and co-author of a current biological anthropology text.

Dr. Anne Stone
Arizona State University
Dr. Anne Stone is Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at the Arizona State University. Her specialization and main area of interest is anthropological genetics. Currently, her research focuses on population history and understanding how humans and the great apes have adapted to their environments, including their disease and dietary environments.

Dr. Christian Tryon
University of Connecticut
Dr. Tryon specializes in the archaeology of human evolution, and he is particularly interested in reconstructing those ancient social and natural environmental contexts in which behavioral change occurred. Although trained as an archaeologist, his interests span multiple fields, including anthropology broadly, but especially, geology, history, and ecology.

Dr. Carol Ward
University of Missouri
Dr. Carol Ward is Curator’s Professor and Director of Graduate Education in the Integrative Anatomy Program at the University of Missouri. She is interested in the evolution of apes and early hominins. Her research focuses on fossils from East and South Africa. Dr. Ward takes a mechanical approach to the interpretation of the postcranial skeleton and uses these principles to reconstruct the behavior of extinct animals. Her overall research goal is to understand human origins.

SEC Emeritus

Dr. Alexander (Sandy) Harcourt
Baldwin Fellowship Advisor
University of California, Davis
Dr. Harcourt is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at University of California at Davis. After many years studying the behavior and ecology of gorillas, Dr. Harcourt’s research moved to the evolutionary biology of reproduction, and of cooperation, and now his interests have turned to biogeography, including the biogeography of humans.

Leakey Foundation Staff