Joshua Powell

Powell attended Cranbrook School, Kent.[4] Powell subsequently attended the University of Nottingham and graduated with a first-class Honours Bachelor of Science degree in geography in 2014,[5] before receiving a Thouron Award to complete his master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania.[6][7]

Powell received a UK Churchill Fellowship in 2017 to study island conservation strategy in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji,[8][9] followed by South Georgia and the Falkland Islands.[10] In 2021, Powell produced and featured in Saving Britain's Islands, a short educational film on island conservation, funded by the British Ecological Society.[11] The film featured conservation projects in New Zealand and South Georgia.[12]

Powell then received a grant from the National Geographic Society to establish Rangers Without Borders, a conservation research program he subsequently founded with Peter Coals, a friend from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at the University of Oxford,[13][14] with Powell becoming a National Geographic Explorer.[15]

Powell is one of the faces of WWF's #WWFVoices campaign on global biodiversity,[16] for which he has hosted series on polar science and Arctic conservation in Svalbard and Arctic Russia,[17] island and marine conservation in the North Atlantic[18] and biodiversity in South Georgia. Powell featured in promotional videos for Earth Hour in 2019 and 2021, appearing alongside other youth advocates and Australian actress, Margot Robbie.[19][20]

In 2020, Powell became an advisor for The Queen's Commonwealth Trust,[21] a charity that funds, champions and assists the projects of youth advocates throughout the Commonwealth.[22]

Powell received a UK Churchill Fellowship in 2017,[23][24] receiving the honorific CF in 2019.

In 2019, Powell was awarded the Scientific Exploration Society's Explorer Award for Inspiration & Scientific Trail-blazing.[25] In 2021, Powell was named one of the Explorers Club 50: Fifty people changing the world.[26]