A natural leader in Edward Alexander

A message from President & CEO Dr. Max Holmes

As I write this at the end of a week spent in Alaska with Woodwell colleagues, board members, and supporters learning about our permafrost work, I keep returning to one thought: how fortunate we are to have Edward Alexander on our staff.

Edward, Woodwell’s Senior Arctic Lead, is Gwich’in. He is from Fort Yukon, the largest Gwich’in community in Alaska. To spend even a short time with Edward is to understand that for him, leadership is not a title but a way of moving through the world.

The record speaks plainly. Appointed by the Chiefs of Alaska, he represented the Gwich’in internationally as Co-Chair of the Gwich’in Council International for five terms, and served as Head of Delegation to the Senior Arctic Officials and to the Arctic Council’s working groups on Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna and Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response. He has represented Gwich’in interests at the highest levels of international diplomacy, across the table from figures like Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He co-chaired the Arctic Council’s Chairship Initiative on Wildland Fire, served for seven years as 2nd Chief of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in, and was appointed by the United Nations to represent the Arctic on the International Indigenous-Led Fire Adaptation Network. He is also a wildland firefighter—someone who does not merely study the changing Arctic but who confronts it directly.

That combination is rare. At Woodwell, Edward works with the Permafrost Pathways team on the climate impacts of wildland fire and the abrupt permafrost thaw that follows it, weaving together scientific analysis, Indigenous Knowledge, and Indigenous management practice. He pairs a scientist’s rigor with a diplomat’s fluency and a firefighter’s pragmatic approach. He is, quite simply, a natural leader, and I count him an inspiration.

It helps to know where this comes from. I had the privilege of meeting Edward’s father, Clarence Alexander, in 2007 at the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council Summit in St. Mary’s, Alaska. Clarence, a former Grand Chief of the Gwich’in and longtime First Chief of Fort Yukon, helped found the YRITWC, an alliance of some seventy Tribes and First Nations dedicated to protecting the waters of the Yukon River Watershed. In 2011, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Obama for a lifetime of environmental and tribal-rights leadership. Edward carries that inheritance forward, charting his own path but continuing to honor that legacy.

Why does this matter so much for Woodwell? Because the questions at the center of our permafrost science are not only physical questions. They are also questions of justice. The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, and the people who have stewarded these lands for millennia are on the front lines of that change. Edward embodies the truth that rigorous climate science and Indigenous leadership are not separate enterprises, but instead are strongest when joined together.

That leads me to the question I keep asking: what can I do to support Edward so he can have the greatest impact? The challenge is not to overly direct someone of Edward’s caliber but to clear the path, to give him the resources and the trust to bring his full self and his community’s wisdom to our shared work. If we get that right, Woodwell will be better for it, our science will be better for it, and the world will be better for it.

We talk often about the urgency of our mission. Edward reminds me that the mission is also about people, about whose knowledge counts, whose future is at stake, and whose leadership we are wise enough to follow.

Onward,