Atossa soltani biography

Atossa Soltani

Founder/ President, Amazon Watch

Bio Current as of September 12, 2017

Atossa Soltani is the Founder and President of Amazon Watch, a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin. Atossa served as Amazon Watch’s first Executive Director for 18 years and continues to support the organization’s mission. Currently Atossa is leading the development of an Amazon Watch and Pachamama Alliance joint-initiative to secure permanent protection for the most biodiverse rainforest in the world, a vast region on the Ecuador-Peru border in the headwaters of the Amazon River.

Atossa is also the midst of producing a feature-length documentary called The Flow, about the art of aligning with nature’s way. Passionate about effective philanthropy focused on the world’s indigenous peoples, for nearly a decade Atossa has been serving as a Trustee of the Christensen Fund, a private San Francisco-based foundation that backs the stewards of biocultural diversity, and was as the Foundation’s board chair for five years (2012-2016).

For the past 27 years, Atossa has been leading global campaigns that have resulted in groundbreaking victories for rainforest protection, indigenous land rights, and corporate accountability. A skilled strategist and storyteller, Soltani has brought to light human rights abuses and environmental disasters caused by extractive industries and effectively advanced rights based solutions to these conflicts.

Prior to founding Amazon Watch, Atossa directed campaigns at the Rainforest Action Network that lead to ending clear-cut logging practices in Canada and forcing Hollywood Studios to end their use of rainforest wood in movie sets.

A native of Iran, Atossa moved to the U.S. during that country’s revolution. Atossa holds a B.S. in Public Policy Management from the University of Akron, Ohio. She is fluent in Spanish and Farsi a

By Kian Moaledj, Center Spring Intern

For Atossa Soltani, the natural world presents an identity that transcends national imaginaries. “Paradise is right here on this Earth. This is the sacred, right here, in this time,” she says. An activist for Indigenous and environmental rights for over 30 years, Soltani is dedicated to protecting the Amazon’s biological and cultural diversity. She is the founder of Amazon Watch, a nonprofit organization committed to protecting the rainforest and advancing the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. The organization now campaigns for some of the most biodiverse regions in the world and recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Soltani spent her childhood in Iran and fondly recalls when her family would take trips to the Gilan and Mazandaran provinces to visit the last remaining remnants of Iran’s beautiful cloud forests. “The camping and picnicking trips were magical,” she says, and they had a profound impact on her love for forests. She also remembers the turbulent days leading up to the 1979 Revolution when student protests would periodically shut down her all-girl’s school for weeks at a time. Her parents thought it best for Soltani to continue her education in the US, and in 1978 she got her visa. She traveled to Ohio via New York to stay with her uncle until the rest of her family would also move a few years later. Quick to immerse herself in an English environment, she later attended the University of Akron and studied public policy management.

Soltani says her first year of college was very formative in that it was where she learned about the Gaia Hypothesis, which “set off a huge lightbulb in my mind,” she says. The Gaia Hypothesis essentially conveys the idea that all living and nonliving things interact with one another to maintain the health and wellbeing of the planet. In this way, she says, “earth is a living system, more like an organism than an inert body floating in space. This concept of Ea

‍[00:02] Jennifer Wu: Hi everyone, thanks for listening to The Founder Spirit podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Wu. In this podcast series, I interview exceptional individuals from all over the world with the founder spirit, ranging from social entrepreneurs, tech founders, to philanthropists, elite athletes, and more. Together, we'll uncover not only how they manage to succeed in face of multiple challenges, but also who they are as people and their human story.

“I was really understanding myself as part of the planet, of Gaia, of life, of a web of life. for me, it was both personal and ontological to connect with Gaia and the Gaia Hypothesis. It was as if I tuned into the frequency of the radio dial of the Amazon. It had been a direct connect with my psyche, with my heart.

What we are seeing is that the Amazon is actually pumping, cycling, circulating, cooling, driving rain, so the Amazon rainforest is the heart of the hydrological climatic system of our planet. 

The Amazon is in a downward spiral, it's beginning to collapse, that we're at a tipping point of no return. We thought it might be 10 or 15 years off, but it's actually happening now. And we could lose as much as 70% of the Amazon. The point of no return is now, that's why we have to reverse the current trend. Ultimately, we have less than 5 years to do this. 

Life is sacred, Gaia is alive, we are part of her. We're not fighting for nature, we are nature fighting for itself.”

Joining us today is the trailblazing Atossa Soltani, Founder and Board President of Amazon Watch, a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 to protect the rainforest and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon Basin. 

A native of Iran, she is currently the Director of Global Strategy at Amazon Sacred Headwaters, an alliance of 30 Indigenous nations to permanently protect 86 million acres of rainforests in the most biologically diverse ecosystem on Earth. 

For the l

  • Atossa Soltani is the
  • A native of Iran,

    • Atossa Soltani is the founder and board president of Amazon Watch and has served as the organization's executive director for 18 years. Currently, she is the director of global strategy for the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative, working to protect one of the most bio-diverse ecosystems on Earth. The initiative is led by an alliance of Amazonian indigenous nations of Ecuador and Peru, with support from Fundacion Pachamama, Amazon Watch and the Pachamama Alliance.

    Amazon Watch and the Sacred Headwaters Initiative works to protect the rainforest in the Amazon basin with the indigenous peoples who know best how to protect the forest. They work in partnership and solidarity at the regional, local and global level to halt the destruction of the rainforest, to increase levels of protection, to advance land rights and indigenous peoples' rights to their territories and their way of life and their self-determination and human rights.

    From the Dorm Room

    Atossa immigrated to the United States when she was 13. She went to live with her uncle in Akron, Ohio, and while they waited to get legal status, she had to stay in Akron. She went to University of Akron, where she initially majored in computer science because she thought that was what she wanted to do.

    She quickly realized that computer science was not for her. She felt too strongly about social issues, politics, world affairs and the environment to sit at a computer programming all day. She had fallen in love with nature as a kid in the mountains of Iran, and the revolution sparked a curiosity about the political system that she had to see through.

    In her first year of college, Atossa learned about the Gaia hypothesis: the theory that the Earth is a living system that is interacting to maintain conditions for life over billions of years. This made a huge difference in how she related to the world and other people. As an immigrant from Iran, suddenly these political boundaries didn't matter so much.

    She changed