BGBS 070: Gregg Treinish | Adventure Scientists | Moving at a Human Pace

Gregg founded Adventure Scientists in 2011 with a strong passion for both scientific discovery and exploration.

National Geographic named Gregg an Adventurer of the Year in 2008 when he and a friend completed a 7,800-mile trek along the spine of the Andes Mountain Range. He was included on the Christian Science Monitor’s 30 under 30 list in 2012, and the following year became a National Geographic Emerging Explorer for his work with Adventure Scientists. In 2013, he was named a Backpacker Magazine “hero”, in 2015, a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur and one of Men’s Journal’s “50 Most Adventurous Men.” In 2017, he was named an Ashoka Fellow and in 2018 one of the Grist 50 “Fixers.” Gregg was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2020 and is a member of their Global Futures Council on Sustainable Tourism.

Gregg holds a biology degree from Montana State University and a sociology degree from CU-Boulder. He thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2004.

In this episode, you’ll learn…

• The creativity, optimism, and persistence required of expeditions translate very well into entrepreneurship and keeping a business profitable over time.


• Adventure is pursuing passion and pushing your personal boundaries in the outdoors.

Quotes

[31:05 ] Adventure is pursuing passion in the outdoors. It’s certainly outdoor sport based, but that can be hiking for some people and just adventuring into a place you haven’t been before to look at birds, or it can be climbing peaks and skiing down. It’s pursuing your own boundaries in the outdoors.

[41:08 ] The cool thing about expeditions for me is not like this, “Ooh, adrenaline-seeking.” That’s not my type of Expedition. It’s persistence, it’s creativity, it’s problem-solving. It’s “you’re in this sh!tty situation, how you can get yourself out?” And it’s avoiding those situations to begin with. I think that is exactly what running a business is.

[44:09 ] We’ve had a tremendous impact on a number of different fields, from antibiotic resistance to microplastics, to improving crop yields, to helping to restore and preserve species that are extirpated from ecosystems. And it’s been amazing what we’ve been able to accomplish in 10 short years, and I’m so proud of the impacts that we’ve already had. But I’m always thinking about how we do that on a bigger scale, and how we make sure that the data we’ve collected and the data we will collect are going to have as much impact on as many lives, human and otherwise as possible.

Resources

Website: www.adventurescientists.org

LinkedIn: Gregg Treinish

Instagram: @adventurescientists

Facebook: Adventure Scientists

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Podcast Transcript

Gregg Treinish 0:02

So we got a call. Three weeks after we gave that presentation in a parking lot. It’s in Salt Lake City at a hotel that since burned down the city Creek in and they were like, can you be in Washington and a month or whatever it was there like Why? And he said if you’ve been selected as adventure of the Year by natgeo, and we went there and Andy skorpa had gotten it the year before. So he was on stage presenting and talking about it, you know, his year of adventure the year and then looked at us and just said, this will change your life. And I had no idea what he meant that but it did.

Marc Gutman 0:45

podcasting from Boulder, Colorado, this is the baby got backstory podcast, we dive into the story behind the story of today’s most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like to think back stories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman. What if you could help scientists cure cancer, or develop medicines that save lives? Or find answers to some of our biggest crises that face us today? All while doing what you love doing anyway. I’m Marc Gutman, and on today’s episode of Baby got backstory, we are talking about adventure in science, and how one adventure brings the two to work together to collect data at scale. And before we get into this episode, I want you to live at scale to adventure and truly feel alive. And that all starts by heading over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and giving us a five star review and rating. By this point in our lives. We all know that algorithms rule the world. And as such apple and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. But look, we’re humans, not robots. So go show that algo that the humans are in control, and rate this podcast. Thank you for your reviews. I do appreciate it. Today’s guest is Greg rhenish, founder and CEO of adventure scientists. And as you’ll hear, Greg founded adventure scientists in 2011, with a strong passion for both scientific discovery and exploration of helping scientists solve the world’s problems wasn’t enough. National Geographic named Greg and adventure of the Year in 2008 when he and a friend completed a 7800 mile trek along the spine of the Andes mountain range. He was included on the Christian Science monitors 30 under 30 list in 2012, and the following year became a national geographic emerging Explorer for his work with adventure scientists. In 2013. He was named a backpacker magazine hero in 2015 at Draper Richards, Kaplan entrepreneur, and one of men journals 50 most adventurous men. In 2017, he was named in a shoka fellow, and in 2018, one of the grist 50 fixers. Greg was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2020. And as a member of their global futures Council on sustainable tourism. Oh, yeah. And he hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2004. And this is his story.

I am here with Greg trennis, the founder and CEO of adventure scientist, Greg, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks so much for having me. Yeah. So Greg, let’s just get right into it. Like what is adventure sciences? sounds really cool. But like, what is it? Yeah, we’re

Gregg Treinish 3:57

a nonprofit organization. We’re based in Bozeman, Montana. And the idea here is that we want to be the world’s greatest field data collectors at scale. So we look for opportunities where we can amplify and accelerate scientists impact and getting them to solutions for the environment. So examples of that are everything from we’re creating genetic and chemical reference libraries for trees, so that they can be used by law enforcement to compare seizures or shipments that they think were illegally sourced with the standing trees across a range of species. So you can use genetics to actually compare wood with trees, and it’s being used for all kinds of things. And we collected the largest data set on earth for microplastics. We’ve collected plant life up at 20,000 feet on Mount Everest, which 22,000 feet which was the highest known plant life on Earth, that is being used to inoculate crops and improve crop yields around the world. So we look for these projects where there’s a solution tied to it, where data can unlock some solution. And we deploy volunteers from the onshore community to go and get those data.

Marc Gutman 5:15

Yeah, and this is the part that I think is really interesting. And I want to make really clear to our listeners is that there are there are these projects where scientists and please correct me if I get this wrong, because I want to, I want to make sure that I put it in, in simple terms, but there’s these projects where scientists are like, hey, it would be really cool to grab this plant life from Everest, but there’s no way that I can get up there, or I’m not going there. Or it’s restrictive, restrictive. And then there’s all these adventurers who are like, I’m going to Everest, or I’m going into the Amazon, or I’m going down to Antarctica. And what you’re really doing is matching these two parties so that adventurers can help out in this collection of scientific data, wherever they’re going. I mean, do I have that right? Is that the what this this is all about?

Gregg Treinish 6:00

Yeah, it is, it’s a lot more detailed and nuanced than that we’ve spent a ton of time building these projects and designing them. That’s something that is so essential for success of the volunteers as they’re out there. But yeah, at the end of the day, there’s this army of people who love the outdoors are traveling around the world and have the skill set that can be really useful. And we find them we give them the mission, we train them, and then we deploy them.

Marc Gutman 6:29

That is an adventure myself, I mean, I can’t think of anything greater than having a purpose behind, you know, beyond just the achievement of whatever we do. And we like to get out and, and, and hit our goals, to have a purpose and to be helping other other scientists and potentially furthering humankind.

Gregg Treinish 6:47

That’s exactly right. And it’s the same for me when I was that on my expeditions. And the reason I started this organization is because of that. It will I had a selfish feeling. I felt really, when I was out hiking the Appalachian Tr