- In 2000, co-founded the Congal BioMarine Station, a mangrove reserve and sustainable aquaculture facility on the coast of Ecuador's Esmeraldas Province.
- Spent one year (during 1998-1999) working as a potato farmer in Ecuador's Carchi Province, an Andean region bordering Colombia. During this time, he also traveled extensively throughout the Colombian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes, visiting remote indigenous communities and collecting rare varieties of traditional tubers.
- First visited Quito and the Ecuadorian Amazon in January of 1991.
- In 1996, spent 6 months working in Yasuni National Park for the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The area is a remote corner of the Ecuadorian Amazon home to a recently contacted stone-age tribe, the Huaorani. Friendships made with individual Huaorani would prove to have major influence in his life.
- Spent the summers of 1992 and 1993 living in an abandoned sports facility on the island of Antigua, West Indies. He wore dreadlocks, was a friend of the Rastifari, and conducted his first independent field research in tropical ecology.
- He is the grandson of renowned Baltimore chocolatier, Herman Wockenfuss.
- From 1998-2002, maintained a residence in Quito, Ecuador. During this time, he met and roomed with Scott Braman, a documentary film maker working with the Huaorani people of the western Amazon. Their shared residence evolved into a urban safe house for these people. Everyday life in the house involved shamanic ceremonies, blowgun competitions, airplane watching and discussions on the Huaorani's struggle with big oil.
- Was a photo double for Tom Wilkinson in Bryan Singer's 2008 WWII thriller, Valkyrie.
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