Tommi Wolfe has an African heart and a strategist’s brain.

She fell in love with nature at four, when someone gave her a pair of binoculars almost as big as she was. Birding was the gateway drug. It opened the door to an all-consuming fascination with the exquisite natural world—and to a childhood spent barefoot and mostly feral in the African bush.

Then life sent her into the Western world, where she learned how businesses grow, how organizations succeed or fail, how leaders make hard decisions and, perhaps most importantly, how money moves.

Along the way, Tommi built an award-winning consulting company, advised hundreds of businesses, led billion-dollar transformation work, ran an African gorilla conservation nonprofit, helped return gorillas to the wild, and conceived a conservation corridor later recognized in Congolese law. Along the way, she also discovered a passion for connecting people who want to change the world with wild places worth saving.

Heartbreaking, she has also spent a lifetime watching Africa’s wilderness disappear. Since 1970, monitored wildlife populations worldwide have declined by an average of a whopping 73 percent! This loss feels deeply personal.

Today, as a Certified Fund Raising Executive and global business consultant, Tommi advises philanthropists seeking credible, high-impact African conservation opportunities. She has an unusual gift for seeing beyond the beautiful story to what really matters: the quality of the leadership, the strength of the organization, the courage of the vision, and whether the whole thing has a fighting chance of working.

Through Cause Crafted, she connects thoughtful philanthropy with exceptional conservation leadership in Africa. She is on a heartfelt mission to help save what remains of Africa’s extraordinary wild places.