Snapshots of a Vanishing World

Growing up, Hunter dreamed of becoming a National Geographic photographer. He took a gap year after Menlo graduation to pursue a passion he might never get to indulge again: wildlife photography. Armed with just a 600 mm lens and an instinctive draw towards nature, Hunter spent months volunteering with conservation organizations around the globe to get exposure to the environments and animals he sought to document on film. His portfolio includes striking portraits of cheetahs, lions, and leopards taken during his gap year in Samburu, Kenya. Each frame captures swift bursts of motion that pierce the raw stillness of the savannah. That experience sharpened not only Hunter’s eye for composition but also his sense of purpose. “That’s where I got to see firsthand actual human-wildlife conflict,” he says. “I learned that these places on the planet aren’t just beautiful postcards; they are really degraded.” The experience lit a fire in him, marking the beginning of a deeper realization: photography was just one way to protect what he loved. He began to wonder, what if other technologies could serve the wild in more lasting ways than a camera ever could?

Purpose under Pressure

Fueled by his mounting climate anxiety during college, Hunter took a second gap year and joined FullCycle, an investment firm backing growth-stage companies developing climate-critical infrastructure technology. That summer, he worked at Graystone Consulting, a division of Morgan Stanley, where he conducted research on upcoming IPOs in emerging technology and renewable energy. Though he intended to return to FullCycle after college, he admits that his work in private equity and wealth management “never really scratched the itch.” Exasperated by the state of the planet—and the burden his generation has inherited—Hunter found himself at a turning point when he met Jane Goodall at a Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN) fundraiser. Looking for direction, he asked her, “What should I do?” She met his gaze and said simply, “Do something. Do anything.” The next day, he called his boss at FullCycle and told him he wouldn’t be coming back.

After earning his degree, Hunter launched CTA with no plan or funding, just a sense of urgency. He spent the next two years in the field, ultimately recognizing the need to bring enterprise technologies to the field of conservation. “We’re fighting a battle—at least the conservationists are—and they’re in the trenches, fighting gun fights with spoons,” he explains. “We have to figure out how to get powerful tools in their hands so that it levels the playing field, so that we have a shot.”

By leveraging tools commonly used in the private sector, including data analytics, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence, CTA provides critical solutions to conservation organizations working to protect the planet. It’s a challenge that plays to Hunter’s strengths. In Menlo’s Whitaker Lab, where a soldering station sits just steps from a table saw, Hunter first discovered his talent for assembling complex systems and understanding how their parts fit and function together. “That was the skill that was really organically fostered in that space,” he reflects. Today, that same instinct drives CTA’s impact. “My motivation is the ongoing function of the biggest, most complex, and most important system that we have: the Earth.”