Renowned ethnobotanist and author of Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice, Dr. Mark Plotkin will be speaking next Thursday at Rollins College. This event is open to the public and will be our Meetup for the month of November.

The event starts at 7pm and is scheduled to last until 9pm. Mark will speak to the group and then there will be an open question and answer session.

If you don't know about Mark Plotkin and have never read his book 'Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice you should check out his bio below and find or buy a copy of the book to read.

A spellbinding orator and storyteller, Dr. Plotkin has been hailed by Time magazine as an environmental “Hero for the Planet.”

For much of the past 20 years, Dr. Mark J. Plotkin has worked with and learned from the ancient shamans in the rainforests of Central and South America, providing him with incomparable knowledge of healing plants and shaman traditions. Plotkin was educated at Harvard, Yale and Tufts. He formerly served as Research Associate in Ethnobotanical Conservation as the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, Director of Plant Conservation at the World Wildlife Fund and Vice President of Conservation International in Washington, D.C. Plotkin currently serves as President of the Amazon Conservation Team, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting biological and cultural diversity of the tropical rain forest. Plotkin was recently named by Smithsonian magazine as one of "35 Who Made a Difference," along with other luminaries such as Bill Gates, Wynton Marsalis, and Steven Spielberg. In 2008, Mr. Plotkin was named one of the Social Entrepreneurs of the Year by the Skoll Foundation.

The author of numerous scientific papers and reports, Dr. Plotkin received the 1994 San Diego Zoo Gold Medal for Conservation, one of the top awards in the environmental field (previous winners include Jane Goodall, Sir David Attenborough, and His Royal Highness Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh).

Dr. Plotkin’s book, Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice (Viking-Penguin) is currently in the eighteenth printing and has also been published in Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. A children’s version, entitled The Shaman’s Apprentice - A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest co-written and illustrated by acclaimed author Lynne (The Great Kapok Tree) Cherry, was published by Harcourt-Brace in the summer of 1997. Smithsonian magazine hailed it as “the outstanding environmental and natural history title of the year.” Dr. Plotkin’s critically acclaimed new book, Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature’s Healing Secrets, was published by Viking-Penguin.

Join us next Thursday at the Rollins College Bush Science Center to hear from and meet Mark Plotkin.