Before launching The Charcoal Project in 2009, Kim spent two decades as a television reporter documenting international current events and the intersection between population and the environment. Today, Kim is Director of Strategic Impact for Rainforest Foundation US, where he works to accelerate the organization’s work and influence to empower indigenous people and enable them to protect tropical forests. Prior to this, Kim spent seven years as Director of Virunga Fund Inc, a US-based non-profit that exists to protect Africa’s oldest and most biologically diverse protected area, Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Illegal charcoal production in and around the park is a $40M/year industry that helps fund irregular armed groups that have cost the lives of some 175 park rangers over the past 15 years.

In 2004, Kim joined The Nature Conservancy in New York where he ran the organization’s strategic marketing and communications unit. At the Conservancy he led a working group focused on the integration of Climate Change, conservation science, and public policy.

Kim holds an undergraduate in biology and is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his family.