Christopher Cox
From an early age, Christopher has always preserved a live-long passion for nature and conservation, while pursuing a successful international career in business and communication that spanned London, France and Canada, USA and Africa. In France, when still in his early twenties, he created and ran the retail arm of a French industrial conglomerate and then in Canada, he built Foster Advertising into the largest agency in Canada, handling prestigious clients such as General Motors, Air Canada, Hilton International, Royal Bank, Christian Dior etc .
In the early eighties he joined Chris Spring of Spring O’Brien (NYC/Paris) to develop the largely under-marketed luxury goods and up-market travel niches. Here, he had the novel idea of linking luxury tourism with conservation and community improvement. His new venture - Cox, Spring, O’Brien - created the first international community-based conservation media campaigns in Europe and the US, which were universally lauded. Combining his wide experience in international business and marketing with conservation, he then helped create the largest community-based private wildlife and tourism reserve in Africa in southern Zimbabwe. The community-based conservation programme instigated there is now used in the curriculum of conservation degrees in universities worldwide.
In 1997, Christopher and his wife, celebrated wildlife vet Dr. Julie Garnier, discovered some of the only remaining coastal wildlife populations in Mozambique, along with some of the last unchartered islands in the Western Indian Ocean. They created a community-based private coastal wildlife area of 3,000 hectares along with a marine commute conservation area including 3 islands They built Vamizi Island Lodge, ranked as one of the top 101 hotels in the world and international media coverage was extensive with glowing articles on the project, including accolades from many conservation-specialized publications. Prestigious scientific partners lined up to join the project and substantial funding for conservation and community programmes were raised from the private sector and institutional donors such as the World Bank, French Government etc. Having created and managed what have been internationally recognized as some of the most successful sustainable community-based initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa, Christopher and Julie decided to expand the concept to other areas around the globe and in 2008, they created the Odyssey3 Partnership.