Historian, pilot, research director, expedition leader, author: TIGHAR Executive Director Ric Gillespie is also an accomplished public speaker. Ric is widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on the Amelia Earhart mystery and his Powerpoint presentations have entertained and informed dozens of audiences large and small. Q&A sessions following his talks are always lively, after which he typically signs copies of his book Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance. Published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press, Finding Amelia has been hailed by Stanford University Pacific scholar Professor Mark Peattie as “the most detailed and factual account of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance and the massive and failed attempt to find her that we shall ever have.”

As the leader of over three dozen aviation archaeological expeditions in North America, Europe and the Pacific rim, including eleven voyages to Nikumaroro, the uninhabited Pacific atoll where Earhart died as a castaway, Ric is a rare combination of adventurer/scholar and master story-teller.

To book Ric Gillespie as a speaker please email Ric or call 610.467.1937 during normal business hours. Ric accepts no personal fee for speaking engagements but asks that his transportation and accommodation expenses be covered and a $2,500 tax-deductible contribution be made toward TIGHAR’s ongoing historical and educational work.