Graham Berwind

Graham is a business executive in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who has had a life-long interest in aviation and travel.

Bill Carter

Bill Carter is a land developer and attorney living in Boise, Idaho. Bill owns a commercial land development company and his own law firm which specializes in intellectual property, general business, real estate and family law.  Bill was a member of the Niku IIII  and V teams and the expeditions to locate crashed Lockheed Electras in North Idaho and Alaska.

Art Carty

Janis Carty

John Clauss

John Clauss is a veteran of seven expeditions to Nikumaroro and has been a TIGHAR member since 1987. He is self-employed, in the business of specialty fabrication for race cars and race sailboats, is an experienced heavy equipment operator and has been a general engineering/hazmat contractor for over twenty years. He also holds a private pilot/ float plane certificate and has been racing sailboats for forty years.

Twenty two years ago he raised an aluminum unlimited hydroplane from the bottom of Lake Tahoe. Skip-A-Long had been resting at a depth of five hundred feet since 1949 and is now on display at a local museum.

John was born and raised in Sacramento California and has resided on the California side of Lake Tahoe for the past thirty three years.

Ric Gillespie

As TIGHAR’s executive director, Ric Gillespie has led over three dozen aviation archaeological expeditions to remote areas of the U.S., Canada, Europe, Micronesia and New Guinea.

Since launching TIGHAR’s investigation of the Earhart disappearance in 1988, he has led eight trips to the Phoenix Islands. Ric’s writings on the Earhart disappearance have appeared in the organization’s journal, TIGHAR Tracks, in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings and Naval History and in LIFE Magazine. His book, Finding Amelia – The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance, was published by the Naval Institute Press in 2006.

Walt Holm

Walt Holm is a self-employed electrical engineer currently engaged in defense-related research.  Walt was a member of the Dive Team on the 2001 Niku IV  expedition, as well as a team member on the 2003 Niku Vp expedition.  He was the team leader on the 2004 TIGHAR expeditions to Idaho and Alaska to examine crashed Lockheed Electras remaining in wilderness areas.  Walt has also participated in other TIGHAR field work in Idaho, Micronesia, and Newfoundland. He lives in Menlo Park, California.

Walt is a certified Divemaster, and holds a commercial pilot’s license.  When he is not outdoors or working, he spends his time dancing, his current love being Argentine Tango.

Karl Kern

Karl Kern is the founder and owner of KRN Aviation Services in Chandler, Arizona, a large aircraft parts supplier with a world-wide customer base. This is his first trip to Nikumaroro.

Tom King

Thomas F. King holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of California, Riverside, and has been a professional archaeologist for some 45 years.  His major field projects have been in California and the Pacific Islands. He is best known, however, for his work in historic preservation – trying to make sure that historic buildings, archaeological sites, indigenous sacred places, culturally distinctive neighborhoods and landscapes – are given as much protection as possible by U.S. government agencies planning projects that may damage them. His work in the late 1970s in what are now the Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands led him to be sometimes be called “the father of Micronesian Historic Preservation.” He spent ten years with the U.S. Government overseeing review of federal projects for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (www.achp.gov), and is known as one of the nation’s leading authorities on historic preservation laws and practice. He has also worked for the Department of Defense, General Services Administration, and other federal agencies, as well as Indian tribes, Native Hawaiian groups, state and local agencies, private industry, and public interest groups. He teaches classes in aspects of historic preservation in cities all over the country and in the Pacific. He is the author of seven textbooks on archaeological and historic preservation topics (www.lcoastpress.com; www.altamirapress.com), along with dozens of journal articles, professional monographs, and popular publications; he is the co-author of Amelia Earhart’s Shoes and has also published a number of professional and popular articles about the Earhart project and other TIGHAR activities. He is currently in private practice, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, and is affiliated with SWCA Environmental Consultants (www.swca.com).

Dan Lann

Dan is an emergency room physician in the Dallas Texas area. He has been on a number of TIGHAR expeditions, including as a diver in the Marshalls on the Devastator, but this is his first trip to Nikumaroro.

Megan Lickliter-Mundon

Megan is an archeologist with a specialty in metallurgy, and is also the administrator of Houston's 1940 Air Terminal Museum at Hobby Airport, Houston, Texas. This is her first trip to Nikumaroro.

Andrew McKenna

Andrew McKenna is a principal in Sun Electric Systems, Inc. a leading renewable energy firm the Rocky Mountain Region, specializing in photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal systems. Andrew is Certified in Photovoltaics in Colorado, and a Certified Energy Manager, with a BA degree in Environmental Science with a concentration in geology from Wesleyan University. Andrew was a member of the 2001 NIKU IIII Dive Team, a participant in TIGHAR’s 2004 Lockheed L-10 search in Idaho, and the 2000 B-23 Dragon survey, Loon Lake, Idaho. He has extensive field experience with the American Museum of Natural History fossil collecting expeditions throughout the Western US, Greenland, and Egypt. Andrew holds an advanced open water scuba diver certification, as well as a Commercial pilots license with Single, Multiengine, and Instrument ratings. He is a member of the Boulder Composite Squadron, Civil Air Patrol, and is actively involved in Airborne Search and Rescue missions throughout Colorado. He lives in Boulder.

Jon Overholt

Jon Overholt is a physician in Fair Oaks, California, with much experience in expedition medicine. This is his first trip to Nikumaroro.

Gary Quigg

Archaeologist, historian, museum professional, and television documentary producer, Gary Quigg balances several fields of expertise. His extensive archaeological field experience includes survey and excavation work at both prehistoric and historic sites, often in such extreme locations as the Newfoundland Cape Shore, Alaska’s Misty Fjords Wilderness, and the remote islands of Nikumaroro and Yap in the South Pacific. Through ground-breaking historical research in material culture, Gary has led the development of numerous one-of-a-kind restorations and uniquely accurate reproductions of long-lost artifacts to create interactive and engaging visitor learning experiences at one of America’s leading living history museums. As founder of Dancing River Productions, Gary has written and produced several award-winning historical and environmental documentaries for local and statewide PBS audiences.

A life-long resident of Indiana, Gary is a magna cum laude graduate of Ball State University (Radio, Television, Film) and has completed all coursework for a master of arts degree in Public History from Indiana University (thesis under development). He is currently a general consultant in museum work, curatorship, and historic preservation out of Crawfordsville, Indiana.

An avid outdoorsman, Gary enjoys wilderness backpacking, mountain climbing and canoeing. He has logged hundreds of hours as a private pilot, and is presently restoring a 1943 C-47 that served with the 8th Air Force in Europe during World War Two.

Tom Roberts

Tom Roberts is an aerospace engineer with a PhD in structural mechanics. He retired from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in 2004 and currently is a consultant with the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. Tom has been a member of TIGHAR since 1995. He has participated in TIGHAR’s B-23 Dragon survey at Loon Lake, Idaho and a trip to Newfoundland looking for traces of L'Oiseau Blanc. He lives in Park City, Utah.

Jesse Rodocker

Jesse Rodocker is a marketing executive for SeaBotix Inc. In addition to the marketing responsiblities Jesse aids in client demonstrations and in field operations/testing. He is the ROV operator for the expedition; he also brought an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for sonar mapping of the lagoon bottom.

Leonid Sagalovsky

Leonid Sagalovsky is a physicist and a financial engineer who said he was looking for new avenues to explore. This is his first trip to Nikuamaroro. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Lonnie Schorer

As a veteran of TIGHAR’s Aviation Archeology Course, the Bombay Hook P-47 Thunderbolt Expedition and the 1997 Earhart Niku Team, Lonnie Schorer’s interest in aviation archeology stems from the fact that she is a private pilot (ASEL and ASES) with an interest in women’s contributions to exploration. She was on the Norwegian team supporting Liv Arnesen’s successful attempt to become the first person to ski solo from the edge of the Antarctic shelf to the South Pole. As a member of TIGHAR, the Explorers Club, Scandinavian Historic Flight, and Women in Aerospace, for the purpose of inspiring students to pursue science, mathematics and technology curricula, Lonnie has been invited to speak with school children throughout the US about exploration, including space exploration. She has written Kids to Space: A Space Traveler’s Guide; Kids to Space Mission Plans: An Educator’s Guide; and Beyond Earth: Children’s Visions of our Future in Space. In professional life, Lonnie is an architect who seeks visionary projects. The most recent such projects were as Director of World Heritage Initiatives Taskforce (UNESCO World Heritage sites) and as head of design for a 43,000 ton new concept residential ship, The World of ResidenSea. With her State Department husband and 3 children, Lonnie has lived in Thailand, the former USSR, Turkey, Italy and Norway for nearly 20 years and has served as staff for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway and for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. Spare time activities include kayaking, skiing, jogging and organizing adventure races. She lives in Burke, Virginia.

Mark Smith

Mark Smith has been the cameraman on two other Earhart Project expeditions to Nikumaroro, as well as trips to the Marshall Islands and around the U.S. for us. He lives in Jersey City New Jersey when he is not shooting film.

Curtis Webster

Curtis Webster is a musician and digital master from New York City with extensive experience in computers and graphics. This is his first trip to Nikumaroro.