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Rod Hunter

East Bend, North Carolina
Chapter Chair
North Carolina Chapter

If Rod Hunter is hard to get a hold of, it's because he's out taking photographs of tundra swans wintering on Lake Mattamuskeet. Or, as chapter chair, he's visiting his state's 13 groups to see how the chapter can help them, and vice versa. Or he's working on the Leadership Development Program, or mentoring other activists, or advising the Organizational Effectiveness Committee, or…

Well, you get the picture. Hunter has been a member of the Sierra Club on and off for more than 20 years. During that time, he served as president and chairman of a mid-size company, published a magazine, became a pro photographer at age 51, retired, and never once set foot in a Club meeting. "Never got involved," he says, "felt life was OK the way it was."

During the Bush administration's first term, after hiking for 10 days on a Club outing to the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge with people deeply critical of the administration's environmental policies, Hunter decided to run for excom of the North Carolina Chapter (despite the fact no one in the chapter knew who he was). But he won—by one vote. "The first time I went to a Sierra Club meeting," he says, "I went as a state excom member."

He brought experience as an administrator and businessman to the chapter and after a year, was voted chapter chair. "The quality of my life has improved tremendously since I became an activist," he says. "All of us have this inner urge, a compelling need, to know that we are making a little difference in the world."

Hunter is also involved in the local arts council and the Amani Children's Foundation, for which he traveled to Kenya to photograph some of the millions of African children orphaned by AIDS.

Published: February 5, 2007