Biographic Sketch

 

 

Carlos Nagel

 

Carlos Nagel arrived in the Sonoran Desert in 1974 to head the Mexico Program of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. In 1978 he established the Cultural Exchange Service to devote himself to linking individuals of good will, in Mexico, the United States, and among First Nations, particularly in the Sonoran Desert region, who wish to undertake collaborative activities in the realms of business, social issues, and the environment.  He is especially interested in assisting individuals and groups in their discovery of common ground that allows the diversity of their points of view to contribute to the successful outcome of their efforts. Carlos has presented dozens of community development workshops and seminars both in Mexico and the US. He is member of the following organizations: a founding member of the Arizona-Mexico Border Health Foundation, (of which he is Board Chairperson); Friends of PRONATURA, a conservation organization in the U.S. with ties to grass - roots international conservation (recently renamed Friends of the Sonoran Desert); Hands Across the Border, a school exchange program that involves more than 100 schools and over 4,000 Sonora and Arizona students each year since 1982; Limberlost Neighborhood Association, in Tucson, 1998; Stone Curves: A Cohousing Project in Tucson, 2001; he is a past member of the Development Center for Appropriate Technology and the YONOSE Foundation, both of these involved in application of innovative environmental technologies.  In close collaboration with the Sonoran Institute, he helped create the International Sonoran Desert Alliance, a broadly based, trinational public policy body for making a reality of the process of sustainability – economic, environmental and social/spiritual - in the north-western area of the Sonoran Desert.  He is the past President of the Board of this organization; he is also a past  member of the Board of the Sonoran Institute, an organization devoted to community--based conservation initiatives, former member of the Arizona-Mexico/Sonora-Arizona Commissions, and official interpreter and first Chairperson of the Environment Committee; Former member:  board of the Center for Studies of Deserts and Oceans; in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora; and Tucson’s Rio Nuevo Citizen’s Advisory Committee. In 2005 he was and consultant to the community development programs of Liberty Cove, a major 55,000-acre residential tourist project on the coast of Sonora in the area of Puerto Libertad.

 

Following his military service in Korea, he obtained the first degree in Museum Administration at the University of Washington in 1958 and, before arriving in the Sonoran Desert, he was, during nine years, a public official of the US Government’s National Institutes of Health’s Primate Ecology project in Puerto Rico; then Associate Director of the Oakland Museum and, subsequently, Director of the Museums of New Mexico.  He is an expert translator and interpreter Spanish/English/Spanish.