Eco Changemaker Oliver Dauert
We asked Wildlife Advocate and Ecopreneur Oliver Dauert to describe his life:
1 You describe yourself as a “Wildlife Advocate” – such a great description – when did your love of wildlife begin and how does this inform your life today?
Since I can remember I loved wildlife. I grew up in Berlin, so limited wildlife there.,.yet my Mum tells me that I knew more animal names before learning all the other useful words that we usually need to communicate. I asked her to dress me as an elephant seal for the carnival! However, growing up as a teenager I lost myself a little because nature was not seen as something cool.
During a year spent in Australia I realised how incredibly beautiful this planet is. I reflected on how I could help best to keep this planet wild. I decided to study business because I wanted to understand why companies get away with such destructive behaviour and how it might be flipped to use the driving forces of enterprise for something good. Currently, I am trying to realise the dream by creating two companies that have the protection of our wild places incorporated into them. So long story short, protecting and rewilding nature means everything to me and shapes every decision.
2. Where are you based currently and what type of work have you done to date?
I live in Bidart, that’s on the French South West Coast. This is Basque country surrounded by mountains and the sea. So far I have worked in e-commerce, sports, hospitality, tourism, I cleaned toilets in Sydney and created a website for a Zambian NGO. Especially the Covid times shaped me. I received a leadership promotion two weeks before the worldwide travel ban – you can imagine the chaos inside a tourism company that sold trips worldwide. Getting my team and our partners sanely through this crisis was my hardest mission to date.
3. Can you tell us some more about your new projects?
Currently, I am building two projects: Wildya – A nature-inspired personal development app that helps people to build better and wilder versions of themselves. I had the idea when I was sleeping in the Chobe National Park in Botswana – in tents 200 metres from a pride of lions with only a bonfire separating us. I had rarely felt so alive! I wanted everyone to experience such a connection to nature, but I knew that those trips are financially impossible for many people. So I came to focus on something that many of us have in common: Smartphones.
I came up with the idea to combine my two passions – nature and personal development because I actually believe they go together like veggie burgers and fries. Wild Business Mates is a consulting company that champions “BIODIVERSITY HEROES”, I assist business leaders and NGOs with finding revenue streams, and with improving operations and marketing, for example.
4. Please give us three words to sum up your passion for nature
FASCINATION – HUMILITY – INSPIRATION
Email: oliver.dauert@wildya.earth / oliver@wildbusinessmates.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-dauert-49016075/
