Climbing mountains across multiple continents, Majka Burhardt ’98 has a unique perspective on the impact of climate change on delicate ecosystems and the people who need them for their own survival. After scaling Mount Namuli in Mozambique, she founded Legado, a thriving futures nonprofit dedicated to a recalibration of the relationship between Indigenous and local peoples and their environment.

A new professorship of Indigenous studies, endowed by a $5 million gift from Wendy Schmidt and her husband, Eric Schmidt, a 1976 alumnus, will build on Princeton’s interdisciplinary strengths and expand its faculty expertise in an area of study that is critically important to the University.