Sharbat Gula was the subject of "National Geographic"magazine's most famous cover, but no one knew her name or her fate until this year. Photographer Steve McCurry photographed her again, in full burka, holding the famous photo of her taken 17 years earlier, when she was 11 or 12. Used by permission of the National Geographic Society.

I went into journalism to use my life meaningfully, to be purposeful, not just to be at the center of things. I have an insatiable curiosity and am interested in people’s lives, interested in telling stories where I feel I can make a difference. I get great pleasure when I’m able to tell a story that draws attention to the courage or to the vision of people. I’m also a great believer that many of the things that go wrong in the world are caused by a lack of understanding.

As executive producer of National Geographic Explorer, I’m the equivalent of an editor. I choose which subjects will interest an audience and work with a whole team of producers, writers, researchers, and editors to make television programs [aired on MSNBC]. National Geographic has a very interesting and unique place in American media, because it’s not only a media company; it’s also a nonprofit scientific and educational organization. We want to achieve great knowledge of the world and everything in it. I often think it’s a little bit like being a teacher at times: This is an important subject—how do I get people to pay attention to it, tell it in an exciting and sometimes fun sort of way that is enticing and that conveys the core importance of the subject? It’s an exciting responsibility.

A year before the September 11 terrorist attacks, I sent a team into Afghanistan to search for Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance, who was fighting the Taliban. I felt strongly that we should be doing something about Afghanistan. At the same time, we knew there wasn’t much American interest in the subject, so when we completed the film we decided to leave the word Afghanistan out of the title. We released the film in October 2000 and called it Into the Forbidden Zone. We hoped that would lure people into it to find out what the film was about.

Two days before September 11, Massoud was assassinated. We knew him as a very charismatic leader and thought it was quite possible that the Taliban had done the assassination. I don’t think we had an inkling that [the unrest] would spill over into the United States, even though Massoud had said it would.

After September 11, we decided to go back and take another look at the material we had gathered in Afghanistan and found we had a wealth of information. We revised and expanded the original film. Now the name "Afghanistan" was interesting to people, so we renamed it Afghanistan Revealed in October 2001. The New York Times gave us a rave review, praising Explorer for providing context to the crisis and going where other cameras hadn’t been and could no longer go.

Underlying all of this is that, at National Geographic, we’re convinced that we don’t and can’t live in an insular world. We need to understand other cultures and peoples of the world. It’s a vital part of our ongoing understanding of our place, and our country’s place, in the world.

One of the films I’m most proud of is Africa Extreme, which was about the last great expedition of the 20th century and the first of the 21st century. J. Michael Fay, an environmentalist campaigner, decided to walk across one of the last tropical forests in central Africa to draw attention to what was happening to this extraordinary wilderness and to bring it to the public’s attention. It took him 15 months to cover 1,200 miles. Every 20 seconds along the way he took a GPS [global positioning system] reading and made an extraordinary record of that part of the world.

One reason I’m proud of this film is that it took a great commitment—especially in terms of personnel and financing—and it also had an impact. It was a strong piece about conservation, but we did it in a way that would not be dull, that would also have a sense of fun and capture what an expedition is like.

At National Geographic, we believe that the last century was the century of exploration and that this century must be the century of conservation. This film brought them both together and helped lead to the Republic of Congo expanding protection to one of the most pristine areas of the forest. It got an enormous amount of attention around the world and made a difference.

I’m not one of those people who, at age 16, knew what they wanted to do. When I was 19 or 20, I thought I wanted to teach. I grew up in the United Kingdom and won a Morehead Scholarship to come to America when I was 19. I came to America in 1974 and went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I earned my undergraduate degree in American studies and English literature. At the end of my time there, I traveled to South Africa, because I had been touched by what I had heard about segregation and wanted to understand more about race relations. I ended up in Zimbabwe Rhodesia, which was in the middle of a civil war. People talked very openly about their lives and what had gone wrong, and I started taking photos and writing about it. It was magical. And it was the beginning of my career in journalism.

Back in the United Kingdom, I joined a newspaper in a very depressed industrial area. I was one of only two people there who had gone to college. David Smith (B.A. ’79), who worked with me, had gone to the University of Minnesota on a Rotary Foundation International Journalism Scholarship. He said, "You would love it there," and suggested

Photographer Michael Nichols captured a gorilla surrounded by butterflies for the film "Africa Extreme". Used by permission of the National Geographic Society.

I try for the same scholarship. Two years later, I won it and went to Minnesota.

The day I arrived in 1983, the snow was so heavy that the roof of the Metrodome collapsed. I had never seen snow like that, and it was a cold I had not experienced before. But I was interested in coming to the University of Minnesota because I thought I could learn every facet of the journalism business.

While at the University, I did a documentary titled You, Me . . . Against the World. The idea came from some powerful photos Donna Terek (M.A. ’87), a graduate student, took of drag queens in St. Paul. I was interested in all aspects of American culture and had never had any exposure to drag queens, so I went to a bar on Hennepin Avenue, where drag queens were lip-synching. They were very good at it. It was like a closed world, and I was very curious about it. I did the documentary with a classmate, Belinda Cowdy (M.A. ’84), and we won a Mark of Excellence Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. It was my first documentary, and I decided that was what I really wanted to do.

I earned my master’s degree in mass communication from the University in 1988. Gary Gilson, a former CBS journalist who was an adjunct professor at the University and has a passion for telling a story, was very instrumental in my career. He called some people in New York and told them about me. That’s how I got involved in filmmaking in America. Having a champion, someone who says, "This person has some talent; give him a chance," was wonderful.

I went to New York and got hired as an associate producer for Inside Story for public television, a marvelous program that investigated the press. It was quite controversial, quite edgy. I thought I had gone to heaven. The first major story I worked on was about [media giant] Rupert Murdoch, which won an Emmy nomination, but the next year the program was canceled.

I was determined to keep going and decided to make my own film about the lack of media coverage of the mass starvation in Ethiopia. I felt strongly that the media ignored Africa and it was hardly surprising that, when the famine story finally broke, the public asked, "Why didn’t anyone tell us this was going on?" I raised about a quarter of a million dollars to make that film, which was called Assignment Africa and took me two years to do. It aired nationally on PBS and then in seven or eight countries around the world.

One of my goals was to get the film into the journalism curriculum at universities. I wanted it to have an impact on how a new generation of journalists covered the world. My associate producer was Belinda Cowdy. We wrote a teachers’ guide to go with the film, which ended up being used in a high percentage of journalism departments around the country, including at the University of Minnesota.

Because of my experience in Africa, a part of the world that has its share of logistical and other challenges, I was asked to make a film about the Soviet Union. It was 1988 and I spent one year there during the period of its collapse. It was like watching the rise of Lenin, only in reverse. It was the sort of experience that money can’t buy. We called the series Inside Gorbachev’s USSR, and we won broadcasting’s version of the Pulitzer Prize, the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Gold Baton.

I also helped to start Michael Moore’s TV Nation, a comedy series that aired on NBC, partly because I was curious about doing a nonfiction comedy. Then I was brought in as one of the first producers of Trauma, which airs on TLC [cable television’s the Learning Channel]. In fact, I was in a trauma bay at the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania when National Geographic called me to ask if I would apply for a position there. I found it hard to believe that they were interested in me. I think maybe they were looking for someone who would bring in some fresh ideas. The fact that I had a fairly eclectic background, yet had a real commitment to good quality broadcast and to international affairs, was a plus to them.

I don’t think most people go into documentary filmmaking thinking they’re going to get rich. I’m extremely fortunate in that I make a respectable living and still get to make valuable films. There is nothing more rewarding than the sheer experience of working on a film, but we all like to be slapped on the back. I’m proud to be recognized by my peers and have received several awards for my work, including five Emmys, the George Polk Award, and the Ohio State Award. I also received an Award of Excellence from the University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication Alumni Society in 2000.

I’m happy where I am. More than anything now I help other people make good films. That’s pretty rewarding, but there are days when I’m listening to someone’s idea and I think it would be nice to go out and do it myself. I hope one day I will be able to do that again. I’m very privileged to be where I am, to work with people who go to the ends of the world in different ways.

I think that if I had stayed in the United Kingdom I would be teaching in a school in England somewhere. My life changed drastically and unexpectedly when I came to the United States. I was given the chance to spread my wings a bit, and the horizon changed forever.

Vicki Stavig is a regular contributor to Minnesota.