When I was growing up as a pre-teen and teenager in Los Angeles, all my friends had pictures of movie stars, rock stars and other heartthrobs taped up on the walls of their bedrooms. My walls were plastered, however, with pictures of chimpanzees. I covered my room with pages carefully cut from National Geographic magazine, filled with images of African jungles and jet-black chimp families.
In the midst of these exquisite images of the forests of Tanzania and their much-too-cute primate inhabitants, sat (or sometimes stood) a young woman. Jane Goodall. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said, “Jane Goodall.” Jane was the hero of my youth, and her impact on my life has only grown with time.
