When you ask Tim Womick what he does for a living, he has an unusual answer: He’s an environmental performer.

After taking classes in acting and theater design and production at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Tim decided to try combining his love of performing with his love of nature. He now criss-crosses the country (and sometimes travels abroad) to speak and perform at events from school assemblies to community tree plantings. His goals are to educate people about the importance of trees and forests and to inspire community activists with his own enthusiasm.

Tim works for the National Tree Trust, where he created the Trail of Trees outreach program. In his first ten years at this rewarding and unconventional job, Tim estimates that he has

• traveled to at least 39 states and several foreign countries
• bicycled and run more than 30,000 miles for tree-related events
• planted thousands of trees with the help of more than a million people—“preschoolers to prisoners, Hollywood types to homeless, and senior citizens to senators”

And hosting KET’s Electronic Field Trip to the Forest isn’t his first venture into mass communications, either: He has appeared on dozens of local television and radio programs and been featured in numerous newspapers as a spokesman for various events.