Frances Seymour in her farewell party. —JP/P.J. LeoDeparting Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) chief, Frances Seymour, first came to Indonesia in 1987 for her dream job.

As with many other young intellectuals in Washington DC, she was fascinated with the newly found global awareness of tropical forests and biodiversity in the late-1980s.

She was not a typical forrester who had learned all the maps about tropical forests. She was a Master of Public Affairs graduate from Princeton University with a great fondness for cats.