Malaika Vaz
Most boards now report on environmental risk, but very few have seen what their supply chains, sourcing decisions and pollution footprints actually look like at the other end. The distance between an ESG dashboard and a trafficking route, a fenceline community or a poached species is enormous, and it is where reputational and regulatory exposure quietly accumulates. Closing that gap requires people who have stood inside those systems and can describe, with evidence, what is really happening.
Malaika Vaz is a National Geographic Explorer and investigative documentary filmmaker who shows leadership teams what environmental risk, wildlife crime and industrial pollution actually look like on the ground.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Malaika Vaz
- She has gone undercover inside wildlife trafficking networks across India, Myanmar and China, and can speak to environmental crime as a live operational and reputational risk, not a policy abstraction.
- Her documentary Sacrifice Zone, made in association with the National Geographic Society, reported pollution exposure across New Delhi, Dhaka, Baton Rouge and La Guajira, giving boards a concrete picture of what fenceline impact looks like in four very different jurisdictions.
- She has built Untamed Planet into a production house whose work reaches National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France audiences in more than 150 countries, which means her storytelling is calibrated for global, non-specialist viewers, not insiders.
- The credentials are independently verified: Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent (2024), Forbes 30 Under 30 North America 2025, Earthshot Prize Advocate, and UNEP recognition as one of six environmentalists changing the world.
- For a sustainability or risk audience used to consultants, she offers something different: a reporter who has been in the room with traffickers, regulators and affected communities, and can connect those scenes to the decisions executives are making.
Biography highlights
- National Geographic Explorer and presenter; films broadcast on National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France in more than 150 countries.
- Co-founder and creative director of Untamed Planet, an independent documentary production company.
- Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent, 2024 Wildscreen Festival, Bristol, for Sacrifice Zone.
- Forbes 30 Under 30 North America 2025, Media category.
- Earthshot Prize Advocate; named by UNEP as one of six environmentalists changing the world.
- Presenter of On the Brink (Discovery Channel and Animal Planet) and Living with Predators (National Geographic), and lead reporter on Peng Yu Sai, a Green Oscar-nominated investigation into the illegal manta ray trade.
Biography
Manta rays were disappearing from the waters off the coast of Goa. Tracing why led Malaika Vaz, on camera and undercover as a seafood trader, from Indian fishing vessels to the Indo-Myanmar border and into the wildlife trafficking hubs of Hong Kong and Guangzhou. The resulting documentary, Peng Yu Sai, was nominated for a Green Oscar and aired on National Geographic India.
That is the kind of reporting Vaz does. As a National Geographic Explorer and co-founder of the documentary production company Untamed Planet, she has built a body of work focused on environmental crime, industrial pollution and the human-wildlife interface. Her films have been broadcast on National Geographic, BBC, Sky, Al Jazeera, PBS and ARTE France, reaching audiences in more than 150 countries.
Her 2024 documentary Sacrifice Zone, produced with the National Geographic Society, examined the human cost of industrial pollution in New Delhi, Dhaka, Baton Rouge and La Guajira. It won the Wildscreen Panda Award for On-Screen Talent at the 2024 Wildscreen Festival in Bristol. She has also presented Living with Predators, a three-part National Geographic series on coexistence with India’s big cats, and On the Brink for Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
Forbes named her to its 30 Under 30 North America list in 2025, in the Media category. She is an Earthshot Prize Advocate and was named by the United Nations Environment Programme as one of six environmentalists changing the world. For an executive audience, the value she brings is specific: an investigator who has stood inside the trafficking routes, fenceline communities and ecosystems that sit underneath their environmental and supply chain risk reports.
Key speaking topics
- Environmental crime and illicit wildlife trade
- Industrial pollution and frontline community impact
- Supply chain exposure to environmental risk
- Investigative environmental journalism
- Biodiversity and human-wildlife coexistence
- Documentary storytelling for non-specialist audiences
- Field reporting in fragile and high-risk environments
Ideal for
- Chief Sustainability Officers, ESG leads and risk committees responsible for environmental and supply chain exposure
- Boards and executive teams setting climate, biodiversity and human rights priorities
- Communications, brand and public affairs leaders translating environmental commitments into credible external narrative
- Investor and asset management forums focused on natural capital, biodiversity and climate-related disclosure
Audience outcomes
- A clearer picture of how wildlife trafficking and environmental crime intersect with global supply chains
- Specific case material from frontline reporting in India, Myanmar, China, the United States and Latin America
- A sharper sense of where ESG narratives diverge from on-the-ground reality, and what that means for credibility
- A working model for using storytelling and visual evidence to move non-specialist stakeholders
- Renewed urgency, grounded in named places and named systems, not abstract climate framing