Bio

Philippa (Pippa) Biddle is the author of Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power, and The Paradox of Voluntourism, an exposé of service-based tourism as contemporary colonialism (Potomac Books, June 2021), and writes the Object Lesson column in The Magazine ANTIQUES alongside her husband, Benjamin Davidson.

Her freelance work has been published by Guernica, The Atlantic, Wired, BBC TravelAMC Outdoors, the magazine of the Appalachian Mountain Club, Maine magazine, and more. She has been featured in numerous online and print media outlets including The New York Times, NPR, The Independent, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera. She is a contributor to Modern Day Slavery and Orphanage Tourism (CABI, November 2019) and the Wildsam field guide to the Hudson Valley (2021).

Pippa appears in two documentary films, Volunteers Unleashed (2015) and When I Say Africa, release date forthcoming. She is featured in New York Times columnist Ron Lieber’s 2015 bestselling book, The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money, as well as in Impact: A Step-by-Step Plan to Create the World You Want to Live In by Christen Brandt and Tammy Tibbetts. She has appeared as a guest speaker at numerous universities, institutions, and events around the world including the United Nations, IBM, the US Summit and Initiative for Global Citizen Diplomacy, Whitman College, Bennington College, Dickinson College, and UNC-Chapel Hill.

From 2010 to 2011, she served as the Roots & Shoots Youth Leadership Fellow at the Jane Goodall Institute. She also helped to build BrightCo, a tech startup that joined GLG in the summer of 2014. Pippa has written content for television in partnership with Bridge the Gap TV. Shows she has worked on have aired on major networks including PBS and National Geographic. She is a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in Creative Writing.

In 2018, Pippa was a member of the founding team of The Dispatch, by Folk Rebellion. As Associate Editor of the monthly print publication, Pippa was a leading force in designing and directing the publication through its first six issues.

Pippa lives in the Hudson Valley region of New York where she co-owns Quittner, a lighting and homewares design practice, in Germantown, NY, with her husband.

Photo Credit: Benjamin Davidson