Olivia McKendrick is from Cambridge, England. A lawyer by background, she worked in London, New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai and was a corporate partner at Linklaters, one of the world’s largest law firms before life took an unexpected turn.
Alongside Chris Rainier, she is the co-founder and Director of The Cultural Sanctuaries Foundation and oversees the charity’s projects from Mexico, Peru and Canada to Mongolia, Polynesia and Papua New Guinea.
The Cultural Sanctuaries Foundation is a US-based 501c3 non-profit focused on supporting and protecting endangered cultures and languages in double hotspots – where both culture and language and biodiversity are endangered.
Hear from Olivia at Summit Photo 2026
Chris and Olivia will be speaking together at Summit Photo 2026.
They are honoured to be invited to talk at RGS’ Summit Photo event and will focus their presentation on Cultures on the edge: at the crossroads of culture and conservation.
To the backdrop of Chris Rainier's portraits of indigenous peoples taken over a 40 year period including as a National Geographic Fellow and photographer.
Chris and Olivia will present on why culture matters and the crucial importance of indigenous understanding and traditions. They will explore the link between culture and conservation, the threats to indigenous cultures, languages and landscapes and the growing power and energy of their revitalisation.
Finally, they will touch on the work that their charity, The Cultural Sanctuaries Foundation, is doing together with indigenous communities around the world.
Theirs is a passion project – for cultural and linguistic diversity, for indigenous guardianship of land and for extra places around the fireplace discussion of what it means to be human in and how to face the challenges of the 21st century.
