English
He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. A Maori proverb that asks what is the most important thing in the world, and answers with “The people, the people, the people”. That’s what gets me up in the morning. The super-smart people I get to work with, learn from, lead and support. The stories I can tell about people and the world they live in. And the amazing audience that listens to our stories with wrapt attention and wants to know more. He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
Craig is an executive producer and writer of science and wildlife documentaries and factual television programs. He has earned three U.S. Emmy Award nominations and two Gold Medals at the New York Film and Television Festival for his documentaries. As a producer, director and writer he’s made over 500 hours of international factual and documentary television. He’s developed and sold an additional 300 hours of programming. As an executive producer and showrunner he has led more than 100 hours of successful productions for international broadcasters over the last ten years.
Craig has been producing international science and nature television since 1995 when he was a field director on Discovery Channel’s landmark series Beyond 2000. He has gone on to make films for Nat Geo, PBS, RTE, France 5, Arte, ZDF, NHK, CCTV, TVNZ and ABC Australia. His credits include Big Pacific for PBS/Arte/NHK/CCTV, Emmy nominated Saving Africa’s Giants with Yao Ming for Animal Planet/CCTV, Wild 24 for National Geographic/FOX and Beyond 2000 for Discovery Channel. He also produced and directed House from Hell, which the Big Brother format was based on, Treasure Island, Temptation Island, The Mole and Survivor.
His biggest production to date was Big Ice, a four-part series capturing the behavioral changes in polar wildlife in response to climate change. His teams recorded scientifically unique behaviors that are contributing to a new understanding of the adaptability of animals. Prior to Big Ice he wrote and produced the landmark PBS/CCTV/NHK/Arte blue chip nature series Big Pacific, which garnered an audience of half a billion people in its first four weeks of broadcast and raised average audiences by 40% for everybody that ran it.
After hours he is a senior metropolitan firefighter and medical first responder for Fire Emergency New Zealand where he leads teams at structure fires, motor vehicle crashes and medical events to save lives and property. Craig holds US and Australian citizenship and descends from the Mayflower pilgrims on his Father’s side and Irish convicts on his Mother’s side. He completed his Bachelor of Applied Management last year majoring in innovation and entrepreneurship and is beginning a Masters Degree focusing on practices of leadership in creative industries.