The nonprofit American Botanical Council (ABC) has presented its ABC Champion Award for 2025 to Chris Kilham, botanical medicine hunter, author, educator, and yogi.
AUSTIN, Texas (March 27, 2025) – The nonprofit American Botanical Council (ABC) has presented its ABC Champion Award for 2025 to Chris Kilham, botanical medicine hunter, author, educator, and yogi.
The ABC Champion Award, which was first presented in 2015, is given to individuals who have donated significant time and/or funds to support ABC’s science-based nonprofit research and educational mission, publications, and programs.
For more than 25 years, Kilham has generously donated his time and ethnobotanical experience and expertise to support ABC’s unique research and educational mission. He has served as a source and peer reviewer for many articles in ABC’s quarterly peer-reviewed journal HerbalGram and other ABC publications and has authored compelling and informative feature articles. Several of these are reader-friendly travelogs in which Kilham provides firsthand accounts of the status of various medicinally and culturally important plants from diverse locations around the world. He also often contributes original photographs for HerbalGram.
Kilham’s HerbalGram articles include “Tamanu Oil: A Tropical Topical Remedy” in issue 63 in 2004, “In the Land of Kesum” in issue 115 in 2017, “Ayahuasca Vine Harvesting in the Peruvian Amazon” in issue 120 in 2018, “A Preliminary Sustainability Report of Ayahuasca Vine in the Peruvian Amazon” in issue 123 in 2019, “The Rising and Falling Fortunes of Vanuatu Kava” in issue 128 in 2020, “Rhodiola Harvest in the ‘Mountains of Heaven’: The Uighur Traders of Xinjiang” in issue 131 in 2021, and “Close Encounters of the Hops Kind” in the forthcoming issue 143 in 2025.
“It is my great delight to be awarded the 2025 ABC Champion Award,” Kilham said. “It means a great deal to me. For many years, I’ve had the good fortune and privilege to contribute to some of the publications and programs of ABC. This is not only an organization, but it is also a mission — a mission that brings together many people from around the world with diverse abilities, experience, and visions, all moving to help establish botanicals in their rightful place. I’m delighted to be part of the mix, and I can’t adequately express how much this honor means to me.”
“There is no question that Chris is a true champion for the herbs and rightfully deserves to be recognized with the 2025 ABC Champion Award.” – Mark Blumenthal, the founder and executive director of American Botanical Council
In 1995, Kilham founded Medicine Hunter Inc. “to promote natural, plant-based medicines, to protect the natural environment, and to support indigenous cultures.” He has conducted medicinal plant research and sustainable botanical sourcing in more than 50 countries and works with botanical companies to develop and popularize traditional plant-based food and medicinal products.
The New York Times has called Kilham “part David Attenborough, part Indiana Jones,” and he has appeared on more than 1,500 radio programs and more than 500 TV programs worldwide. As a TV correspondent and guest, Kilham speaks about medicine hunting, traditional botanical medicines, nutraceuticals, psychoactive plants, environmental and cultural preservation, and related topics for broad and diverse audiences. He was a special guest, correspondent, and weekly contributing writer for FOX News Health for nine years and a regular guest on The Dr. Oz Show.
His latest book, The Lotus and The Bud: Cannabis, Consciousness, and Yoga Practice (Park Street Press, 2021), is an in-depth guide to combining the practice of yoga with cannabis (Cannabis sativa, Cannabaceae).
As a consultant for Groupe Berkem, a botanical extraction and science innovation company in Bordeaux, France, Kilham works on chain of trade, botanical field exploration, new product development, marketing, and communications. The company has developed portfolios of botanical extracts for a wide range of health needs, and Kilham is involved with many of these botanicals.
Working with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in London, Kilham is providing a large library of images from his decades of field research, for the Kew digital image database. Focusing on medicinal and other beneficial plants, people who work with them, and the places from which they originate, Kilham’s image database is intended to provide Kew researchers with visual materials for publications, presentations, and more.
Kilham is also explorer-in-residence for Purity Products, a company that offers health-promoting herbal concepts that he supports. These products are largely based on Kilham’s findings on botanical expeditions. For six years, he served as brand ambassador for KSM-66® Ashwagandha, a leading ashwagandha (Withania somnifera, Solanaceae) root extract.
For 21 years, Kilham conducted medicinal plant research for PureWorld Botanicals of New Jersey and then Naturex of Avignon, France (now part of Givaudan), one of the leading botanical extraction companies in the world. On the company’s behalf, he headed new botanical discovery, helped develop sustainability programs, and created videos, presentations, and other communications about medicinal plants. He is widely known throughout the botanical, natural health, and sustainability sectors for his global explorations.
In the course of his work, Kilham has traveled more than 4 million miles and spent thousands of days and nights away from home. He has fire-walked in the South Pacific, been made an honorary chief on Pentecost island in Vanuatu in the South Pacific, enjoyed a post as Honorary Consul to the United States on behalf of Vanuatu in the late 1990s, has made good friends all around the world, roamed rainforests and mountains, made friends with a prince, embarked on ceremonial journeys with shamans, and explored wild places from deserts to rivers.
An avid body surfer and adventure traveler, Kilham lives and works in Massachusetts with his wife, cultural activist Zoe Helene. They travel the world on Medicine Hunter expeditions and work together to promote plant medicines, environmental protection, and cultural preservation.
“I have known Chris since our early years in the herb and natural products industry in the late 1970s,” said Mark Blumenthal, the founder and executive director of ABC. “I had a wholesale herb company in Austin, Texas, and Chris worked in the herb department of a large natural food store, Bread & Circus, in Massachusetts. That later became the first Whole Foods Market store in New England. During that time, I remember Chris’ passion for herbs and medicinal plants. He created various formulas, which were ahead of their time, for the fledgling industry.
“Over the years, I’ve watched him grow his interest in and passion for herbs — now for more than 40 years,” Blumenthal added. “And, during much of that time, Chris has been a strong and energetic supporter of the nonprofit research and educational mission of ABC, to the point where he has become one of the most frequent contributors of articles for ABC’s publications. There is no question that Chris is a true champion for the herbs and rightfully deserves to be recognized with the 2025 ABC Champion Award.”
“Part David Attenborough, part Indiana Jones (Chris Kilham) scoured remote jungles and highlands for three decades for plants, oils and extracts that can heal.” – The New York Times
Previous recipients of the ABC Champion Award include Mark Plotkin, PhD, an ethnobotanist, conservationist, author, and co-founder and president of the nonprofit Amazon Conservation Team (2024); Christine Burdick-Bell, executive vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary at Pharmavite (2023); Steven Foster (1957–2022), a botanist, photographer, and author (2022); Jerry Cott, PhD, a former Food and Drug Administration psychopharmacologist (2021); Thomas Brendler, PhD, founder of the consulting firm PlantaPhile (2019); Jim Emme, CEO of NOW Health Group (2018); Dick Griffin (1938–2021) of Griffin Insurance Services (2017); Josef Brinckmann, a medicinal plant expert formerly at Traditional Medicinals and current chairman of ABC’s Board of Trustees (2016); Ed Smith, co-founder of Herb Pharm (2015); and Terry Lemerond, founder of EuroPharma, Inc. and Enzymatic Therapy (2014).
The 2025 Champion Award was presented at the 20th annual ABC Celebration and Botanical Excellence Awards Ceremony on March 4, 2025, in Anaheim, California, during the annual Natural Products Expo West conference and trade show.
The 2025 ABC Celebration and Botanical Excellence Awards were generously underwritten by donations from Alkemist Labs, Amin Wasserman Gurnani, Applied Food Sciences, Brassica Protection Products, Cepham, Eurofins, Euromed, Gaia Herbs, Herb Pharm, Indena, Informa, Nature’s Way, NOW Foods, Pharmatoka, RFI, RT Specialty, Sabinsa, Talati, Terry Naturally/EuroPharma, and the United Natural Products Alliance.
Chris Kilham in France with Hops (Circa 2024)
Chris Kilham with Ashwagandha in India (Circa 2019)
Chris Kilham and Zoe Helene in a market in the Peruvian Amazon (Circa 2014)
Chris Kilham with Goji berries in China (Circa 2013)
Chris Kilham Coffee Ivory Coast (Circa 2012)
Chris, Dona Lucy, Sergio Cam, and Dona Sophia in Maca Country. Dona Lucy and Dona Sophia are native Shaman, and Sergio is Chris' right hand man in the maca project, and the founder of Chakarunas Trading Company. (Circa 2008)
Chris Kilham in Morocco with wild Rosemary (Circa 2007)
Chris Kilham in Siberia with Rhodiola rosea (Circa 2004)
Chris Kilham with Tongkat ali root in Malaysia (2003)
Chris Kilham in Palmyra, Syria on Zallouh Expedition (Circa 2002)
Chris Kilham in Brazil with Ryan Black of Sambazon Acai Brazil (Circa 1997)
MEDIA CONTACT:
Zoe Helene
zoe@medicinehunter.com
(Contact for photos)