Where Science
Meets Story
Iona Horton is a British documentary filmmaker, born in Hong Kong and based in New York. She holds an MEarthSci in Earth Sciences from the University of Oxford and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University, where she specialized in documentary film.
Before picking up a camera, she spent seven years as a sustainability consultant, tracking how materials move through global supply chains and what happens when they reach their end of life.
Her work explores the invisible systems connecting humanity to the natural world - from the endangered wood inside every violin bow to the global butterfly trade nobody knows exists. She finds these stories the same way every time: a chance encounter reveals a hidden world, and she follows the thread.
She believes the environmental movement has been selling sacrifice for too long - that the sustainable future needs to be made so exciting, so beautiful, and so obviously worth building that people sprint toward it. Her films, writing, and public speaking are all in service of that vision.
She is a Pulitzer Center Fellow, the founder of Carsaig Productions, and has been invited to join the board of the International Pernambuco Conservation Initiative. Her film The Final Bow is a winner of the duPont / Judy F. Crichton Award, recognizing hard-hitting journalism and excellence in long-form narrative and visual storytelling.
