Main Wilson: It's a wonderful world.

A slide show of World Wonders

Photos copyright Andrew Main Wilson—World of Wonders

Like so many businessmen, Andrew Main Wilson (AMP 156, 1999) is readying himself for a trip abroad, this time to Taiwan. When he arrives, he’ll hit the ground running; time is precious. Instead of a briefcase, however, Main Wilson will be toting a Nikon D3 with four lenses—one of which he describes as “a miniature telescope.” It’s all part of an ambitious project Main Wilson has set for himself: to become the first person in history to personally photograph and tell the story of what he describes as “the 1,000 wonders on earth, including at least one in each and every one of the world’s 200 countries.”

Main Wilson has a full-time job as COO of the UK’s Institute of Directors (IOD), but has nonetheless managed to get three-quarters of the way to achieving his objective, with the eventual goal being a series of books, a worldwide travelling photo exhibition and a powerful commercial website.

“It’s a very global concept, a very global brand, in the best HBS tradition,” he says by phone from his London office. “To show the people of Guatemala the travel wonders of Germany is just as extraordinary to them as showing an English person the travel wonders of Zimbabwe. It’s as relevant in Honduras as it is in Hungary and Hampstead Heath.”

The project took shape when Main Wilson was a young executive at Thomson Travel (then the world’s largest tour operator). “I had my briefcase in one hand and my camera in the other,” he recalls. “After I did the AMP program, my ambitions really came to the fore. It was a watershed time for building confidence and creating big ideas for the future.” For Main Wilson, that carried over to both his business life (by this time he was a managing director at the IOD) and to picking up the pace with his photography.

“I use every holiday and most weekends,” Main Wilson says, describing how he manages to squeeze it all in. “I don’t golf or go to the pub. My idea of fascination is going on these shoots.” As an example, he describes a weekend jaunt to Ethiopia: Leave the office Friday at 5, take the subway to Heathrow, hop a 9 p.m. flight to Addis Ababa, land at 6:30 a.m. (“One hour time difference, no jet lag,” he comments.) Shoot Saturday and Sunday, catch a flight Monday evening, and make it into the office Tuesday morning. “I can sleep on the plane as easily as I can sleep in a bed,” he remarks. “The contrast between photography and the corporate world is really invigorating.”

Asked for his top spots, Main Wilson demurs, but describes Burma, Madagascar, and Guatemala as “underrated,” and the US as packed with the most wonders (he puts Monument Valley, Arches National Park, Stone Mountain, Georgia, and the Blue Ridge Parkway at the top of the list). If pressed to pick one spot, he admits he would choose the Galapagos Islands. “You see these extraordinary miniature dinosaurs and birds with bright red beaks and bright blue feet,” he says. “It’s the one place on earth where you feel like you’ve travelled back one million years in a time machine.”

Main Wilson attributes his energy and inspiration to his father, Dennis Main Wilson, a well-known radio and television producer at the BBC for whom mixing and mingling with celebrities was all in a day’s work. “My ambition to do something uniquely creative was born at an early age,” says Wilson, who often hung out on the sets of hits such as Till Death Us Do Part (later remade as the long-running US show All in the Family). “I’ve always wanted to create something that would be enjoyed for pleasure and education by people all over the world.”

Despite meticulous preparations, Main Wilson has sometimes found himself in some tight spots. “I have had a gun pointed at my head in the DRC Democratic Republic of Congo, where the guerrillas did not want me photographing the lava spill that runs the length of the high street in Goma, and in Mozambique, where I found myself, inadvertently, heading towards the presidential palace,” he told The Times of London (September 24, 2011).

Even so, Main Wilson continued, “travel is the greatest education.…Our children need an international perspective for their careers, they need languages and they also need cultural understanding. Having an experience of emerging nations is the sort of thing that will help people make it in the best British companies today.”

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