Eric Goode

Eric Goode (born 1957) is an American conservationist, naturalist, and entrepreneur. He is known as the founder of the Turtle Conservancy as well as the creator of the nightclub Area and B Bar in New York City, and recently of the Bowery Hotel.

Biography

Born in Rhode Island in 1957 and raised in New York until the age of 8, Eric relocated with his family to California. He is the second of five children born to Marilyn Goode, a naturalist and conservationist, and Fredrick Goode, a painter and teacher. He has lived in New York City since 1977.

Eric began his career as an artist, educated at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and Parsons School of Design. Much of his early work was displayed in group shows with other upcoming artists of the day, the earliest in 1981 which was curated by Keith Haring. He continued to make and show his art throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s.

Eric Goode chose an unorthodox career path as a conservationist, decidedly not taking a conventional path into the sciences. Instead he became an entrepreneur, which allowed him to have both the freedom and resources to conduct his own research and fund many of his own conservation initiatives. In Goode's early life in California he was privileged to have worked in the field with renowned herpetologist Robert Stebbins. Eric later created the Turtle and Tortoise Propagation center in 1980 to breed and manage endangered chelonians.