Stefan Templeton

R. Stefan Templeton (born July 15, 1967) is the founder of the SPEAR Project (Standing Patrol for Emergency Assessment and Response).

Of American and Norwegian descent, he is the grandson of the civil rights leader Dr. Furman Templeton. He is also the grandson of Gerda Boyesen, the founder of Biodynamic Psychology. A linguist educated in Oxford and at the Sorbonne, Stefan Templeton majored in shipbroking at the Royal Norwegian Shipping Academy in 1990. Starting out as a structural weld inspector on oil platforms in the North Sea after completing a rigorous training in deep-sea saturation diving, he went on to become an airborne search-and-rescue paramedic, translator and interpreter.

Stefan Templeton, who is the subject of author David Matthews' upcoming book, has conducted humanitarian missions all over the globe when sudden onset natural disasters occur. He is currently the CEO of the Conceptium Trading Group LLC, based in Washington D.C., which he founded in 1999. He is also the founder of Studio 2412.

In his youth, Templeton divided his time between the rough neighborhoods of Baltimore where he trained in the martial arts and aristocratic circles in Europe. A holder of a 6th degree black belt in jujutsu, he occasionally teaches safety and self-defense to NGOs on location.

Humanitarian missions
Templeton has acted as coordinator and civil-military forward field liaison in numerous airborne missions that he has organized in Honduras, Cambodia, Bosnia, Kashmir, Morocco and Colombia, specializing in rapid response deployment and assessment with the aim of paving the way for the relief efforts of military and civil humanitarian groups.

10 days after the devastating tsunami that ensued due to the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, Templeton inserted 27 medical personnel in Aceh Jaya (Indonesia) to conduct emergency assessment in the most inaccessible regions and coordinate delivery of supplies in collaboration with ELISA (Equipe Légere d'Intervention de Secours Aéroportée) and PFC (Paramedics for Children), with the support of Newmont Mining Corporation CEO Richard Ness. Templeton flew 24 surveillance and GPS mapping missions in order to provide geo-referenced intelligence to the UNJLC, thereby convincing them to use the Calang Camp as the relief distribution hub where the team then coordinated landing zones for USMC LCAT vessels delivering 30,000+ tons of supplies. Between January 5 and February 14, 2005, the SPEAR team completed a pediatric vaccination campaign of 3,150 children.

In March 2007, in collaboration with the Kush Organization and the U.S. Institute of Peace, Templeton conducted a mission in Abyei province in Southern Kordofan (Southern Sudan) mainly to assess their water supply.