After graduation, Francis wrote oil spill regulations for the U.S. Coast Guard for a year, but was then drawn back to travel — sailing and walking through the Caribbean and the length of South America as a goodwill ambassador to the World’s Grassroots Communities for the United Nations Environment Program. In 2011 he was back on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus serving as a visiting associate professor of environmental studies.

Dr. Francis is the author of Planetwalker and The Ragged Edge of Silence: Finding Peace in a Noisy World. He speaks internationally on sustainability and environmental justice and his illustrated children’s book Human Kindness: True Stories of Compassion and Generosity that Changed the World will be published in September of 2022.

Dr. Francis fondly recalls spending most of his childhood years at the family home in West Cape May. A current full-time resident of West Cape May, he served as a Borough of West Cape May Commissioner from May 2017 to 2022 and also served as an education fellow at the National Geographic Society. His mission is to revitalize the William J. Moore Scholarship Foundation and help it to become sustainable.