Lawrence Kent is originally from Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey but now lives in Seattle with his wife, three kids, and about 25 tanks, many filled with cichlids he collected in the wild. An economist by training, Lawrence works for a charitable foundation striving to help the poor in Africa and South Asia to lift themselves out of poverty by improving their agricultural productivity. He travels widely and frequently for his work and has lived abroad for ten years in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Chad, Madagascar, and Egypt. Lawrence is fascinated by African cichlids and has published on his “fish watching” adventures in Mozambique, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Uganda, and the Congo. He also loves bird watching, reptiles, and even mormyrids and killifish.