Glenn Hening’s credentials are unparalleled in the world of modern surfing.  For over twenty years, he’s established a unique reputation for being a “provocateur asking the hard questions” (The Surfers Journal, 2004).

Glenn’s first notable accomplishments as a surfer included winning contests both individually and with the UCLA surf team in the early 70s. He became a high school history teacher and taught (and surfed!) in Central America for five years. After his return to California he developed a second career in computer programming.  But his dedication to surfing never wavered, and in 1984, while working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL-Caltech/NASA), he founded the Surfrider Foundation, leading a small team of  urfers who established the concepts behind surfing’s largest environmental organization.

In 1989 Glenn returned to teaching and for fifteen years worked with at-risk high school students and adults in diploma, GED, ESL and job training programs throughout Ventura County. Surfing remained a passion (of course!) and in 1997 he co-founded the Groundswell Society to address broader issues affecting modern surfers both in and out of the water. He has written or edited over one hundred articles for the Society’s publications about trends, projects and people from surfing’s past and present, including two landmark articles on the iconic rebel Mickey Dora and a widely-read essay, “The Stain on the Soul of Surfing”, which became the inspiration for an award-winning documentary on “localism” produced in 2001 through the USC Graduate Film School.

Over the years he has delivered speeches and lectures to a wide variety of audiences on such topics as the surf industry, the environmental movement in surfing, surfboard design, and the origins of surfing in ancient Pre-Incan cultures.  In 2002 he led an expedition to archaeological sites in Northern Peru built by the first ’surfriders’ over a thousand years ago. Glenn was recently invited to be a Regents Lecturer at the University of California in Santa Barbara for a residency during the Winter quarter of 2006. He has been profiled and/or interviewed in Readers Digest, the Los Angeles Times, all the major surfing magazines, and over two dozen newspapers and periodicals.

Today he owns a business providing training and motivation systems to small companies and large corporations.  He also does a daily radio spot, “Surfing Your Ocean” (KVTA 1520) consisting of motivating stories from the world of riding waves for audiences of non-surfers.  And recently he was hired to research the histories of military sites now contaminated with lead and toxic chemicals.

Throughout his unique career Glenn has remained a dedicated and talented surfer while riding some of the world’s best waves throughout California, Hawai’i, Australia, Peru, Polynesia, and Central America.  For the past ten years he’s organized the Rincon Clean Water Classic, a special fundraising event for environmental projects and high school scholarships. At an age when many surfers are starting to take it easy, he still rides high performance surfboards and can be found checking the surf every day at dawn across the street from his home at Oxnard Shores, California.

Slide show, cool people, and refreshments.  Hope to see you there.

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