The Gift
Gift: The person
behind the name
Dominic Mark Phillips was born in the town of Bebington, in the County of Merseyside, England, in 1964. Born into a middle-class family, he began his studies in English in Liverpool, but did not complete his degree. He decided to travel the world to learn about other cultures. Before Brazil, Dom lived in Denmark, Israel, Greece, and Australia.
Dom was an ethical, loving and kind person. He had a deep connection with nature.
There’s more to him than just pages and paragraphs. His friends know him as the smiling guy who gets up before sunrise to go stand-up paddleboarding. We know him as the guy who’s anxiously awaiting the paperwork so he can adopt a child with his wife. Dom is the friend who texts us on WhatsApp on our birthdays and the volunteer who taught English in the favelas. One of the first things he did in Salvador was get involved with Jovens Inovadores, a public health program at UFBA. There, he was surrounded by young people, teenagers who he fondly described as equally loud, distracted and full of curiosity about the world.
— Excerpt from a letter written by 40 international correspondents and friends of Dom Phillips during the searches in June 2022.
Music:
the first passion
Like his parents and siblings, Dom always loved music. He had a band in his teens and performed on the streets as an amateur artist. His career began with this passion.
Interested in the vibrant English music scene of the 90s, Dom worked at MixMag magazine, which became a reference in electronic music culture. After a few years he wrote the book, "Superstar DJs, Here We Go: The Rise and Fall of the Superstar DJs." And it was while writing this book that he arrived in São Paulo in 2007 to spend a year, but he never returned to England.
After living in São Paulo for four years, he moved to Rio de Janeiro and married Alessandra Sampaio there., His wife and founder of the Institute. It will cover culture, politics, economics, public health, socio-environmental issues, and the country's preparations for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. Dom was a freelance correspondent for major media outlets such as The Washington Post, Reuters, Bloomberg, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Intercept, and The Guardian.
Amazon:
Journey of discovery
His first published article about the Amazon was in 2015 by The Washington Post, when he visited a large mine in Pará and identified the environmental, social and economic impacts of the project. From then on, his curiosity and interest in the Amazon biome grew and his network of contacts in the forest expanded.
EIn 2018, he met Bruno on an expedition to the Javari Valley. In the report that emerged from this trip, Dom makes clear his passion for the forest. For him, enchantment was the key to reconnecting with nature, inspiring a relationship of care and respect for it.
During his travels to the Amazon, Dom realized that the knowledge of the forest peoples and the professionals working to protect it should be disseminated. With this in mind, he began writing a book in 2020, which remained incomplete at his death on June 5, 2022. The book was finished by journalist friends, each chapter written by one of them, and the afterword by an indigenous leader from the Javari Valley. "How to save the Amazon: A journalist's deadly quest for answers" was released in May 2025 in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Brazil.
It's as if they had directly affected us, because he was representing our cause, our history. He became family. Francisco Piyãko, Ashaninka leader.
Your Legacy:
The living forest within us
For many indigenous peoples, Dom became a Enchanted — a guardian of all life that is part of the forests. On land, their legacy lives on and continues to expand. The Institute is committed to echoing the knowledge from within the forest to the outside world, helping to reveal the profound humanity of the Amazon. We are building partnerships with the new generation of Indigenous people, through ongoing support, so that they can write the next chapters of their story.
