[citation needed] After his work on the First Earth Day, he was one of ten university students selected from across the nation by President Richard Nixon's Administration to form a national Youth Advisory Board on environmental matters, S.C.O.P.E (Student Council on Pollution and the Environment) was assigned to the U.S. Department of Interior where Mitchell was a reviewer on the creation of the first Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

In the early 1980s, Mitchell was recruited by the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, where he served as the Group vice-president of Planning and Control (Finance).

[6] In the Spring of 1985, Mitchell was contacted by Bob Geldof, an Irish rock musician, that had been working on issues of drought and famine in Africa.

Geldof asked Mitchell to produce a worldwide televised music show to raise funds to help alleviate the catastrophic consequences of the worst African famine in a century.

Mitchell's planning of development projects in rural Russia included work in Siberia on sustainable resource and forest management practices.

While undertaking those projects in conjunction with local wildlife scientists Mitchell convinced the Prime Minister of Russia, Viktor Chernomyrdin, to establish the Amur Tiger Sanctuary in 1993, which was initially funded through the Global Survival Network (GSN), an environmental organization he co-founded with Steve Galster now of Freeland Foundation.

[20] In order to strengthen the Sanctuary efforts to stop poaching, Mitchell worked with Steve Galster conducting undercover video interviews with the poachers.

"[22] The film was released in 1997 and received widespread media coverage in the US and abroad, including specials on ABC Primetime Live, CNN, and BBC.

[23] Galster took what was learned during that undercover period and continues this work, founding the Freeland Foundation, which is the lead implementing partner of Asia's Regional Response to Endangered Species Trafficking (ARREST),[24] a program sponsored by the U.S. government in partnership with ASEAN and over fifty governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The material that was collected during those two years is housed at the Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI), The University of Texas at Austin Beginning in 1985, Mitchell began an association with Irving Sarnoff, the executive director of Friends of the United Nations (FOTUN), and his co-founder, Dr. Noel Brown, Director of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), North America.

Invited by universities in the U.S., China, South Korea and Japan, he has given lectures and planning studios, sharing his professional experience with students and faculty members.