Where did you grow up?
I was born north of Boston and grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. In 1980 our family moved to Eugene, Oregon. I immediately took to the outdoors, hiking as much as I could in the Cascade and Olympic mountains.
Why did you choose UBC Forestry?
A court injunction that closed logging from U.S. federal lands in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s really started my career rolling. I sought solutions that would drive environmentally and socially responsible forestry. By 1995 UBC had several faculty members focused on these issues. The prospect of studying forestry not far from my family and within a world-renowned and multi-disciplinary faculty was hard to pass up.
In what year did you graduate from UBC Forestry?
I defended my thesis in spring of 1998. I had started my graduate studies in 1995 and received a Master of Science in Forestry. The subject of my research was the assessment methods used by Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certifiers in North America from the inception of the FSC up to 1997.
What was your first job after graduation?
I managed a number of short consultancies for eight months, then joined the Rainforest Alliance in their forestry certification program as an intern. I had researched this extensively as a graduate student, so it was a logical place to start. I was immediately trained as a forest auditor, and within a few months was flying into the heart of the Bolivian Amazon to assess a forest concession.
What are you doing now and what led you there?
I’m currently Vice President, Landscapes and Livelihoods – the division leading our field work – at the Rainforest Alliance. I am also the global lead on climate and concentrate a lot of my energy on climate change adaptation, resilience and mitigation. The Rainforest Alliance is an international conservation organization based in New York that works with over 3,000 businesses, over 1.3 million farmers, in over 80 countries, and has certified over 38 million hectares of forest to FSC standards.
What is your fondest memory of your time at UBC?
I lived for a summer in Williams Lake and worked in the Alex Fraser Research Forest. I really enjoyed all the very practical and real-world forestry concerns embodied in a small university forest. I also did a few stints as a teaching assistant with the fall camp, and I really loved helping students on plant identification.
If you weren’t working where you are now what profession would you most like to try?
I’d still be trying to solve a global problem. If not forests and climate change, I’d probably be at a think tank working on urban sustainability issues.
What is the toughest business or professional decision you’ve had to make?
In 2002, I had to oversee a process to revoke the FSC certificates of Perum Perhutani, the Indonesian parastatal teak plantation company. This meant that the majority of the teak garden furniture industry, which had become very supportive of certification, would need to both phase out their teak certified product lines and identify new sources of supply within a very narrow time frame. There was a lot of hostility and open threats to me and the Rainforest Alliance. It was a hard time. But it also demonstrated that certifiers will revoke certificates.
Do you have any advice for students currently in Forestry or recent graduates?
Get practical experience in the area of forestry that really calls to you, even if it’s not necessarily the most lucrative opportunity. Also, find one thing in your position that you can be the expert or specialist in, even while maintaining an ability to be a well-rounded generalist, so you emerge as the go-to person in your company for something.