Friday Focus On Speakers

Maria Janowiak, Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, led by the USDA Forest Service

Maria Janowiak is deputy director of the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, led by the USDA Forest Service. Her primary project is to coordinate the Climate Change Response Framework activities in New England and northern New York, an area that includes more than 40 million acres of forest stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the peaks of the Appalachians. Maria has more than ten years of experience in helping natural resource professionals understand and adapt to climate change and was recognized with the Climate Adaptation Leadership Award for Natural Resources in 2018. Maria lives in western Upper Michigan and spends much of her free time working on forestry projects with her husband on their own land.

Dr. Kristen Waring, School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University

Dr. Kristen Waring is Professor of Silviculture and Applied Forest Health in the School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University, where she has worked since 2006. She received her B.S. (Forestry) and M.S. (Forest Entomology) from the University of Montana. She then earned her Ph.D. from the University of California – Berkeley in Silviculture. She specializes in finding solutions to a wide assortment of challenging forest health problems using silviculture and other management strategies. Five needled white pine trees are a particular passion, including southwestern white pine. Her research and teaching have taken her across the western US and globally into Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica and Indonesia. Outside the office, she can be found exploring the outdoors, running, and practicing yoga.

Chris Woodall, USDA Forest Service

Chris Woodall is a research forester with the USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis research work unit in Durham, NH. For nearly twenty years, Dr. Woodall’s area of research has involved developing and applying a nationwide forest inventory to emerging forest resource topics such as carbon, stand dynamics, tree range shifts, and down woody materials.

Marley Gray

Marley Gray currently serves as the Principal Architect for the Azure Multiparty Engineering team responsible for envisioning, developing and delivering the company’s multi-party, i.e. digital assets/tokens, contracts and analytics platform. He also leads applied innovation within industry contexts in Financial Services, Energy and Sustainability. Marley established the Microsoft Blockchain platform and strategy in 2015, was a founder of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) and serves as the Chairman for the InterWork Alliance. He is also the creator of the Token Taxonomy Framework (TTF) and is currently incubating next generation multi-party platforms focused on sustainability. Marley’s information technology career spans more than 29 years. He specializes in software development, architecture and platform strategy matched with 20+ years immersed within financial services.

Eric Hallstein, The Nature Conservancy

Eric Hallstein is The Nature Conservancy’s partnership lead (managing director) and investment committee representative for the Sustainable Water Impact Fund that invests in working landscapes to demonstrate how capital can enhance the sustainability of land, water, and agriculture as well as provide competitive financial returns. Previously, Eric led TNC California’s work in economics, conservation finance, and transactions. Eric has published in Science Advances, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and Environmental and Resource Economics, among others. He and his team's work has also been featured in a variety of news outlets, including The New York Times, Fast Company, the Economist, Forbes, and National Geographic. Dr. Hallstein earned his Ph.D. from the University of California - Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow, and his B.A. from Harvard University.

Zack Parisa, SilviaTerra

Zack Parisa is the co-founder and CEO of SilviaTerra. A forester and biometrician by training, Zack has spent the past 10 years helping forest owners acquire, organize, and analyze information about their forests. SilviaTerra focuses on developing tools to extend better data to make better decisions in the context of the practice of forest management. Most recently SilviaTerra created "Basemap" the first nation-wide high-resolution inventory of forests covering every acre in the US. That information forms the basis for the Natural Capital Exchange (NCAPX) a new ecosystem service rental market which reframes how conservation outcomes can be bought and sold. Zack earned a BS in Forestry from Mississippi State University and an MFS degree from Yale University.

Kathy Wolf, University of Washington

Kathy Wolf is a research social scientist at the University of Washington (Seattle). She has become one of the world’s go-to persons for resources and study on the effects of nature on human health and behavior. A highly sought after, motivating speaker and project consultant, Dr. Wolf’s down-to-earth style makes her relatable to a variety of audiences from the most astute scientists to lay people of all backgrounds. As a social scientist she investigates people's perceptions and behaviors with regard to urban landscapes. Based on professional experiences early in her career - as an urban forester in South Florida and a landscape architect in the Midwest - she became interested in the interactions between human and ecological systems. Her scientific endeavors aim to discover, understand, and communicate, human behavior and benefits, as people experience nature in cities. Dr. Wolf has published within the fields of forestry, urban planning, environmental stewardship, retail marketing and economics. You can view her research at www.naturewithin.info; and the Green Cities: Good Health project at: www.greenhealth.washington.edu PHOTO CREDIT: Mary Levin

Andrew Vietze, Former Managing Editor of Down East: The Magazine of Maine

The former managing editor of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, Andrew Vietze has written for a wide variety of magazines and online publications and now does his scribbling in the back bedroom of an old Maine farmhouse and a cabin deep in the wilds of the Katahdin region, where he spends six months of each year as a ranger in Baxter State Park. He is the author of more than a dozen books, which have received multiple awards and recognitions. White Pine: American History and the Tree that Made a Nation was released to much acclaim in 2018: “…. a unique view of American history, one that’s beautifully written, lucid and detailed and fascinating throughout.” “White Pine is good history written in a refreshing, breezy style, surprising, illuminating, and informed.” “White Pine is the noble saga Hollywood only wishes it could conjure.” Andrew is currently writing essays about life in the woods and tinkering with a novel about a park ranger suspected of being an ecoterrorist.

Marcella Windmuller-Campione, University of Minnesota

Marcella Windmuller-Campione is Assistant Professor of Silviculture and Applied Forest Ecology in the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota. Her research explores fundamental questions regarding forest stand dynamics, as well as applied questions of how different silvicultural techniques influence productivity, forest health, and wildlife habitat, with a goal of developing measurable metrics of resistance and resilience in different forest ecosystems.

Damian Adams, University of Florida

Damian Adams is a natural resource economist tenured in the School of Forest Resources & Conservation with a joint appointment in the Food and Resource Economics Department at the University of Florida. He is also Interim Associate Dean for Research. His area of research specialization is natural resource economics and policy, with emphasis on invasive species and ecosystem services. Damian holds a master’s degree in environmental policy from the University of Cambridge, and a law degree and a Ph.D. in resource economics from the University of Florida. He recently served as Director of a region-wide initiative called ProForest (Proactive Forest Health & Resilience), which unites experts in the area of forest management and policy to sustain forest systems and their benefits to society. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Forest Economics and Human Dimensions section of the journal Forests.

Patricia Manley, US Forest Service

Patricia Manley is Research Program Director, Conservation of Biodiversity Program, Pacific Southwest Research Station, US Forest Service. She has a Bachelors and Masters from Humboldt State University in Natural Resources Science with an emphasis on wildlife and forestry, and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Wildland Resource Science, with an emphasis on biological diversity and vertebrate community ecology. She has worked for the US Forest Service for 30 years, with the first 15 years spent working for the National Forest System, and for the past 15 years she has been a scientist and research leader for the Pacific Southwest Research Station. The program area addresses key information gaps to support the conservation of biodiversity in California, with the intention of informing forest management to achieve multiple objectives. She has co-led multiple interdisciplinary science and management teams to meet large landscape assessment, planning, and monitoring needs.

Roger Williams, Blue Source

As President of Bluesource, Roger oversees corporate strategy and the identification and development of projects that generate long term environmental benefits. As an expert in environmental markets for over 20 years, he has worked to find creative financial solutions that can be used to fund and scale tangible activities that benefit the environment. These include forest and land-based carbon sequestration, carbon reduction activities and renewable natural gas. He has extensive international sustainable development experience, having served as an agroforestry Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala. He holds a BA in Political Science from Duke University and an M.E.M. from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Alan Siewert, Ohio Division of Forestry

Alan Siewert is a world-renowned orator and writer known for his sense of humor and out-of-the-box approach to practical urban forestry. Ohio’s direct assistance approach and tight relationships with their communities have offered Alan and his colleagues the unique opportunity to identify real needs and challenges of the smallest villages to the largest cities. Their goal is to work directly with towns to identify solutions that work for each town’s culture, structure, and goals. With that have come innovative solutions like the Ohio Urban Site Index, Ohio Master Planting Design process, and a shared set of guidelines that at first seem counterintuitive. It has significantly changed how Ohio’s communities make decisions and approach their programs today.