ISTF 2022 | Presenters

List of Speakers and Panelists

Listing 44 Contributors in this category. Click on any listing to show sessions and more information.

Pablo Pacheco

Global Forests Lead Scientist at World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

Pablo Pacheco is WWF’s Global Forests Lead Scientist, based in Washington DC. He is a member of the WWF’s Global Science Team and Forest Practice Core Team. He supports the design of strategies, action frameworks and impact monitoring linked to efforts for halting deforestation, enhancing sustainable forest management, and accelerating forest restoration. He participates in several working groups and platforms supporting global forest conservation, sustainable development, and forest governance. He holds a PhD from the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University, a Msc in Agricultural Economics, and a BA in Sociology. Before joining WWF, he was Principal Scientist and Team Leader at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia and coordinated comparative research on sustainable value chains and investments under the CGIAR Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA). His main research areas focus on community forestry, land and forests governance, drivers and dynamics of land use change, landscape transformations, sustainable and resilient livelihoods, inclusive value chains, and area-based conservation. His work has primarily focused on the tropics, mainly in the Amazon and Southeast Asia. He has published extensively in these topics.

John Parrotta

President International Union of Forest Research Organizations National Research Program Leader for International Science Issues US Forest Service

John Parrotta is the President of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations - IUFRO (2019–2024). A research scientist with the USDA Forest Service since 1991, he has served as national research program leader for international science issues since 2001. He provides scientific and technical advice for development of science-based policy positions in international forest policy forums and works with government agencies, international organizations and other partners to strengthen global forest science, biodiversity conservation and sustainable forest management. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University and has been engaged in research worldwide for over 30 years, with a focus on tropical forest ecology and management, traditional knowledge, and forest landscape restoration. He is the author of a number of books and over 180 other research publications and serves as an editorial board member for several international scientific journals.

Sara Price

Sustainability Manager, Sappi

Andika Putraditama

Head of Rimba Collective, Lestari Capital

Andika leads the implementation and strategy development of Lestari Capital’s flagship initiative, the Rimba Collective. He brings over 10 years of experience working on sustainable land use issues and sustainable commodities in Southeast Asia. Prior to Lestari Capital, he served as the Deputy Program Director of the World Resources Institute Indonesia where he played a leading role in establishing WRI’s office in Indonesia, and managing WRI Indonesia’s agriculture, forest, and land use portfolio. This includes overseeing the development of satellite-based supply chain monitoring system, policy advocacy works on responsible supply chain, nature-based solution, climate-smart agriculture, as well as project design, proposal writing, and grant management. He is an awardee of USAID/CIFOR Master’s Degree Fellowship where he received his Master of Science in Forestry from the School of Forestry at Northern Arizona University with a published thesis on the deforestation impact of social forestry program in Indonesia.

Hege Ragnhildstveit

Senior Adviser Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI)

Hege is a Senior Adviser with the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), based in the Ministry of Climate and Environment in Oslo. She has 20 years’ experience in rainforest protection, REDD+, forest governance, indigenous peoples rights and deforestation-free supply chains. She has worked with the governments of Indonesia, Guyana, Ethiopia and Brazil in supporting their national plans for reduced deforestation and green growth, and she leads NICFI’s work on stakeholder engagement, safeguards and the intersection between REDD+, sustainable development and rights. Prior to joining NICFI, she served as Climate and Forest Counsellor at the Norwegian Embassy in Jakarta and as Head of the Southeast Asia Department for Rainforest Foundaiton Norway. She holds a Master of Philosophy Degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oslo.

Juan Carlos Ramos

Manager EcoAgriculture Partners

Juan Ramos is currently a Manager at EcoAgriculture Partners focused on finance, markets, and policy in support of locally agreed upon landscape-scale strategies. Juan also supports the 1000 Landscapes for One Billion People initiative, with an emphasis on financial resource mobilization in a ‘radical collaboration’ amongst leading practitioners in the field and local landscape partnerships. He focuses primarily on Latin America.
Previously, Juan has worked with the financial and private sector on developing strategies for climate, sustainability and resource mobilization at the Interamerican Development Bank Group (IADB), South Pole, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Victoria Reyes-García

ICREA Research Professor Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) Autonomous University of Barcelona

Victoria Reyes-García (PhD in Anthropology, 2001, Florida University) is ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her research focuses on Indigenous and local knowledge systems, particularly in relation to the natural environment, and the relevance of this knowledge to understand and deal with the climate and environmental crises. She has participated in the preparation of the Global Report of the Intergovernmental Science and Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). She currently directs a research group that analyzes the impacts of global change on various socio-ecosystems (LASEG) and an ERC-funded project on local perceptions of the impacts of climate change (LICCI). She is elected member of the National Academy of Science of the United States (2021).

Laura Toro

Postdoctoral Fellow Yale Applied Science Synthesis Program

Cora van Oosten

Senior Project Manager, Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation Wageningen University and Research

Dr. Cora van Oosten is senior project manager at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation, which is part of Wageningen University and Research. She focuses on landscape approaches, landscape restoration, and the governance of landscape restoration. Within these domains she trains professionals, coaches students, carries out research and provides advice to policymakers and practitioners worldwide. Based on 30 years of practical experience, she considers governance to be key to successful landscape restoration, as it addresses the questions of who decides on what to restore, where, how and for whom. Cora also works at the Global Landscapes Forum, leading in the design and development of the Landscape Academy, which is a multi-partner initiative to promote Restoration Education for All.

Ramesh Venkataraman

Managing Trustee, Junglescapes Charitable Trust Director, Society for Ecological Restoration (SER)

Ramesh Venkataraman has been actively engaged in ecological restoration since 2007. He is the Managing Trustee of Junglescapes Charitable Trust, a non-profit engaged in restoration of degraded forest ecosystems in a biodiversity hotspot in India. The non-profit follows a community-participative model where local village communities, mostly indigenous, are active partners in the projects. Junglescapes received the SER Full Circle award in 2017 for its inclusive model of restoration. Over 3500 acres of degraded forests have been restored to healthy wildlife habitats so far.

Ramesh is on the Board of Directors of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), the leading world body for ecological restoration, since 2017. He is currently the Chair of the ad hoc committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at SER. A Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner, his areas of specialisation include management of invasive alien plant species, assisted natural regeneration, design of restoration projects for rewilding by keystone fauna and restoration of fire affected areas. He is active in spreading awareness about ecological restoration and has been a speaker at many restoration conferences at the national and international levels. He writes regularly on conservation and restoration topics. He also runs a training program on ecological restoration in collaboration with a leading educational institution in India.

Angela Xue

Conference Co-chair, MEM Candidate

Angela Xue is a first-year Master of Environmental Management candidate at Yale School of the Environment. Her interests include conservation finance, sustainable livelihoods, and nature-based solutions. Angela recently worked in natural climate solutions with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and community-based conservation with local nonprofits in Panama. Prior to Yale, Angela was an agricultural biologist for the Santa Clara County Consumer and Environmental Protection Agency. While there, she aided the development of the first countywide Food System Initiative Workplan and supported pesticide regulation and plant quarantine enforcement activities. Angela holds a B.S. in Ecology, Behavior and Evolution from University of California, Los Angeles. In her free time, Angela loves road-tripping with her furry companion Cooper.

Fabíola Zerbini

Director of Forestry, Land Use and Agriculture, World Resources Institute (WRI)

Fabíola Zerbini’s work in the socio-environmental field has been recognized for more than 25 years, especially in promoting value chains and catalyzing public-private partnerships for the economic, integrated and sustainable development of key Latin American territories concerning agriculture, forests and land use agenda. Fabíola holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law, a specialization in Education for Sustainable Societies (Esalq-USP) and a PhD in Environmental Science (Procam/USP). She has been executive director of multi-stakeholder coalitions, such as FACES do Brasil and FSC Brasil, acting on agendas as Fairtrade, Responsible Forest Management. More recently, she has worked as Latin America Director at Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA) – an alliance hosted by the World Economic Forum to eradicate the deforestation linked to commodity production and to build bridges among producers, buyers and players from the private sector, governments and the organized civil society, and now is the current Forest, land Use and Agriculture Director of WRI Brasil.