Kent Redford
Kent H. Redford is the principal at Archipelago Consulting, established in 2011 and based in Portland, Maine. He was most recently Director of the WCS Institute and Vice President, Conservation Strategies at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York.
Archipelago Consulting has worked with a variety of clients including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Global Environment Facility, the US National Park Service and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Kent has led evaluations, been a team member on others, written commissioned papers and helped organize and run meetings. He has also initiated projects that were funded by others; the largest of which was a collaboration with Equilibrium Research to review the global status of private protected areas and make recommendations for their strengthening. This work culminated in an IUCN Technical Report Series publication and a set of workshops at the 2014 World Parks Congress. He also worked with Revive & Restore on a workshop to assess the possible application of genomic tools to wildlife conservation.
Kent lived and traveled in the Middle East and Far East as a youth and completed his Bachelors at the University of California, Santa Cruz and his Doctorate at Harvard University. He held post-doctoral fellowship and faculty appointments at the University of Florida, in the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. Working with colleagues he established and helped run interdisciplinary graduate programs in conservation and development for students from tropical countries.
In 1993 he left academia to join The Nature Conservancy where until 1997, he directed the Parks in Peril program and ran the conservation science department in the Latin American Division. At TNC he helped develop guidelines for ecoregion-based conservation in the US and abroad and was a member of the Conservation Committee that developed a conservation mission for the whole organization.
In 1997 he joined the Wildlife Conservation Society to work in the International Program on conservation strategy. He was then chosen to lead the WCS Institute, created to: 1) analyze conservation and academic trends that potentially challenge WCS’s mission or provide opportunities to further conservation effectiveness; and 2) to communicate strategically with significant stakeholders, including other conservation NGOs and the private sector. The Institute drew on WCS’s wide range of conservation issues, and disseminated WCS’s conservation work via papers and workshops, adding value to WCS’s discoveries and experience by sharing them with partner organizations, policy-makers, and the public.
Carly Cook
I am a Lecturer in Ecology in the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. I am a conservation biologist whose research relates to the integration of science in environmental management decisions. In particular I’m interested in the types of evidence decision-makers use to inform their decisions and why, the consequences of poor uptake of science on management decisions, and the design of decision support tools, tools for evidence synthesis and knowledge transfer systems that promote evidence-based decisions. My other research interests include developing decision triggers as a tool for management, cost-effective conservation and integrating evolutionary theory into conservation management.
My research program is highly interdisciplinary and I have a keen interesting in understanding what conservation can learn from other disciplines in order to become more effective.
I completed my PhD in Environmental Management at the University of Queensland in 2010. My research there was focused on developing and improving systems to evaluate the effectiveness of protected area management, working with conservation management agencies in Australia.
Duan Biggs
Duan is from South Africa and completed his PhD at the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, Australia in 2011 on the resilience of coral reef tourism to global change and crises. Duan holds an MSc in Conservation Biology from the University of Cape Town and has a trans-disciplinary undergraduate training with majors in Economics, Development Studies and Environmental Science. Duan has developed, coordinated and consulted projects for BirdLife International, Conservational International and WWF among others. Subsequent to his PhD he developed a tourism research program for South African National Parks to support decision-making and management of the trade-offs and synergies between conservation and tourism.
In March 2012, Duan started a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions where his research focuses on the socio-economic aspects of conservation decision-making and management and operationalizing resilience ideas for biodiversity conservation. The geographic focus of his work is Australia, Chile, South Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and south-east Asia. He also leads specialist nature and wildlife tours to destinations around the world.
Glenda H. Eoyang
Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D., has deep insights into the art and science of self-organizing systems. As a pioneer in the field of human systems dynamics, Eoyang applies principles of self-organizing to help people thrive in unpredictable environments. Since 1988, she has provided training, consulting, coaching, and facilitation support in both the public and private sectors. As the founder of the field of human systems dynamics, she brings a strong and cogent voice to public discussions about the field.
She currently serves as founding Executive Director of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, a network of professionals working at the intersection of complexity and social sciences. A master teacher and facilitator, Dr. Eoyang supports change for individuals, organizations, and communities around the world. Her experiences as guide, leader, entrepreneur, author, and public speaker provide a wealth of resources.
Dr. Eoyang has trained and certified more than 400 member Associates who form a world-wide, scale-free network of scholar practitioners. She consults and trains others to improve performance in leadership and management, planning, product development, organization and personal development, customer service, and conflict transformation. The accessibility of her work can be found through her public webinar series, making HSD principles and practices accessible around the world.