About Us
Advisory Board
David Ackerly is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, and the Curator of Ecology for the UC and Jepson Herbaria, at the University of California Berkeley. A native of New England, he conducted his Ph.D. and post-doctoral research at Harvard University, including field work in Brazil, Mexico, New England and Japan. Professor Ackerly and his research group study the ecology and evolution of plant traits.
Current projects in his lab include examining tropical forests in Ecuador, woody plants in the Sierra Nevada, and potential impacts of climate change on the endemic flora of the California Floristic Province. At Berkeley, Professor Ackerly teaches courses on Ecology, Plant Ecology, Biodiversity, and Plants of the UC Botanical Garden. David is married to documentary film maker Noel Schwerin, and they live in San Francisco with their twin, ten-year old boys.
Gillian Caldwell is an independent consultant who helps progressive non-profits, corporations, and foundations increase their impact. Her special areas of expertise are strategic planning, outreach and advocacy campaigns, and organizational development. She recently completed three years as Campaign Director for 1Sky (www.1sky.org), which she helped build from inception and is now the largest collaborative climate and energy campaigns in the United States, combining the force of over 600 allied organizations, a team including organizers in 23 states nationwide, more than 200,000 climate advocates and more than 4000 volunteer “Climate Precinct Captains” covering every state in the country. She received her BA from Harvard University and a J.D. from Georgetown University, where she was honored as a Public Interest Law Scholar.
Andi Colnes is the Policy and Development Director at the Biomass Energy Resource Center, a non-profit based in Montpelier Vermont. She has spent much of her career working on natural resource public policy and coalition building throughout New England and elsewhere in the country, where she has held a variety of positions focused on large-scale land conservation, sustainable forestry, and energy issues. Her background in energy issues began with her work on Vermont's first Comprehensive Energy Plan under Governor Madeleine Kunin, and more recently working closely with BERC and partners in launching and implementing the Northern Forest Biomass Energy Initiative. Colnes was founding executive director of the Northern Forest Alliance, policy director of the Northern Forest Center, and deputy director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council. She co-founded Americans for Our Heritage and Recreation and the Eastern Forest Partnership and helped launch the National Rural Assembly. Immediately prior to joining BERC in February of 2009, Colnes served as the policy leadership director for the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, where she worked with nonprofit leaders throughout northern New England. Colnes has a master’s in Wildlife Conservation from the University of Maine and a BA in Political Science from Williams College.
Gary is the Director of Science and Certification at the Forest Sustainability Council (FSC). He is responsible for programs designed to ensure FSC system integrity and increase uptake of FSC certification by forest managers in the US and Canada. His expertise in both the ecological and human dimensions of forest management are central to his role at FSC-US.
Gary leads our work in developing and applying US and international standards and policies for forest management, facilitating access of the FSC system to small landowners, increasing access to ecosystem service markets (such as carbon), and assisting market linkages. Gary is based in Placerville, CA.
Gary comes to FSC-US with over twenty years of professional experience as a conservation biologist and ecologist. Gary holds an M.S. in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology and a Ph.D. in Plant Ecology from the University of Maryland.
Josh Elmore is Co-Director of The Arbolito Foundation, which awards grants to individuals and small organizations that are putting compassion into action within their communities. He has helped launch numerous small non-profit organizations and continues to actively participate in their respective Boards. Josh is also a member of the Board of Directors and lead investor in Lighthouse Solar (www.lighthousesolar.com), a solar installation business based in Boulder, Colorado with offices in Austin, TX, New Paltz, NY, and Carbondale, CO.
Formerly, Josh co-founded BeSeen.com, Inc. in 1996. BeSeen.com became one of the most popular web sites of the time, achieving a web traffic ranking in the top 20 most visited web sites in the world. BeSeen.com,Inc. was acquired by Looksmart Ltd. in 1998. Josh lives with his wife Allison and three children outside Nederland, CO.
Michael is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Health (CEH) which raises public awareness of the corporate use of toxic chemicals and of the many viable, pragmatic solutions to this pervasive threat to public health. He founded CEH in 1996 and since then has helped lead national efforts to stop toxic exposures and protect public health. He has also pioneered the groundbreaking legal work that has won landmark victories to protect the public from hazardous consumer products and toxic emissions. Michael has worked in Washington D.C. for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management, and the US EPA's Working Group on Environmental Equity. He has testified in front of Congress, serves on numerous boards of directors, and is frequently quoted in national and international media. Michael has an MS in Natural Resources and an MPP in Public Policy, both from the University of Michigan.
John Gulland's is a principal of the the Wood Heat Organization, the preeminent non-profit educational organization for residential wood heat in North America. His involvement with wood burning began in 1974 when he built a wood stove for his own home. Since then he has gained professional experience in virtually every aspect of residential wood burning, including product design and manufacture, safety and environmental standards development, stove, fireplace and chimney retailing, policy and market analysis, laboratory and field research, professional training, and popular writing as a contributing editor to Mother Earth News magazine.
Most recently he helped launch The Woodpile, an advocacy project associated with the popular Woodheat.org web site. Current areas of interest include researching and developing better ways to achieve smoke emission reductions through public education, a field that Gulland thinks has been largely overlooked. He would like to encourage government, industry and the NGO community to pool resources and develop and disseminate educational materials that can be proven to be effective in helping people to burn wood better. John works from his home office in the hills of Eastern Ontario, Canada, using wind and solar power for electricity and wood for heating and cooking.
Sat Jiwan Ikle-Khalsa has been an advocate and activist for the environment since 2000, working and volunteering for non-profit environmental groups and energy efficiency companies. He is a green building and environmental consultant and works with a team of green architects, designers, builders and energy experts (Helicon Works) to build and remodel very green homes. Sat Jiwan is also current president of the Save Our Sky Home Heating Co-operative (a.k.a. the "Corn Co-op") and a board member of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He is the monthly "Going Green " columnist for the Takoma Park/Silver Spring/Kensington Voice, won the Azalea Award for "Green Takoma" in 2009 and served on the Task Force on Environmental Action for Takoma Park 2009-2010. He uses biomass for 90% of his home heating using a corn pellet stove and solar panels for his electricity and hotwater.
The Save our Sky Home Heating Co-operative installed and maintains two urban corn bins located less than a mile outside of Washington, DC. The bins are filled with Maryland-grown corn (no till, non-GMO, minimal synthetic fertilizer and herbicide/pesticides) keeping the operation sustainable and lowering agricultural carbon emissions. The Co-op serves over 70 families, enabling them to replace or drastically reduce fossil fuels for heating.
Eric is the founder and principal of Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors. He has more than fifteen years of service in the nonprofit community and federal government. Eric’s commentaries on effective philanthropy have been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Business Week Online, and National Public Radio’s Marketplace.
Eric's public service includes working as the first National Field Director for the non-partisan League of Conservation Voters Education Fund and as a White House political appointee in the Clinton Administration.
Eric currently serves as the Disaster Response Resource Lead for the Council on Foundations and is a member of its 2008 Philanthropy Summit Program Committee. Eric is also on the Selection Committee of the Brower Youth Awards. He studied at the University of Colorado and earned an MBA from Georgetown University.
Steve Nadel is the Executive Director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), a non-profit research organization that works on programs and policies to advance energy-efficient technologies and services. He has been at ACEEE for nearly 20 years serving as Deputy Director of the organization and Director of ACEEE’s Utilities and Buildings programs prior to his promotion to Executive Director in 2001.
Steve has worked in the energy efficiency field for nearly 30 years and has over 100 publications on energy-efficiency topics. His current research interests include equipment efficiency standards, utility-sector energy efficiency programs and policies, and state and federal energy and climate change policy.
Charlie Niebling is General Manager with New England Wood Pellet LLC, the largest manufacturer of wood pellet fuel in the northeastern US. He is responsible for sales, wood procurement for the company’s three plants, corporate communications, and government and public affairs. Among external representations, he serves as chair of the board of directors of the Biomass Thermal Energy Council in Washington DC.
From 1997 to 2005, Mr. Niebling was vice president for policy and land management with the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, a non-profit land conservation and environmental advocacy organization. Prior to assuming this position, Mr. Niebling was a consultant for two years in the firm Innovative Natural Resource Solutions, specializing in natural resource policy, research, advocacy and public relations for corporate, government and non-profit clients. From 1987 to 1995, Mr. Niebling served as executive director of the New Hampshire Timberland Owners Association, the state’s forest landowner and forest industry trade organization. From 1984 to 1987 he worked as a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Forest & Range Experiment Station in Berkeley, CA.
Mr. Niebling holds forestry degrees from the University of Vermont (BS) and the Pennsylvania State University (MS). Mr. Niebling is a licensed professional forester.