Ruth has been  working with certification and sustainable management of natural resources for nearly two decades. Her experience includes running a global forest certification programme, advising governments, industry and NGOs on responsible natural resource management, developing international and national standards and writing a range of guides and books. She has worked in more than 40 countries and has vast experience of developing, interpreting and implementing policies and processes for delivering sustainable management and independent verification of natural resources.

Ruth is a co-founder and director of ProForest.

Neil has spent the last eighteen years working with environmental certification and responsible management of natural resources.  He has extensive experience of delivering practical solutions to sustainability requirements, specialising in audit and certification, supply chain control and best management practices, in an extremely wide range of tropical and temperate settings. His experience has included management of the largest global forest certification programme, and a leading role in the development of sustainable oil palm.

Neil is a co-founder and director of ProForest.

Alex has 12 years of experience within the business and investment sectors and specialised in Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Funds, and how these can drive better practices in the arena of natural resource management.

He has conservation, land use and woodland management experience. 

His focus now is on how companies can deliver practical implementation of business policies, especially those that reflect their environmental and social impacts.

Dawn has a background in rural development and forestry. She has considerable field experience in participatory research and development projects in Latin America where she lived and worked for over 10 years in research, project management and with civil society networks. Her experience includes projects working with participatory land-use planning, community forestry, forest certification, NTFP harvesting, advocacy and information networks and participatory monitoring and evaluation.  

She has particular experience in forest certification and accreditation systems and their application to small landholders, communities and NTFP producers. Dawn is fluent in Spanish.

Chris has  worked in the fields of applied tropical plant ecology and high-value crop development (medicinal and non-food crops in temperate and tropical zones) for much of the last 10 years. His experience includes extensive periods of field research in tropical forests, and commercial collaborations in many countries on medicinal crop development.

More recently, he worked for the UK Government, directing the UK Technology Programme’s support for Environmental Technologies, including policy development and funding for technological innovation. Chris is fluent in French and also speaks Italian.

Andry has wide experience in forestry and conservation projects. Her work has ranged from strategy development to practical fieldwork in Madagascar as well as in France. She also has extensive experience as production and quality managers for a range of timber companies in Europe. 

Andry is currently the Training and Quality Manager at ProForest, coordinating training and maintaining the quality management system. She also works in supply chain management with private sector clients on the implementation of responsible purchasing policies. As a native speaker of French, Andry is leading the ProForest francophone projects. She is a French and Madagascar national.

Nilofer is a zoologist, specialising in the behavioural ecology of primates. She spent three years living and working in tropical forests in Southeast Asia, which has given her a broad overview of the ecology of tropical forests and the adaptive responses of their inhabitants. Nilofer also has experience of teaching in British universities, including University College London.

Her current role at ProForest is coordinating the High Conservation Value (HCV) Resource Network, which involves promoting the HCV concept and ensuring a consistent approach is applied worldwide. Nilofer is of Pakistani origin and is fluent in Hindi and Urdu.

Joyce joined ProForest in 2004 after finishing her MSc with distinction in Forest Ecology and Management in Edinburgh University. She has wide experience in supply chain management, implementation of responsible timber purchasing policies and assessment of forest certification schemes. She has carried out baseline audits for timber product manufacturers in China and her native Hong Kong, and provides ongoing support on improving their timber sourcing.

Previously, she worked in Forest & Trade Network in WWF Hong Kong generating demand for certified forest products. Joyce speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin.

Pep is an ethnobotanist specialising in traditional use patterns. With a background in botany and anthropology, she has conducted research on community-values in the Crocker Range and on community-conservation in Ulu Padas, both in Sabah, Malaysia, where she is native. She has also worked within the Malaysian Forest & Trade Network.

She currently manages the ProForest Audit Programme and has experience in oil palm management audits. She has also conducted HCV social-assessments. She coordinates ReIPAC (Responsible Investment & Purchasing Advice Centre) which involves supply chain investigation and research. Pep speaks fluent Malay.

Tim has forestry experience drawn from the UK and the tropics. As a researcher at the Oxford Forestry Institute he studied woodland management in England, but has also worked in Thailand on community forestry and forest restoration ecology and on plantation forestry in South America. He has also carried out wildlife conservation research in the Congo basin.

Since joining ProForest, he has been involved in sustainable forest management, identification and management of High Conservation Value Forests and the implementation of responsible purchasing programmes.

Kate has worked on elaborating principles of international law relating to sustainable use of natural resources, and in sustainable transportation. She also has field experience in stream ecology, specifically on aquatic invertebrates.

With a background in natural resources conservation and environmental policy, she currently works with biofuels, supporting the implementation of responsible purchasing and standard setting for sustainable agricultural commodities production. She is also involved in responsible timber procurement and co-ordinated CPET for 2 years. Kate is Canadian/British and speaks French.

Sofie has a background in biology, sustainable land use and natural resource management and has worked in developing countries assessing the effects of deforestation through ecological impact surveys and biodiversity analysis. She has professional experience with the process of developing public procurement policies for timber and an extensive knowledge of forest standards and certification.

She is currently responsible for coordinating the monitoring programme on the implementation of the UK Government’s policy on legal and sustainable timber procurement, as part of the CPET team. Sofie is from Denmark and speaks Danish and German.

Ilan is an agronomist and since 1995, has had extensive experience working with NGOs and the private sector in human development, conflict management and organizational change in Brazil. He has also worked as a consultant on strategic socio-environmental management and has a Master's degree in Environment Science from the University of São Paulo.

Ilan worked several years in WWF-Brasil dealing with conservation issues and the expansion of agriculture commodities, such as soy, sugar cane and cattle ranching.

Ilan is Brazilian and speaks fluent English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Simon has extensive international experience of forest certification, gained over the last eleven years. This expertise has been gained as an auditor, a manager of certified woodlands and a producer of certified wood products.

His work also covers practical forestry and research both in the UK and abroad and includes projects for both public and private forestry and environmental organisations.

Anders is a forest ecologist with a research background in botany and entomology. He has vast experience consulting in the forest industry and forest owners' associations specialising in applied conservation and biology training. He then joined WWF, initially as national forest officer, then as certification officer for WWF International, before returning to consultancy. His work over the last 12 years focused on various aspects of FSC-certification, including the development of the Swedish FSC standards and development of the HCVF concept. He recently coordinated the now completed two-year policy phase of the international FSC Plantations Review. Anders' work for ProForest has included an advisory role in the setup of the HCV Resource Network.