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Dr. Bruce Manley is a forestry graduate from the New Zealand School of Forestry. He has spent 20 years at the NZ Forest Research Institute as a scientist and science manager working on the development of forestry decision-support systems, and using these systems as a consultant to industry. Since 1999, he has been an Associate Professor in Forest Management at the NZ School of Forestry located at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch.

Mr. Pierre Levac is a graduate of Laval University with a B.A. in Forest Engineering and a Master’s degree in Forest Management and Silviculture. Mr. Levac began his career with the Ministère des Terres et Forêts, where he as a specialist in the field of timber scaling. Mr. Levac's career includes lecturing at the Faculty of Forestry and Geodesy, being a forest manager with Norbord Industries Inc. and Cascades Inc, and as a director and assistant vice-president for the Crown Corporation “Société de récupération et d’exploitation forestière du Québec” (REXFOR). In 1994 Mr. Levac founded the forestry consulting firm Levac et Associés, where he served as president until 2005. In 2005, Mr Levac became Québec's first chief forester.
Over the past thirty years, Mr. Levac has had the opportunity to work in nearly every sector of the Québec forest industry. The various positions he has held throughout his career have allowed him to discover all the regions of Québec and to appreciate the particular characteristics of the forests and communities that compose them. Over the past ten years, Mr. Levac has been highly committed to the implementation and registration of sustainable forest management systems, in conjunction with ISO (International Organization for Standardization) compliant environmental management systems. As an associate of the Quality Management Institute (QMI), a division of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), since 1997, Mr. Levac was among the first forestry experts in Canada to take an interest in management ( Quality, Environmental and OH&S ) systems applicable to the forest industry. This has also allowed him to adapt these systems to the particular needs of the forest industry in eastern Canada.

Dr. Ljusk Ola Eriksson received his PhD in harvest scheduling modelling and this has since been his main research area. From the 1990’s he has been paid much more attention to bring biodiversity and other stakeholder interests into the harvest scheduling framework, leading to the use of heuristics and mixed integer programming models. Since 1999 Ola has been the head of the Department of Forest Resource Management at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences that, among other things, harbours the National Forest Inventory

Dr. Gary Bull spent most of his early career working in a consultative capacity with forest products companies, resource based communities, various government agencies and environmental non-governmental organizations. Internationally, he has worked with organizations such as the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, the International Institute for Environment and Development in London, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome and the US Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. He is currently supervising research projects with CIFOR, World Bank, Shell Canada, Wildlife Conservation Society, Iisaak Forest Resources Ltd., Forest Trends and FAO. Gary has a background in commerce as well as three degrees in Forestry, specializing in economics and policy. He has an interest in global forestry policy issues and is currently studying forest and timber markets in Asia and ecosystem services markets in Afghanistan, Canada, China, Mozambique and Uganda. He is an advocate for interdisciplinary research.

In November, 2004, Jim Snetsinger was appointed as BC’s Snetsinger chief forester. He replaced Larry Pedersen who was chief forester for 10 years. As chief forester, Snetsinger is the senior professional forestry executive of the ministry, responsible for developing plans and programs to manage provincial forest and range lands. He’s the executive in charge of the Forest Science program and is responsible for determining timber harvest levels for each timber supply area and tree farm licence in the province. He also oversees the ongoing implementation of the new Forest and Range Practices Act and regulations. Before becoming Chief Forester, Snetsinger was the regional executive director for the Northern Interior Forest Region. A professional forester since 1981, he’s a graduate of the University of Toronto and worked as a forester for five years with BC Hydro before joining the Forest Service in 1986. Since then, he’s worked in the former Prince Rupert Forest Region and also served as a regional director for Land and Water BC.

Dr. David A. Maclean is Dean and Professor of the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada. Prior to joining UNB in 1999, Dr. MacLean was a Research Scientist with the Canadian Forest Service for 21 years. Through the 1990s, he coordinated Canada-wide research networks to (1) develop GIS-based decision support systems for four of Canada’s major insect pests, and (2) determine silvicultural approaches to integrated insect management. Current positions include Chair of the Canadian Model Forest Network, President of the Fundy Model Forest, Board of Directors of the Sustainable Forest Management Network, and Chair of J.D. Irving Ltd. Forest Research Advisory Committee. Dr. MacLean has led, or is leading, research projects on forest carbon, forest dynamics, and implications to biodiversity. Dr. MacLean has published over 120 papers and over 75 technology transfer publications.

Dr. Thom Erdle has worked as a professional forester in New Brunswick for 26 years in the public, private, and academic sectors. His work has focused on forest management planning, and related underpinning disciplines. He has degrees from the University of New Brunswick and the University of British Columbia. Thom teaches forest management in the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management at UNB and currently chairs the Task Force on Forest Diversity and Wood Supply

Dr. Doug Williams (B.Sc., M.Sc. Biometrics, Ph.D. Operations Research) has acted as a consultant to governments, private industry, and international agencies on issues of the forest sector and forest products trade. After completing his Ph.D., Doug taught courses in simulation, mathematical programming, and multivariate statistics at the UBC Faculty of Forestry, and did research with the Forest Economics and Policy Analysis Project, also located at UBC. Before establishing Cortex Consultants Inc. in 1990, Doug consulted extensively in China and South East Asia, Europe and South America. In addition to managing Cortex, his current responsibilities include analytical support for investors and managers of private forest lands.

Hamish Kerr has held his current position with TimberWest since 2002. Prior to joining TimberWest Hamish was an equity analyst following publicly traded forest products companies for institutional investors first with Burns Fry (now Nesbitt Burns) and then with Goepel Shields and Partners (now Raymond James). Hamish has a BSc in Forestry from the University of New Brunswick (1977) and an MBA from the University of Western Ontario (1983).