Stephen D. Blackmer has worked for 25 years to build networks, organizations, and social will to conserve and sustain the forest ecosystems and human communities of the Northern Forest region of the northeastern United States. That has resulted in protection of over 13,000 km2 of forest and development of multi-state initiatives to redirect the region's economy toward ecological principles. He has been founder and president of the Northern Forest Center, founding chairman of the Northern Forest Alliance, and founding co-chairman of Americans for our Heritage and Recreation. Steve received his A.B. from Dartmouth College and his M.F. from Yale University. In 2003, he received the International Paper Conservation Partnership Award for his work in the Northern Forest. In 2008-2009, Steve is a Bullard Fellow with the Harvard Forest at Harvard University.

Sandra E. Brawders is executive director of the Master Logger Certification Program and the Trust to Conserve Northeast Forestlands. She taught high school English, speech, and drama for six years in New Jersey, and was accepted in 1976 to attend Princeton Seminary to study ancient languages and ethics. Sandy has directed or co-directed a variety of social advocacy programs, including a work training program for mentally challenged adults, a Meals-on-Wheels program for the city of Trenton, NJ, an outreach program for caretakers of Alzheimer Victims, and a homeless shelter for women in Washington, DC. She was director of the State of Maine's 150 adult education programs. In her current position working with loggers in Maine, she launched a participatory process to develop a third-party certification for logging contractors and sole proprietors. This program has been adapted in nine other states and Atlantic Canada.

Thomas F. Gross founded Genesis Consulting Group S.A. in 1990 in Geneva, Switzerland. His career commitment for more than thirty years has been supporting clients to mobilize their organizations to develop and implement their visions for superior, sustainable performance, in the belief that healthy organizations are an important building block for healthy societies. The clients he has served include various headquarters of Fortune 500 and other international companies in the USA, Europe, Asia, and South America (including General Electric, Novartis, and Unilever), as well as nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations devoted to sustainable development and community well-being. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Princeton University, his M.A. in Organizational Behavior from Yale University, and his Ed.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University.

Gene E. Likens is founder and President Emeritus of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies, an international ecological research and education center. He currently is in Canberra, Australia, as a Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities Fellow with the Australian National University. Likens is an ecosystem ecologist whose research focuses on the ecology and biogeochemistry of forest and aquatic ecosystems, primarily through long-term studies at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest. He holds faculty positions at Yale, Cornell, Rutgers, SUNY Albany, and the University of Connecticut, and has been awarded nine honorary doctoral degrees from academic institutions, nationally and internationally. In addition to being elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, he was awarded the 2001 National Medal of Science, presented at The White House, and in 2003 was awarded the Blue Planet Prize (with F.H. Bormann) from the Asahi Glass Foundation, considered by the Foundation to be the Nobel Prize of Ecology. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 19 books and more than 500 scientific papers. He received a Ph.D. (Zoology) from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, in 1962.