Professor Brendan Mackey, Director of the Griffith Climate Change Response Program, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

Brendan Mackey is a professor at the Griffith University School of Environment and serves as Director of the Griffith Climate Change Response Program, which leads the university’s research into climate change adaptation and mitigation problems.  He has a long-standing interest in the nexus between science, policy, social ethics, law, and sustainability. His current research is focused on climate change adaptation challenges in Pacific islands and states and the challenge of protecting the world’s remaining primary forests. Mackey has written more than 200 academic publications and serves on many expert committees and advisory groups. He was a member of the core drafting group for the Earth Charter and has served two terms on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Council where he chaired the IUCN’s Climate Change Task Force.

Cyril Kormos, Executive Director, Wild Heritage

Cyril is Founder and Executive Director of Wild Heritage which he launched at the end of 2018. Wild Heritage focuses on protecting primary (“old growth”) forests and on wilderness conservation, with a particular focus on leveraging the World Heritage Convention for protection of the planet’s last great wilderness areas. Prior to launching Wild Heritage, Cyril was Vice President for Policy at the WILD Foundation. He was previously Senior Director for Program Management at Conservation International. Cyril holds a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.Sc. in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics and a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School.

Virginia Young, Director, International Forests and Climate Program, ARCS

Virginia is Director of the International Forests and Climate Program for the Australian Rainforest Conservation Society (ARCS), contributing to the international policy component of a global research program on primary forests lead by Griffith University in Australia.  She is also a member of the steering committee of an international, science based collaborative initiative called IntAct – focused on increasing global attention on the climate and biodiversity imperative to protect what’s left of Earth’s primary forests. She is Chair of Gondwanalink Ltd, and a member of the Board of the Great Eastern Ranges Initiative - organisations that provide leadership for two of the world’s foremost ecological connectivity protection and restoration initiatives - in the south of Western Australia and along the eastern seaboard of Australia, respectively. She is also on the Board of the Partnership for Policy Integrity – a US based organization that is analyzing and tracking the impacts of burning wood in the name of renewable energy on forests and the accumulation of GHG in the atmosphere.

Barbara Zimmerman, PhD, Kayapo Program Director, International Conservation Fund of Canada

Barbara trained as a tropical ecologist, doing field research in the Brazilian Amazon for Master's (University of Guelph) and PhD (Florida State University) degrees on an amphibian and reptile community in terra firme forest. Since 1989 she has been working with the Kayapo Indians of Brazil's Xingu Basin to develop conservation-based economic alternatives to logging and to strengthen Kayapo capacity for territorial control so that they are able to continue to protect from deforestation 110,000 km2 of their legally ratified territories. Barbara works closely with ICFC's Kayapo NGO partners, other Brazilian NGOs and government agencies, and, of course, the Kayapo people themselves.