Peter Howell is the Executive Director of the Conservation Finance Network, which seeks to advance land and resource conservation by expanding the use of innovative and effective funding and financing strategies.  He has 30 years of experience in the conservation field as a practitioner and funder, most recently as the Open Space Institute’s Executive Vice President, and previously as the inaugural Environment Program Director at the Doris Duke Foundation. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and obtained a Masters in Business Administration degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.  

Charles Sims is the TVA Distinguished Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy and Director of the Center for Energy, Transportation, and Environmental Policy at the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics. He attended the University of Tennessee, receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Forest Resource Management and a Master’s of Science in Forestry, with a minor in Environmental Policy. Sims’s research interests center on environmental and natural resource economics with a specific emphasis on the role of risk and uncertainty in natural resource, environmental, and energy policy.  

Naomi Engelman has spent the past twenty years contributing to a variety of projects as a contract technical assistance and market research specialist. In 2007, she was the founding executive director of the New Mexico Forest Industry Association (NMFIA) – a collaborative effort supported by the Forest Stewards Guild, New Mexico State Forestry, the USDA Forest Service, and industry representatives. Her current work with the Guild includes a conservation finance initiative for a five-million-acre multi-jurisdictional landscape and research into the barriers and opportunities for private landowners to engage in the carbon dioxide removal marketplace.   

John Fenderson is a Senior Fellow at Croatan Institute. He has a keen interest in market based behavior change especially as it relates to social impact and environmental sustainability, and has worked with landowners in the southeast U.S. to help them create wealth through responsible stewardship of their natural assets – principally forestland. He has over 25 years experience in forestry and the environmental arena working in such places as the Sierra Mountains in California, as well as on the Tongass National Forest in Alaska – in addition to working for environmental organizations in the southeastern U.S. John currently serves on the boards of the Tennessee Environmental Council, the Forest Stewards Guild, and the Forest Stewardship Council – U.S.