Val Charlton lives in Cape Town, South Africa and deems it a privilege to have been able to work with communities and conservation organisations for a large part of her career. Community based fire management is her area of specialty, working with people that live in fire-prone landscapes across the globe, promoting Integrated Fire Management practice to address landscape fire risks and hazards. This includes 20 + years of Wildland Urban Interface/Intermix facilitation in both urban and remote rural communities, collaborating with private landowners, traditional leaders, the insurance sector, government and conservation agencies in multi-stakeholder social ecology/economic projects in various countries. As a practitioner, her work has encompassed initiating and co-creating green, youth and female-focused employment programmes and opportunities that are also of benefit to the wider community, thus improving the likelihood of sustained community-driven hazard reduction and resilience action.

Bill worked as a provincial firefighter for six years before joining the Canadian Forest Service in 1985. He worked for CFS for 35 years conducting research on fire danger, fire behavior, and physical and ecological impacts of fire. He developed the Canadian Fire Effects Model (CanFIRE) and procedures for calculating national wildland fire carbon emissions for annual UNFCCC reporting. His research includes development and technology transfer of international fire danger rating and early warning systems, and operational applications of new science for fire management. Bill is retired from CFS, and continues to work as a wildland fire consultant.

Tim at a very young age told his father he wanted to be a firefighter when he grew up - his dad said you cannot do both, son! So, Tim began his fire career at 17 and has never looked back since, with now over 50 years in the fire service. Currently he is the African Disaster Management Specialist for the US Forest Service International Programs. He has been to thousands of fires, but isn’t an expert. “I’m experienced and worked with the best firefighters in the world!” Beware of the expert.

Natasha S. Ribeiro, was born and raised in Maputo, Mozambique on August 24th 1971. She holds a bachelors degree in Forest Engineering from the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) in Mozambique, a MSc. in Management and Conservation of Biodiversity from the Centro Agronomico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Costa Rica and a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia (UVa) in the USA. Natasha has more than 25 years of professional experience in teaching, researching and extension in fields of restoration ecology and forest fires. Her teaching experience includes national and international universities and coordination of academic development projects. In research, Natasha has initiated a long-term fire-related research program in the Niassa Special Reserve, one of the most important conservation areas in Mozambique, southern Africa. The program has helped defining conservation action in the country. Natasha has been appointed the coordinator of key missions in the country such as the National Strategy and Action Plan for Biodiversity Conservation (NBSAP) under the UN Convention on Biodiversity. She also serves as an advisor in several international forums such as the IUFRO Forest Fire taskforce and the European project, FirEURisk. Between 2011 and 2021 she was the regional coordinator of the Miombo Network of southern Africa. Natasha was the recipient of the 2017-2018 Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program grant, which she used to visit the University of Virginia. She coordinated the book “Miombo woodlands in a changing world: securing the resilience and sustainability of people and woodlands” which was published in 2020.

Dr. Lucy Amissah is an Ecologist, and a Senior Research Scientist with the CSIR-Forestry Research Institute of Ghana. She holds a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Lucy has over twenty years’ experience in research and development in forest ecology, fire management and biodiversity conservation. Lucy’s research focuses on the impacts of disturbances (drought and fires) on tree species distribution, plant diversity, and the underlying mechanism using plant functional traits. Other research areas include the study of impacts of wildfires on farming systems dynamics in the forest zone of Ghana. Lucy has worked with other stakeholders to develop fire use guidelines and Manual of Procedures for Fire Management in the High Forest Zone of Ghana, which is one of the operational manuals used by the Forest Services Division of the Forestry Commission of Ghana. In addition, Lucy has led the development and implementation of community fire management programs to help protect natural forests and restored forest landscapes. Lucy is currently the site Principal Investigator for the Wageningen University led EU-funded PANTROP project that seeks to assess how human-driven climate change, landscape degradation, and biodiversity loss affect forest recovery in tropical landscapes in Ghana, Mexico and Australia. She is serving as the founding head of the Regional Western Africa Fire Management Resource Center within the Global Wildland Fire Network.