Cathelijne Stoof is specialized in pyrogeography - the interdisciplinary study of the distribution and functioning of wildland fire. She is the national delegate of The Netherlands to the EU Expert Group of Forest Fires and coordinator of the Innovative Training Network PyroLife, that trains 15 early career researchers to become our new generation of integrated fire management experts. PyroLife fosters knowledge transfer between countries, risks and people. It thereby combines how the North solves community problems with fire knowledge from the European South, with a strong focus on diversity in terms of interdisciplinarity, science-practice links, geography and gender.

Isabeau Ottolini is a PhD candidate at the Open University of Catalonia (Spain) and the European project PyroLife. Her research focuses on Community-led wildfire communication. For this, Isabeau collaborates with Pego Viu, a land stewardship collective born from the ashes of the Vall d’Ebo wildfire in 2015, to explore how insights from such community-led initiatives can contribute to the wider field of Wildfire Communication.

Kai is the Head of International Communication at the Finnish Forest Association, and has more than 20 years of experience in sustainability communications, environmental and lobbying activities for the Finnish forest sector. Previously, he has held a variety of positions in industries, environmental communications and consulting companies, specializing in international issues. He is the leader of the FAO-UNECE Forest Communicators Network as well as a member of the FAO global forest communications coordination group. Kai studied environmental and land use economics as well as communications at the University of Helsinki. He holds a Master of Science (Agriculture and Forestry) degree.

Sarah McCaffrey, PhD, recently retired after 20 years as a fire social scientist with the US Forest Service where her research focused on understanding the social dynamics of fire management. This included research projects that examined the role of risk perception and risk attitudes, social acceptability of prescribed fire, homeowner mitigation decisions, evacuation decision making, risk communication, and agency-community interactions during fires. Her current interests are in understanding barriers to use of fire as a management tool and what a more effective fire management system, one designed for 21st century social and environmental conditions, might look like. She received her PhD in 2002 from the University of California at Berkeley where her dissertation examined Incline Village, Nevada homeowner views and actions in relation to defensible space and fuels management.

Néstor ALFONZO SANTAMARÍA is an expert on risk governance and disaster risk reduction/management currently on loan to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), serving as a senior advisor on risk governance in the Public Governance Directorate. Before his current position, he worked on resilience policy and disaster management at the UK Cabinet Office, as well as in various UK ministries, the government of the City of London and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Nestor has also advised the European Union, various UN agencies, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank on disaster management issues. Néstor regularly speaks at international events (such as thematic events of the Group of 20 and the Group of 7) and is also a visiting lecturer at several universities worldwide (including University College London, Kings College London, Coventry University, London School of Economics, Universidad Central de Venezuela, Tsinghua University Beijing, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Universidad de Buenos Aires, and Berlin Free University).