Speaker Bios

(in Alphabetical Order by Last Name)

Phil Bailey

Sylvia Blanchet

Sylvia Blanchet is the co-founder of ForesTrade Inc, Brattleboro, a wholesale organic spice and Fair Trade coffee company that has been a pioneer in merging for-profit business with sustainable development. The company is the world's largest supplier of organic spices and provides 10% of the Fair Trade coffee into the U.S. It received the prestigious World Business Summit Award for Sustainable Business Partnerships in 2002 at the Johannesburg World Summit. Sylvia is a member of the Social Venture Network and serves on the Board of the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility and the American Spice Trade Association. A particular interest for her is how a business can support sustainable development through its supply chain management. She has been involved in the field of organic agriculture and sustainable development for 30 years and a business owner for 10.

Dean Cycon (Keynote Speaker)

Dean Cycon is the owner of Dean's Beans Organic Coffee Company, a certified 100% organic, fair trade and kosher coffee roasting operation in Orange, Massachusetts, USA. Dean has over twenty-five years of development work and activism in indigenous communities, including coffee villages, around the world. Dean is a co-founder of Coffee Kids (non-profit development group), and of Cooperative Coffees, the world's first fair trade roaster's cooperative. He created Dean's Beans to prove that business can promote positive economic, social and environmental change at the third world source, and be profitable at the same time. Dean has a law degree from New York Law School and an advanced law degree from the Yale Law School. He has been a Fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a Senior Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand, an Ella Baker Fellow and a Visiting Scholar at the Yale Law School. Dean has taught Environmental Law, Natural Resource Policy and International Resource Management at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Rhode Island, and has several professional publications regarding law, development, resource management and indigenous peoples.

Steve/Barb Davis

Stephanie Demmons

Stephanie Demmons is the New England Field Organizer for Oxfam America. At Oxfam, she is part of the Make Trade Fair team and is currently leading New England organizing efforts to reform the 2007 Farm Bill so it better supports family farmers in New England and abroad. Before coming to Oxfam, Stephanie led environmental organizing and election campaigns throughout New England. She is a 2003 graduate of Mount Holyoke College with a Bachelor's Degree in Biological Sciences.

Becky Grube

Becky Grube joined UNH Cooperative Extension in December of 2004. In addition to teaching Sustainable Food Production at UNH, she provides statewide support to Extension Educators and commercial farmers. Her areas of interest are specialty fruit and vegetable crops, pest & disease management, and organic and low-input farming. Before joining UNH, she was a geneticist and plant breeder with the USDA/ARS in Salinas, California. She received her PhD in plant genetics at Cornell and her BA in biology at Dartmouth College after growing up on a small, diversified farm in North Pomfret, Vermont.

Emily Hague

Emily Hague is a native of New Hampshire who has had an interest in the outdoors since childhood. She obtained a BS from Oberlin College and an MS from Antioch University New England, both in Environmental Studies with a focus in Resource Management. Emily spent two years working on organic farms after college and has a strong interest in enabling sustainable land uses.

Sophie Haines

Sophie Haines recently completed an MSc in Anthropology and Ecology of Development at University College London (UCL). Her background includes fieldwork on highway enhancement and livelihood strategies in Belize (summer 2006). She is currently embarking on an Anthropology PhD at UCL with funding from UK Economic and Social Research Council. Sophie won the Royal Anthropological Institute Hocart prize in 2004 for an essay concerning political landscapes in Israel and Palestine. Her research interests include political ecology, resource use and impacts, environment and development, citizenship and social/political construction of landscape-particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Frank Hunter

Ryan Isakson

Ryan Isakson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. On a general level, he is interested in autonomous development strategies, particularly as they relate to food sovereignty and human interactions with the natural environment. More specifically, his current research is an attempt to understand the cultural and economic relevance of on-farm maize genetic diversity to peasant farmers in the Guatemalan highlands and how that relevance is evolving with new forms of market engagement.

Sue Ellen Johnson

Sue Ellen Johnson is an agricultural ecologist and activist based at the New England Small Farm Institute with degrees from departments of Animal Science, Agronomy and Crop and Soil Sciences from three major US Land Grant Universities. She works to improve food production and the environmental impact of rainfed farming systems throughout the United States and the tropics.

Claudia Knab-Vispo

Claudia Knab-Vispo is a coordinator of the Farmscape Ecology Program at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Columbia County NY. Prior to her current botanical studies in the farmscape of Columbia County, she researched ethnobotany and forest ecology in southern Venezuela. She received a Ph.D. in Land Resources from the University of Wisconsin. Claudia grew up in rural Germany and studied biology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich. As she gathered experiences in nature conservation in Europe, Asia and the Americas, she became more and more intrigued by the possibilities of nature conservation within “cultural” landscapes.

Mary Ann Kristianson

Abby Lindsay

Abby Lindsay is currently at Tufts University pursuing her graduate degree in Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. Her focus is on sustainability in Latin America (including social and economic) as well as international environmental policy. Although she grew up in NH, Abby has an environmental science background from the University of Mary Washington (Virginia). Her presentation is taken from her thesis research on the environmental effects of free trade in the agricultural sector. This interest stems from her travels in Central America, and now incorporates her experiences in Ecuador and Colombia this past summer (2006).

Ashley Mason

Ashley Mason is a New Hampshire native who obtained her BS in Environmental Conservation, with a minor in Sustainable Living, from the University of New Hampshire. Examples of her environmental work include: an internship with the Conservation Commission creating an educational nature trail in the Salem Town Forest, travel to Australia for a course on Tropical Rainforest Restoration, organizing a Vote Environment campaign at the University of New Hampshire, travel to St. Croix with EarthWatch to “Save the Leatherback Sea Turtle,” and service as the Lead Coordinator for the UNH branch of the Student Environmental Action Coalition. Most recently, Ashley traveled to Belize for an internship with Sustainable Harvest International to assist in the implementation of their Monitoring and Evaluation System.

Nana Mensah

Nana Mensah is the Belize Country Director of Sustainable Harvest International. He brings experience as an agricultural engineer, agronomist and educator. Before joining Sustainable Harvest, he taught chemistry and construction at the University of Belize, Toledo Campus and worked as an environmental manager/consultant for Meco & Santa Fe Co. Most recently, he taught Spanish and integrated science at Julian Cho Technical High School and served as the Director for Southern Marketing and Appropriate Research Technology (SMART).

Virginia Nickerson

Virginia Nickerson recently completed her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources. Her dissertation explored central Vermont farmer's motivations for cultivating heirloom vegetables. She works at an apple orchard in Shoreham, VT, is the Promotions and Marketing Coordinator for the Middlebury Farmer's Market, and recently helped organize the Addison County Localvore Challenge.

Kim Peevy

Tatiana Schrieber

Tatiana Schreiber received her Ph.D. in Environmental Studies (Environmental Anthropology) at Antioch Univeristy New England in 2005. Her dissertation examined the relationship between organizational pluralism within organic coffee cooperatives in southern Mexico and their potential for economic, ecological and cultural sustainability and resilience. Dr. Schreiber has been on the Adjunct Faculty at Vermont College since 1998 teaching Environmental Studies, Journalism, and Anthropology. She also has extensive experience in organic and ecological agriculture, and is a small-scale grower of organic vegetables which she markets from her roadside stand. As a radio journalist, she has produced numerous features and documentaries on agriculture, environment, and related topics.

Maryellen Sheehan

Tracie Smith

Elanor Tison

Elanor Tison is an adjunct professor at Green Mountain College. She conducted her doctoral research at University of Georgia's Anthropology Department on seed saving practices in Southern Appalachia and the African-American barrier-island and coastal communities of Georgia. Her current work examines seed saving and food systems issues in New England and New York.

Conrad Vispo

Conrad Vispo is co-founder of the Farmscape Ecology Program at Hawthorne Valley Farm in Columbia County NY and has been one of its coordinators for the past three years. Prior to that, he directed a small ecological research institute in the gold-mining region of Venezuela and worked with the Wildlife Conservation Society for several years studying a riverine fishery along the Orinoco. His Ph.D comes from the University of Wisconsin, exploring the interaction of forest management and winter Ruffed Grouse ecology in northern Wisconsin. Before the grouse, Conrad studied weasels, ground squirrels, and small mammals while pursuing BS and Master's degrees. He grew up in the same county of NY where he and his wife Claudia now work. Particular interests are land use in relation to wildlife biology and environmental justice.

Tim Wichland

Speaker Bios (PDF 28KB)
Tentative Symposium Schedule (PDF 138KB)