Technical Advisors

Current Technical Advisors
Jim Chandler - Bryant Pond, Maine
Cecilia Danks - Burlington, Vermont
Mark Lorenzo - Montpelier, Vermont
Tim Maker - Montpelier, Vermont
Spencer Phillips - West Charleston, Vermont
Robert Turner - Bristol, Vermont
Jon Zeltsman - Ossining, New York 

Spencer Phillips, Resource Economist, The Wilderness Society. It was a 1986 article in Wilderness that convinced me that the cause of conservation needed more economists, so I went to grad school to become one. My pre-Wilderness Society environmental economics work was a staff economist at the White House Council on Environmental Quality and a consultant to Resources for the Future and the Virginia Air Pollution Control Department.

Originally from Pennsylvania, I am a graduate of the University of Virginia (B.A.) and Virginia Tech (M.S.) where I expect to complete the Ph.D. in agricultural and applied economics this fall. As part of my efforts to promote sustainable forestry, I serve as an advisor to the Global Forest Policy Project and the Certified Forest Products Council, and, previously, I was board member and president of the Forest Stewardship Council.

Since December 1992, I have supported The Wilderness Society Northern Forest Campaign with economic research, demonstration, and extension projects. My work aims to demonstrate how local economies can thrive while the forest is sustained and protected. This work has entailed writing a series of reports titled Northern Forest Strategies for Sustainability that address trends in forest products manufacturing, forest-based development opportunities, and the relationship between land protection and land value. It also involves applying research results in projects intended to make the connection between land protection, improved forest management and economic opportunity in the Northern Forest. Finally, it means reaching out to rural communities from Cobscook Bay to Tug Hill with data and tools to better inform development and conservation decisions.

In September 1997, we- my wife Missy, daughters Molly and Claudia, hound Sally and my office - moved to Craftsbury Common, Vermont. The office looks out over a cross-country ski trail to a wooden canoe builders'  shop, his nephews' dairy farm, and thousands of acres of working and wild forest land. This about sums it up for a region with a heritage of natural resource use and an evolving future that includes more service jobs (mine, for example) and more diverse forest uses and forest values.

Jon Zeltsman. Eclectic and creative: taking an entrepreneurial approach to life and always learning. I find myself hard to categorize; that is my strength. College studies included geography and design, both requiring the ability to synthesize a broad array of subjects and information. This experience formed an intellectual approach built upon crossing disciplines; I employ it to this day. Except for a brief period living in a rural setting, and many visits to the forests of upstate New York, the suburbs of New York City have been my home. This middle-space, between urban and rural, has given me the opportunity to explore and appreciate the three worlds and think about how they are connected.

Leaving college, after exploring a couple of options at home and abroad, I settled in to learn the furniture making craft and simultaneously, business. Over the course of eighteen years Zeltsman Woodworking and Design, Inc. evolved from making one-of-a-kind studio furniture to architect designed architectural woodworking for the high-end residential and executive markets. I became a cabinetmaker, then a businessman and an active industry participant.

The workshop closed in 1992. It was time to move on. I incorporated as Zeltsman Associates, Inc. to redirect my focus in support of the wood products industry. Working with the Industrial Assistance Development Corporation, I conducted research to understand and support small manufacturers, especially growth-oriented firms. More recently, my wife, Miriam Haas, has joined me in Zeltsman Associates as a consultant organizing and managing farmers' markets. We are involved in community issues and are committed to the integration of civic and economic life.

Robert Turner. Professionally, I have offered natural resource consulting since 1989 to a wide variety of clients from my office in Bristol, VT. My background is in finance and forestry and my services can be broadly described as technical support to land managers and policy makers. On the management side, these services often include mapping, resource inventory design and processing, general information system design, financial and investment analyses, and growth and yield modeling. On the policy side, I have developed state and regional long-term timber supply models and have participated in a number of resource-based economic development studies. I have worked in all the states of the Northern Forest and I find as problems faced by both managers and policy makers have grown in complexity, there has been a corresponding increase in the demand for technical information services.

I have lived in Vermont for 25 years, most of that on the western flanks of the central Green Mountains. For that entire time, I have been quite active with local efforts in conservation and environmental education. As rewarding as my professional work is, this is clearly where my heart is. At least in the communities in my locale, citizens care deeply about their natural world. Given any reasonable opportunity to learn about or experience it, they respond with eagerness and a clear and thoughtful approach toward stewardship.

I believe my personal and professional interests converge with the interests of this Center: to bring technical skills to those who’s job or mandate require access to natural resource information; to deliver this information in a way that adds to our knowledge of resource use and conservation; and to support efforts that strengthen a healthy connection to our natural world, economically, environmentally, and spiritually.

Past Technical Advisors

Yurij M. Bihun (Director, Shelterwood Systems, Burlington, Vermont) is a forest resources consultant and sustainable forest products analyst with over twenty years experience and a diverse background in writing and forest management. He has worked on a variety of forestry issues and authored dozens of articles, brochures, and technical publications on silviculture, harvesting, wetlands and forest stewardship. Yurij specializes in issues linking forest ecology and silviculture with economic development in the forest products sector and has lectured at conferences in Finland, Guatemala, and Ukraine. As contributing editor to the British-based trade journal Timber & Wood Products (TTJ) International, he covers stories on forestry and wood products in North America and Latin America and travels regularly throughout the region.

Yurij believes his forestry career began when he headed to the Grand Canyon after graduating from Lafayette College with a BA in Comparative History. While hiking he met some loggers and upon returning to Oregon they contacted him and he joined the fire team in Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

Wayne Fawbush is the first director of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund. The Fund is a private nonprofit organization dedicated to creating sustainable jobs by helping businesses work together to increase their incomes. The Jobs Fund is involved in a broad range of projects that are intended to develop value-added sectors within the State's economy. The focus is on working with existing businesses and the resources at hand and gaining access to higher value markets with quality products.

Prior to coming to Vermont, Wayne worked for four years as Deputy Administrator for Policy and Planning for Rural Development at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. In that position Wayne was responsible for the field operations of the Farmers Home Administration with 1,600 field offices and a total of 6,000 employees. He also served 16 years in the Oregon State Legislature where he helped change the State's economic development policy to focus on creating high value jobs throughout the State. He also owned and operated a farm for 20 years, growing pears and blueberries in Hood River, Oregon.

"I have always believed that small businesses located in rural communities can compete effectively and prosper. The Jobs fund is an exciting opportunity to illustrate not only this fact but to also show how to help businesses grow and prosper and have a positive effect on local communities and the environment. In other words, we are helping businesses make money by doing the right thing."