Sandra Pearson –  President   

Ms. Pearson has expertise in business management and organizational development and currently works as an instructor at three California community colleges and leads training workshops for large corporations undergoing organizational transformations. She is an experienced nonprofit leader and has served as President of the Board of Directors for a major non-profit in the Bay area. While in this position, she successfully represented the organization to the general public and the media, and participated in successful fundraising programs that resulted in broad public support for the organization. She is fluent in English and has intermediate fluency in Spanish.

Julia Medina, PhD –  Secretary 

Julia Medina received a doctorate from the University of California Davis in Latin American Literature. Recently, Julia joined the faculty at Albion College in the state of Michigan as a scholar in culture and history of Central America. Previously, she worked as a program coordinator for the University's Center for History, Society, and Culture. Julia was born in Nicaragua and immigrated to the United States with her family as an adolescent. Since then, she has maintained her cultural ties with her native country. Her family continues to produce sustainable shade-grown coffee in the mountains of Nicaragua.

George Gorman, PhD –  Treasurer

George Gorman received a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University, and later was Professor of Biology at UCLA. His specialty was evolutionary biology and herpetology. His primary research area was in the Caribbean region. At approximately age 40, he left academia and studied law at the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation he was admitted to the California Bar and the federal Patent Bar. After a brief legal career, his “day job” for the last 25 years has been asset management/financial planning.  During this period, he found time to spend a year in Costa Rica with Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology; two years at the Yale School of Forestry (partly as a 60 year old grad student, partly as a research associate); and several semesters as a visiting fellow at Cornell University. He has been involved with the management of the endowment funds for the Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund for many years.

Sean Carney 

Sean was one of the first employees of Carbonfund.org, which has become the largest carbon offset retailer in the United States. There he worked with such corporations as Dell, Volkswagen and Orbitz to develop and manage carbon neutral programs. He also managed the financing and development of the third reforestation project in the world to be validated to the Climate, Community, and Biodiversity Standard (CCBS). Sean has researched carbon sequestration potential of tropical forests in Costa Rica and his honors thesis was on forest carbon finance and sustainable development. Sean has a degree in business and environmental studies from the University of Southern California. Sean is a member of the Forest Carbon Standards Committee, which is developing an ANSI-accepted forest carbon standard.

Rodolfo Dirzo, PhD

Rodolfo Dirzo is a conservation scientist with a passion for conserving the tropical forests of Latin America. He is currently Bing Professor in Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. However, Rodolfo taught for many years at the Universidad Nacional Aut—noma de Mexico where he still continues to collaborate. While at the UNAM, he also directed the Los Tuxtlas Tropical Research Station in Southeast Mexico. Rodolfo's scientific interests are focused on the ecology, evolution, and conservation of ecological processes in tropical forests.

Dr. Ricardo Rudea 

Botany professor at the UNAN-Leon in Nicaragua

El Dr. Ricardo Rueda es biólogo y labora en la UNAN-León desde 1980, en esta institución ha fungido como Vicerrector de Relaciones Externas, Decano de la Facultad de Ciencias y actualmente es profesor del departamento de Biología, director del Jardín Botánico Ambiental y del herbario de dicha institución. Realizo sus estudios de maestría y doctorado en la Universidad y Jardín Botánico de Missouri en Estados Unidos, es especialista en botánica, miembro de numerosas organizaciones profesionales internacionales, ha recibido apoyo de la National Geographic Society para estudios de diversidad vegetal en Nicaragua.  El Dr. Rueda ha participado como científico visitante de numerosas instituciones de Estados Unidos y de América Latina, en Nicaragua ha hecho más de 100 expediciones para estudiar la flora de las reservas naturales. De sus estudios ha publicado más de 20 trabajos en revistas y editoriales nacionales e internacionales, estas publicaciones incluyen libros y artículos de especies nuevas para la ciencia procedentes de diferentes países de América. El Dr. Rueda realizo sus estudios becado por LASPAU-FULBRIGHT y el Missouri Botanical Garden de donde es actualmente investigador asociado.

Lotte Roache

Lotte Roache was born and raised in Germany and immigrated to the United States over 20 years ago. Her expertise lies in Event Planning and Coordinating and she worked most recently  for a non-profit organization. She currently volunteers for different organizations including a school dedicated to educate homeless and at-risk students, an institution which delivers food and support to men, women and children affected by AIDS or cancer and a non-profit which recycles flowers from events and businesses and delivers the re-purposed arrangements to hospitals, senior homes and hospice centers.

Gian Marco Palazio

Gian Marco is President of CASCO Safety Group (Central America Safety Company), the leading Central American distributor of industrial safety, public safety and rescue equipment.  He is President of Café Las Flores, Nicaragua’s leading integrated specialty coffee brand from plantation to retail, a Rainforest Alliance Certified product.  Café Las Flores is part of Agora Partnership’s Accelerator Program.  He directs other companies in the eco-tourism, handicraft export, and real estate industries. 

Gian Marco is a CALI (Central American Leadership Initiative) Fellow from the Aspen Institute and part of the Aspen Global Leadership Initiative. 

He graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1997.  Since then, he completed the Entrepreneur’s Organization’s EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program, and multiple INCAE executive programs.

He currently resides in Managua with his wife Marcela and three children.