Winifred B. Kessler

Winifred Kessler is the Director of Wildlife, Fisheries, Ecology, and Watershed for the USDA Forest Service, Alaska Region. Previous Forest Service assignments included National Wildlife Ecologist (1986-90) and Principal Rangeland Ecologist (1992-93) on the Washington, DC Staff. From 1993 until 2000 she chaired the Forestry Program at the University of Northern British Columbia, and was recognized as British Columbia's Academic of the Year in 1997. She held earlier faculty appointments at the University of Idaho and Utah State University.
Dr. Kessler's enjoyment of international work has taken her to Peru, India, Mongolia, and the Altai Republic (Siberia). An active volunteer, she currently chairs the Public Advisory Board for British Columbia's Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, and is serving as the Northwest Section Representative of the Wildlife Society. Dr. Kessler is a professional member in the Boone & Crockett Club, and chairs their Grants-in-Aid Program among other duties.
A Certified Wildlife Biologist since 1978, Dr. Kessler received the Wildlife Society's Special Recognition Service Award in 1999. Her publications span a variety of natural resource journals including Condor, Ecological Applications, Ecosystem Health, Environmental Management, Forestry Chronicle, Journal of Forestry, Journal of Soil & Water Conservation, Journal of Wildlife Management, Northwest Science, Rangelands, Wildlife Society Bulletin, Women in Natural Resources, and others. Dr. Kessler's education includes BA and MSc degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, and PhD from Texas A&M University.

Back to Top

Robert Lewis, Jr., is a native of the Mississippi Delta. He started his Forest Service career in 1970 as a biological technician at the Hardwood Research Laboratory in Stoneville, MS, where he later became a research plant pathologist. During this time, he authored more than 40 research papers on canker diseases, forest declines, and oak wilt. In 1986, he was appointed Assistant Director for Planning and Applications at the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station and then he became Assistant Director for Research supervising research programs in New England and New York. He served as assistant to the Deputy Chief for Research in 1991-92. While serving in that position, Lewis became one of the first multicultural members of Chief and Staff in the National Office.

He was appointed to the position of Director of the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station in December 1992. As Director of the Northeastern Station, Lewis managed Forest Service research in the 13-State northeastern area, with projects that concentrated on global change, forest inventory and health monitoring, wildlife and endangered species, human values, biotechnology and forest pest management, forest products and harvesting, silviculture and ecosystem management, and watershed management. In April 1997, Lewis was named Deputy Chief for Research in the Washington Office.

Lewis earned a B.S. in Biology at Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi, and a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology at Texas A&M University. He has served as a regional lecturer for Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society of America, and an adjunct professor at Mississippi State University. He has also received several awards for his managerial and civil rights accomplishments. Dr. Lewis is credited with developing a fundamental understanding of oak decline, a serious problem from Alabama to Texas. In addition, he is known for discovering that oak wilt was the primary cause of widespread live oak mortality in Texas.

Dr. Lewis' philosophy can be summed up from what he once said about his work in the Forest Service, "Developing as a research scientist and gaining the recognition and respect from peers across the Nation, and even in other countries, brought a good feeling of accomplishment. But, even more gratifying to me was the feeling that what I did as a scientist really made a difference in our society and to the people who depended on me to help solve their problems through research."

Back to Top

Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom is Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, and the Center for the Study of Institutions, Population, and Environmental Change (CIPEC), Indiana University, Bloomington. She is the author of Crafting Institutions for Self-Governing Irrigation Systems (1992) and Governing the Commons (1990); co-author with Robert Keohane of Local Commons and Global Interdependence (1995), Roy Gardner and James Walker of Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources (1994), and Larry Schroeder and Susan Wynne of Institutional Incentives and Sustainable Development (1993).

Back to Top