HANNAH BRENKERT-SMITH (she/her/hers) is a research associate professor at the University of Colorado’s Institute of Behavioral Science in the Environment and Society Program. Prior to joining the research faculty, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research with the Integrated Science Program in the Research Applications Lab. Brenkert-Smith’s research examines social-environmental interactions in the face of environmental change, focusing primarily on household and community response to wildfire risk. More recently, her work has prioritized collaborative research practices that yield actionable data and insights for those working at the forefront of risk mitigation in the wildland-urban interface. Brenkert-Smith was a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science to Achieve Results fellow whose dissertation work prioritized risk-related decision-making in the wildland-urban interface and she was a science policy fellow with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellowship Program, where she served on the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. Her team recently received the United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station Award for Science Delivery. Brenkert-Smith earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Colorado with a focus on environmental sociology and natural hazards and disasters.

ALEXANDRA PAIGE FISCHER (she/her/hers) is an associate professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan and directs the Western Forest and Fire Initiative at University of Michigan, a transdisciplinary research group with 12 projects focused on understanding how human and ecological communities can adapt to more flammable, smokier, hotter, and power-disrupted conditions in the western United States. She was previously a research social scientist for the United States Forest Service. Fischer is a scholar of human behavior and environmental change and focuses on how individuals, households, and communities perceive, cope with, and adapt to increasing wildfires, droughts, storms, biological invasions, and other climate-induced changes, specifically in the context of forests. She was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for research on community adaptation to wildfire as a social-ecological system in Chile, and received a Fulbright Scholarship for research on forest gardens in Sri Lanka. Fischer received a B.A. in cultural anthropology from Hampshire College, an M.S. and Ph.D. in Forest Ecosystems and Society from Oregon State University in 1994.

OCEANA P. FRANCIS (she/her/hers) is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Sea Grant Program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UHM). Her research focuses on building the resilience of urban communities and infrastructure systems from hydrodynamic hazards, circulation and transport in nearshore regions and oceans, wave hydrodynamics, sea-level rise, and the effects of sea ice on oceanic processes. Francis is a licensed civil engineer in both Alaska and Hawaii. Some of her awards include the Hi Chang Chai Excellence in Teaching Award from the UHM College of Engineering, the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement’s Inaugural Award for Exemplary Multi-Institutional and Regional Collaborations in the Service of Citizen Science, and the Young Engineer of the Year Award from the Fairbanks Chapter of the Alaska Society of Professional Engineers. She has made significant contributions to science and engineering for the State of Hawaii, which includes development of the Coastal Road Erosion Susceptibility Index, the Ocean Hazards Database and the Coastal Vulnerability Index GIS modeling of the Hawaiian Islands. Francis received a B.S. in physics and astronomy from the University of Nebraska Lincoln, a B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Alaska Anchorage, and a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

FRANK K. LAKE (he/him/his) is a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) forest service research ecologist, and the Pacific Southwest Research Station’s (PSW) Tribal liaison and Tribal climate change point of contact. He is recognized as a subject matter expert regarding Tribal research partnership for Indigenous knowledge, wildland fire, Indigenous fire stewardship/cultural burning, forestry-Indigenous agroforestry, and climate change with an emphasis in the Pacific West. Lake’s collaborative interdisciplinary work is recognized by having received awards, some if which include: USDA Forest Service PSW’s Distinguished Science individual award, Science Delivery individual award, Innovation & Service group award, Innovation and Service in Research group award, and the USDA Office of Tribal Relations Nation to Nation Innovation individual award. He has served as the Ecological Society of America’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge section chair, vice chair, and advisor.

Lake is currently on the Association of Fire Ecology Board of Directors. He received a Ph.D in environmental sciences-ecology from Oregon State University.

GARY E. MACHLIS (he/him/his) is professor of environmental sustainability at Clemson University. He previously served as science advisor to the director of the National Park Service and the agency’s Science Integrity Officer. Machlis was co-leader of the Department of the Interior’s Strategic Sciences Group that worked on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Hurricane Sandy. He is the author and co-author of several books on conservation and environmental change, including The Structure and Dynamics of Human Ecosystems (2017) and The Future of Conservation in America (2018). Machlis’ current research deals with conservation, sustainability and social justice, science during crisis, and the social-ecological effects of recurrent disasters. He was awarded the Department of the Interior’s Conservation Service Award and is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Machlis received his B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Washington, and his Ph.D. from Yale University.

ALEXANDRA D. SYPHARD (she/her/hers) is a senior research ecologist at the Conservation Biology Institute, an adjunct professor of geography at San Diego State University, and a member of the California Wildfire Safety Advisory Board. She has spent 25 years analyzing the ecological and social drivers and consequences of landscape change, particularly focusing on wildfire. Syphard investigates how change has occurred in the past, how it is likely to occur in the future, and how different policy or management alternatives may improve ecological and social well-being. She concentrated intensely on wildfire risk to communities, investigating structure loss in wildfire, and identifying the best approaches for balancing fire risk reduction with biodiversity conservation. Syphard’s research also focuses on wildfire and social vulnerability, fire-climate relationships, land use change, vegetation dynamics, invasive species, and species’ range shifts. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Mary Washington, a Masters of Public Health at the Medical College of Virginia, a Masters in environmental studies at the Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Ph.D. in geography from San Diego State University as well as at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

TAMARA WALL (she/her/hers) is a research professor at the Desert Research Institute (DRI), the co-lead of the Climate Center Group at DRI, the lead primary investigator for the California Nevada Adaptation Program, and the deputy director of the Western Regional Climate Center. She has worked extensively with stakeholders in California, Nevada and other regions of the West in co-produced climate science projects. Wall’s research focuses on qualitative and quantitative social science research in climate information use by stakeholders, understanding the process of climate information dissemination and utilization for climate resiliency and adaptation in natural resource management agencies, and public and agency use of wildland fire weather forecasts and wildland fire behavior/fire danger information. Recent work has focused on developing expertise in applying change theory to better support mixed research/practitioner teams address the evolving dynamics between research, social processes, and climate change adaptation actions. Wall is a board member of the International Association of Wildland Fire, and a council member of the Bi-State Tahoe Science Advisory Council. She received her Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Montana.

SPEAKERS

EDWARD ALEXANDER (he/him/his) represents Gwich’in internationally as the Co-Chair of Gwich’in Council International and has been appointed by the Chiefs of Alaska for multiple terms in this role. He serves as the head of delegation to the Senior Arctic Officials, and to the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna and Emergency Prevention, Preparedness, and Response Working Groups of the Arctic Council. Additionally, he serves as the co-chair of the Arctic Council’s Chairship Initiative of Wildland Fire. Alexander also served as the 2nd chief of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in. He found wildland fire for eight seasons across Alaska and the western United States. Alexander has worked as a secondary teacher, principal, in administration, managing the University of Alaska’s Yukon Flats Campus, and as the education director for the 37 tribes of the Tanana Chiefs Conference. He founded

and operates the consulting firm The Village Consultants which is focused on tribal sovereignty, village development, Indigenous education, and climate issues. Additionally, Alexander founded and operates a small family farm, Gwich’in Grown, which is dedicated to organic and regenerative agricultural and land management practices, which produces broiler chickens, eggs, and seasonal vegetables. He has an M.A.Ed in secondary education from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a current Type A Alaska Teaching Certification.

JESSICA BLOCK (she/her/hers) is the associate director for Operational Programs of the WIFIRE Lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Her work aims to mitigate disasters using emerging technologies including satellites, sensor networks, machine learning tools, and virtual reality. Block has spent her career addressing fire, water, and geologic risks in the American West and Southeastern Australia. In 2019, she was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to the California Wildfire Safety Advisory Board.

JUDSON BOOMHOWER (he/him/his) is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on environmental economics, energy markets, climate risk and adaptation, and the design of environmental and energy policy. Boomhower is a contributor to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, an invited researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and a faculty affiliate at the E2e initiative. He joined UCSD after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Boomhower is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a former Fulbright Scholar, and an award-winning undergraduate teacher. He earned a B.A. and M.S. degree from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

AMY CARDINAL CHRISTIANSON (she/her/hers) is Métis and grew up in Treaty 8 territory (northern Alberta, Canada). Her Métis relations are the Cardinal (Peeaysis Band) and Laboucane (Laboucane Settlement) families; and currently lives near Rocky Mountain House in Treaty 6 (central Alberta). Christianson was formerly a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service (Natural Resources Canada) and an Indigenous fire specialist in the National Fire Management Division of Parks Canada. She works with Indigenous Nations across Canada on fire stewardship practices like cultural burning and collaborates with Indigenous peoples from around the world on decolonizing land management. Christianson also studies wildfire evacuations and advocates for Indigenous wildland firefighters. She is the co-author of the books First Nations Wildfire Evacuations: A Guide for Communities and External Agencies and Blazing the Trail: Celebrating Indigenous Fire Stewardship. She also co-hosts the Good Fire podcast, which looks at Indigenous fire use around the world. Christianson serves on the steering committee of the Thunderbird Collective, the board of the International Association of Wildland Fire and the international research advisory panel with Natural Hazards Research Australia.

SUSAN CUTTER (she/her/hers) is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina and co-director of the Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute. Her research focusses on vulnerability and resilience science with specific reference to methods, models, and metrics. Cutter’s scientific contributions include the hazards of place model of vulnerability, the disaster resilience of place model, as well as tools for assessing spatial and temporal variability in vulnerability (Social Vulnerability Index or SoVI®) and resilience (Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities Index). Her policy-relevant work focuses on the evidentiary basis for hazard mitigation and disaster recovery policy and practice at local, state, national, and international levels. In particular, she continues to lead investigations of the disproportionate spatial and temporal impacts of disasters on vulnerable populations and the places where they live. Cutter is an elected fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was also the recipient of her discipline’s highest awards: American Association of Geographers Lifetime Achievement, Presidential Achievement, and the Wilbanks Award for Transformation Research. Cutter has authored or edited 15 books, 200+ plus peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, and mentored more than 75 master’s and doctoral candidates. She received an honorary doctorate from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and was elected as a foreign member of the Royal Norwegian Society of

Sciences and Letters. In 2024, Cutter became an elected member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.

MIKE FLANNIGAN (he/him/his) is the British Columbia innovation research chair for predictive services, emergency management and fire science at Thompson Rivers University and the scientific director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science. He has been studying fire and weather/climate interactions including the potential impact of climatic change and lightning-ignited forest fires for over 40 years. Flannigan has published over 300 journal papers, book chapter and reports. He received his B.S. in physics from the University of Manitoba, his M.S. in atmospheric science from Colorado State University, and his Ph.D. in plant sciences from Cambridge University.

CAITLIN FONG (she/her/hers) is a research associate with National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) and is currently leading the Western Wildfire Resilience Index project. Her research is at the interface of social and ecological systems with the goal of solving sustainability challenges by supporting societal decision-making and addressing key issues of environmental justice and sustainable development. Previously, Fong was a National Science Foundation post-doctoral student studying anthropogenic stressors to tropical reefs, then an NCEAS post-doctoral student exploring aquaculture as a sustainable pathway for meeting growing food demands. She earned her Ph.D. at University of California, Santa Barbara, where her dissertation investigated parasite population and community ecology.

SARAH HENDERSON (she/her/hers) is the scientific director of environmental health services at British Columbia (BC) Centre for Disease Control and of the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health. She is also an associate professor in the University of British Columbia’s School of Population & Public Health. Henderson oversees a program of applied environmental health research, surveillance, and knowledge translation to support evidence-based policy in BC and across Canada. She has studied wildfire smoke and its population health effects for over 20 years.

PHILIP HIGUERA (he/him/his) is a professor of fire ecology in the Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences at the University of Montana. He directs the PaleoEcology and Fire Ecology Lab, funded largely from the National Science Foundation and Joint Fire Science Program, and he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in fire and disturbance ecology. Research in Higuera’s lab spans western North America and broadly addresses interactions among climate, wildfire, ecosystems, and people, across timescales of years to millennia. This work has revealed how fire activity varies with climate change in recent decades and the distant past, and how forest ecosystems respond to past and ongoing changes. For over eight years, collaborative efforts have increasingly focused on understanding wildfire as an integrated social-ecological phenomenon, helping address current societal challenges centered around living with wildfire.

STSMÉL’QEN, RONALD E. IGNACE (he/him/his) is a member of the Secwépemc Nation in Interior British Columbia. He was the elected chief of the Skeetchestn Indian Band for more than 30 years. Ignace also served as chairman of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council and president of its cultural society, where he initiated a broad program of research and reclamation on Secwépemc language and culture, including an innovative university partnership with Simon Fraser University (SFU). He has written and co-written numerous articles and book chapters on Secwépemc history, ethnobotany, language and culture, including the epic Secwépemc People, Land and Laws: Yerí7 Re Stsq’ey’s-Kucw, a journey through 10,000 years of Secwépemc history. Previously, Ignace chaired the Ministerial Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures, and he has co-chaired the Assembly of First Nations’ Chiefs Committee on Languages, where he played an instrumental role in the development of the Indigenous Languages Act. Raised by his great-grandparents Sulyen and Edward Eneas, and despite being taken to Kamloops Indian Residential School for several years in his childhood, Ignace is a fluent speaker of Secwépemctsin and has more than 60 years of practical experience in Secwépemc traditional skills on the land. With his wife Marianne Ignace, he was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Innovation, for their decades

of collaborative research involving Indigenous people and communities. He holds a B.A. and M.A. in sociology from the University of British Columbia, and completed his Ph.D. in anthropology at SFU, with a dissertation on Secwépemc oral history.

MARIANNE IGNACE (she/her/hers) is a joint appointment with Indigenous studies and director at First Nations Language Centre. For the past twenty years, she has focused her research on the Secwépemc (Shuswap) people of the Plateau, where her interests are aboriginal land use and occupancy, ethnobotany, traditional ecological knowledge, ethnohistory, and the linguistic and anthropological analysis of Aboriginal language discourse. Ignace has authored and co-authored papers in various journals and books on these topics and has also carried out research in the field of Aboriginal language revitalization, some of which is published in the Handbook for Aboriginal Language Program Planning in British Columbia. She has also published articles on Haida oratory and Potlatching. In recent years, she has worked with First Nations communities and elders on various language revitalization projects, including Secwépemctsin, St’at’imcets, Heiltsuk, Nuxalk, Haida and Sm’algyax. Ignace completed her Ph.D. dissertation on the politics of Haida symbols which was later published as The Curtain Within: Haida Social and Symbolic Discourse.

KARL KIM (he/him/his) is editor-in-chief of Transportation Research: Interdiscplinary Perspectives; associate editor of Transportation Research, Part D, Transport and Enviroment; formerly editor-in-chief of Accident Analysis and Prevention; and formerly editor of Korean Studies. He holds faculty appointments in the Center for Korean Studies and the School of Architecture. He has received more than $67 million in research and training grants from federal, state, and international agencies and organizations. Kim also previously served as chairman for the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (ndpc.us), and as vice chancellor for academic affairs (chief academic officer) of the University of Hawaii at Manoa—where he would oversee strategic planning, accreditation, tenure and promotion, and international programs. Further, he serves on several committee of the Transportation Research Board. Served as Chair of the Pacific Risk Management Ohana. Elected to the Board of North American Alliance of Hazards and Disaster Research Institutes. Kim received an A.B. in demography from Brown University and a Ph.D. in urban studies and planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

PETE LAHM (he/him/his) is the air resource specialist and smoke program branch chief for the United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, State and Private Forestry, Fire and Aviation Management. He leads the Forest Service’s national smoke management efforts developing technical approaches and policies related to smoke impacts from prescribed fire and wildfires. Lahm chairs the National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Smoke Committee and leads the Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program, which provides personnel, technical specialists called air resource advisors, smoke modeling and monitoring capabilities to develop smoke forecasts for communities adversely affected by smoke.

IRENE LUSZTIG (she/her/hers) is a feminist filmmaker, archival researcher, educator, and amateur seamstress. She works in a space of delicate mediation between people, their pasts, and the present-tense spaces and landscapes where unresolved histories bloom and erupt. Often beginning with rigorous research in archives, Lusztig’s work brings historical materials into conversation with the present, inviting viewers to contemplate questions of politics, ideology, and the complex ways that personal, collective, and national memory are entangled. She is invested in expanding the form of artful nonfiction through her lyrical use of archival images, her commitment to listening-centered and collaborative methods, patient durational shooting, and open-ended editing. Lusztig is the director, producer, and editor of three acclaimed feature length documentaries that have screened widely in festivals and are distributed by Women Make Movies: Reconstruction (2001), The Motherhood Archives (2013), Yours in Sisterhood (2018), and Richland (2023). Her work has been screened around the world, including at the Berlinale, MoMA, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Anthology Film Archives, Pacific Film Archive, Flaherty NYC, IDFA Amsterdam, Hot Docs, Sheffield DocFest, AFI Docs, BFI London Film Festival, Melbourne Film Festival, DocLisboa, and RIDM Montréal. Lusztig has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright, two MacDowell fellowships,

the Flaherty Film Seminar, and the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship. She teaches filmmaking at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she is professor of film and digital media.

SARAH McCAFFREY (she/her/hers) retired after 20 years as a fire social scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service where her research focused on understanding the social dynamics of fire management. Research topics included risk perception and risk attitudes, social acceptability of prescribed fire, homeowner mitigation decisions, evacuation decision making, and agency-community interactions during fires. McCaffrey previously assisted the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre with their post-fire data collection following the February 7th, 2009, bushfires and was subsequently named a USDA liaison to the Victorian Bush-fires Royal Commission. More recent work examined internal barriers to use of fire as a management tool and how response to the fire problem might better allow for more holistic consideration of both social and ecological concerns. Since retirement, she has been involved with a number of research and practitioner efforts to improve future fire outcomes including as an adviser to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Wildfire Resilience Initiative and a Board member for Fire Adapted Colorado. McCaffrey received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley where her dissertation examined Incline Village, Nevada homeowner views and actions in relation to defensible space and fuels management.

TARA K. MCGEE (she/her/hers) is a professor in the human geography group in the department of earth and atmospheric sciences at the University of Alberta. She is a wildfire social scientist whose research program extends over 25 years and includes research on wildfire prevention, FireSmart mitigation at property and community levels, preparedness, and evacuation response. McGee has conducted and participated in research in Canada and overseas. She co-leads the First Nations Wildfire Evacuation Partnership.

MICHAEL MÉNDEZ (he/him/his) is an assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and Visiting Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He previously was the inaugural James and Mary Pinchot Faculty Fellow in Sustainability Studies and Associate Research Scientist at the Yale School of the Environment. Méndez has more than a decade of senior-level experience in the public and private sectors, where he consulted and actively engaged in the policymaking process. This included working for the California State Legislature as a senior consultant, lobbyist, member of the California State Mining & Geology Board, and as vice-chair of the Sacramento City Planning Commission. In 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Méndez to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. The board regulates water quality in a region of 11 million people. In 2023, he was appointed by Deanne Crisell, the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to serve on their National Advisory Council. In this capacity, council members advise the Administrator on all aspects of emergency management, including preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation for natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other manmade disasters. Méndez award-winning book Climate Change from the Streets (Yale University Press, 2020), is an urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy.

BETH ROSE MIDDLETON MANNING (she/her/hers) is professor of Native American studies at the University of California, Davis. Her research centers the Indigenous and rural environmental justice impacts of natural resource infrastructure and policy, using environmental laws and processes for protection of cultural places and lifeways, assessing and improving environmental health impacts, and collaborating on climate adaptation with Native communities. Middleton Manning has published on rural and Indigenous environmental justice, environmental and tribal law, political ecology, and historic and contemporary environmental policy.

MIRANDA MOCKRIN (she/her/hers) is a research scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service’s Northern Research Station (Baltimore, MD) who studies land use, combining ecological and social science. Much of her current research focuses on residential development, including mapping the growth of the wildland-urban interface over time, examining community recovery and adaptation after wildfire, and studying the effects of land use policies on forest conservation.

MAX MORITZ (he/him/his) has been a statewide wildfire specialist with University of California’s Cooperative Extension and is an adjunct professor at the Bren School at University of California, Santa Barbara. Much of his research is on the dynamics and effects of fire regimes at relatively broad scales, including drivers of fire hazard, projections of climate change effects, and home loss studies. Through Mortiz’s extension activities, he aims to apply scientific information for sustainable planning and management decisions on fire-prone landscapes. He got his Ph.D. in biogeography from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

STEVE PYNE (he/him/his) is an emeritus professor at Arizona State University and the author, most recently, of The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire and What Happens Next and Five Suns: A Fire History of Mexico. He has written over 30 books, mostly on the history and management of wildland and rural fire, including big-screen surveys for the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe (including Russia), and the world generally, and is completing a multi-volume fire history of the United States and its regions since 1960. Pyne exploration research includes books on Antarctica, the Grand Canyon, the Voyager mission, and a biography of Grove Karl Gilbert. He teaches courses on fire, history of exploration and science, and nonfiction writing.

EMILY SCHLICKMAN (she/her/hers) is an assistant professor of landscape architecture and environmental design at the University of California, Davis. In a broad sense, her research and creative work sits along two primary axes: 1) how to support climate adaptation through landscape stewardship and land use planning techniques and 2) how to experiment with and critically evaluate emerging tools and technologies for design. Schlickman current research on wildfire adaptation aims to collectively shift perceptions of and relationships with fire by challenging normative approaches in the field and offering alternatives that foreground care and decolonization. She received a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in international studies and environmental studies and an M.LA. from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Prior to the University of California, Davis, Schlickman worked professionally as a landscape and urban designer and a practice-based researcher.

ROBERT TAYLOR (he/him/his) has worked as a geographer and a fire geographic information systems (GIS) specialist for the United States National Park Service’s Mediterranean Coast Network for the last 22 years, based at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. He has compiled and produced geospatial data to document more than a century of ongoing fire history in Ventura and Los Angeles Counties and has mapped hundreds of wildfires. Taylor has provided geospatial and statistical support for a wide variety of natural resource management and public fire safety programs for the National Park Service in coastal Southern California. He coauthored the Santa Monica Mountains Community Wildfire Protection Plan and has contributed to production of a series of Fire Management Plans for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, Channel Islands National Park, and Cabrillo National Monument. Taylor has also provided GIS support to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s Ventura Field Office. He has a B.S. in biology from the University of California Berkeley, an M.S. in restoration ecology from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and a Ph.D. in biogeography from the University of California Santa Barbara.

HAIZHONG WANG (he/him/his) is a professor within the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University (OSU). His overarching career goals are to educate and inspire engineering students and guide their development into the world’s future leaders in providing innovative solutions and addressing complex global problems related to climate change, resilience to extreme events, people health, and decarbonization to promote social, economic, cultural, and environmental progress of all people. Wang’s research focuses on the human dimension of resilience through an integrated and interdisciplinary agent-based modelling framework to couple social, natural, and engineered systems to address social-technical research questions. He is also actively involved in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Infrastructure Resilience Division and serving on the Critical Infrastructure and Lifeline System Committee (CILSC). Wang serves as the associate editors for ASCE Natural Hazards Review and Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Reviewer for ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, Jacob Multidisciplinary Collaboration Award for OSU’s Undergraduate Expo, and the recipient of a PacTrans Researcher of the Year Award. Wang has

published over 95 journal papers and 80 major conference papers, he has attracted 5.5 million (his share) external funding from ten different federal or state funding sources. Notably, he has had multiple National Science Foundation- or ASCE-supported reconnaissance data collection trips including the 2017 Mexico Earthquake, the 2018 Indonesia Palu Earthquake and Tsunami, the 2018 Attica Wildfire in Mati, Greece, and the 2023 Maui Wildfire. Wang received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Hebei University of Technology and Beijing University of Technology, China, as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Applied Mathematics and Civil Engineering (Transportation).

MICHAEL WARA (he/him/his) is a lawyer and scholar focused on climate and energy policy. He is a senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment and director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program. The Program provides fact based, bipartisan, technical and legal assistance to policy makers engaged in the development of novel climate and energy law and regulation. Wara also facilitates the connection of Stanford faculty with cutting edge policy debates on climate and energy, leveraging Stanford’s energy and climate expertise to craft real world solutions to meet these challenges. His legal and policy scholarship focuses on carbon pricing, energy innovation, and regulated industries. Wara collaborates with economists, engineers, and scientists in research on the design and evaluation of technical and regulatory solutions to climate and energy challenges. He is also an expert on international environmental law with a particular focus on the ozone and climate treaty regimes. Prior to joining the Woods Institute, Wara was an associate professor at Stanford Law School and an associate in Holland & Knight’s Government Practice. He received his J.D. from Stanford Law School and his Ph.D. in ocean sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

MARIAN WEBER (she/her/hers) currently serves as manager in the Disaster Recovery Division of British Columbia’s (BC’s) Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness. Her roles include providing provincial coordination on issues related to rebuilding after the wildfires and updating policies for private disaster financial assistance. Weber served as manager of Natural Resource Sector Socio-Economic Analysis with BC’s Ministry of Land Water and Resource Stewardship as well as chief environmental economist with BC’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy. She was responsible for assessing the socio-economic implications of natural resource sector policies—including implications for ecosystem services, climate risk and community resilience—to support Executive and Cabinet decisions. Prior to joining the BC Government, Weber was principal researcher with Alberta Innovates, a provincially owned research corporation, where she worked with academia, industry, First Nations, government, and non-government partners on the design of incentives and policies to support ecosystem services and nature-based solutions including conservation offsets and tradable disturbance permits. She has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Alberta and is adjunct professor in its Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology.

KELSEY WINTER (she/her/hers) is the mother of three young girls and her and her husband are grateful to be able to raise their family on the traditional lands of the ləəŋən People, today known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. Today referred to as Victoria, British Columbia (BC), Canada. She is the manager of wildfire operations research at FPInnovations, a national not-for-profit that specializes in creating solutions that accelerate the growth of the Canadian forest sector. Winter’s team utilizes operations research projects to assist wildfire agency partners in increasing their positive impacts in the wildfire management ecosystem. She has a background in natural resources, fire ecology and fire management and before FPInnovations worked for the BC Wildfire Service for over a decade. Winter has an interest in learning how policy can make space for Indigenous communities to prepare and recovery from wildfire. She is a Ph.D. candidate with University of Victoria Public Administration, focusing on barriers to wildfire resiliency.

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