Dr. Hawkins is engaged in tourism and hospitality management education and conducts policy-related research. He was appointed as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Tourism Policy (an endowed chair) in 1994. He serves as Chairman of Solimar International-an international tourism development firm with offices in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and Latin America.

In 2003, he received the first United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Ulysses Prize for individual accomplishments in the creation and dissemination of knowledge in the area of tourism policy and strategic management. He coordinated the UNWTO Tourism Policy Forum focused on using tourism as a development assistance strategy, conducted at GW, October 18-20, 2004. He received the UNWTO Themis Foundation Science Fellow Award, in April, 2005 in Andorra.

He is chairman of the SAVE Travel Alliance. In 2003, the George Washington University formed the SAVE Travel Alliance (SAVE) as a not for profit entity consisting of the National Geographic Society, Counterpart International and Institute for Honduras Tourism. SAVE is an acronym for Scientific, Academic, Volunteer and Education Travel. In 2009, SAVE became of member of the Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) which was founded in 2004 as a vehicle to allow the USAID Economic Growth Officers to reach out to organizations providing technical experts in private, public and NGO sector development.

He is currently actively engaged in sustainable tourism activities, including policy development, strategic planning and technical assistance in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Sri Lanka, Bulgaria, Portugal, Spain, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Canada and the United States.

He and his wife, Luz, have 6 children and 11 grandchildren.

Beth Beloff is founder and President of BRIDGES to Sustainability, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster the implementation of sustainable development through development of approaches, methods and tools supporting management decision-making. In 1992, Ms. Beloff founded and directed the Institute for Corporate Environmental Management in the business school at the University of Houston (UH).

Ms. Beloff lectures and writes on issues of corporate sustainability, including sustainability performance and accounting, integrated decision support tools and sustainability education. She is co-editing "Sustainable Development in the Chemical Industry: A Practical Approach," to be published by John Wiley & Sons in 2005. She has been principal investigator / research coordinator on projects funded by numerous sources, including NSF, EPA, DOE, TCEQ, UNDP, Gulf Coast Hazardous Substance Research Center and Business Council for Sustainable Development-Gulf of Mexico. While at UH she received the Shell Interdisciplinary Scholars Grant Award for four consecutive years. She serves on numerous committees / boards, including: City of West University Place Zoning & Planning Commissioner, US Green Building Council Houston Chapter Board, Environmental Quality Management Journal Editorial Advisory Board, Texas Council on Environmental Quality's Clean Texas Team, The Nature Conservancy's Houston Advisory Board, and is a member of the US Business Council for Sustainable Development. She has served for several years on the Society of Petroleum Engineers' Environment Committee of the international EHS conference.

Ms. Beloff is a full member of American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and received an MBA from the University of Houston, M. Arch. from UCLA, and a BA from University of California

Dr. Jan Hamrin is CEO of HMW International, a consulting firm specializing in the implementation of sustainable energy policies. Jan recently retired as President of the Center for Resource Solutions (CRS) she founded and headed for eleven years. While at CRS she designed and implemented the Green-e program, an independent third party program that certifies and verifies renewable energy, REC and greenhouse gas reduction benefits from renewable energy purchased by individual households, business and industry. She also led various sustainable energy projects including one in Chiapas, Mexico that contained an assessment of small eco-tourist facilities.

Her work has provided policy and technical support for the implementation of renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate programs throughout North America and globally. Jan led the China Sustainable Energy Program Renewable Energy Team as well as working in Europe, Canada, India, Mexico, Thailand, Brazil and several other countries. She has been involved in projects with the World Bank and has participated in the US State Department’s Distinguished Speaker Program in South Korea and Indonesia. Jan recently completed a project for Agency for International Development (USAID) that provided training materials on renewables for developing country decision-makers. Dr. Hamrin founded and served nine years as Executive Director of the Independent Energy Producers' Association (IEP) in California and played a key role in the implementation of the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA) in California and elsewhere.

Dr. Hamrin received her Ph.D. in Ecology, with emphasis on public policy evaluation of environmental and energy programs, from the University of California, Davis. She also holds Masters Degrees in Public Administration and Consumer Science from U.C. Davis as well as a B.S. from the University of New Mexico.

Peter D. Krahenbuhl is the co-founder and former President of Sustainable Travel International (STI), where he helped develop the first global, non-profit travel industry eco-standard to help companies measure, manage, and verify sustainability impacts. He has implemented and advised regarding best practices solutions for small to Fortune 500 Companies, as well as destinations and governments. While supporting organization, program and business development, he managed STI’s standards / certification program and its carbon mitigation and offset program, as well as initiated and managed STI’s European operations and international relations. He developed several multi-industry firsts, including assessing and developing sector specific sustainable tourism standards, as well as corporate carbon footprint measurement, employee emission reduction programs, and consumer facing custom carbon solutions. Peter also led corporate consulting efforts, including strategic sustainability positioning, CSR reporting, supply chain management and stakeholder communications. He also directly led or advised multiple global sustainability councils and executive level business networks. At the destination level, Peter has assessed or helped develop national sustainable tourism policy and planning activities, as well as regional standards and capacity-building programs from Latin America to Europe.

Prior to STI, Peter developed and operated global eco- and active travel companies in all aspects of operations, trip leadership, business and product development in creating experiences that connect travelers with people and place. His leadership experience extends to working on international community development and conservation projects, being a published author related to travel guides and sustainability related topics, and as a recognized industry and public speaker.

Krahenbuhl received his Master of Public Affairs from Indiana University (IU), School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), with a double concentration in Comparative International Affairs / Environmental Policy & Natural Resource Management. He received his double Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Environmental Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Alexi Huntley Khajavi is the Director of Global Strategy at MercuryCSC where he is responsible for curating and cultivating trends, research, capabilities and industry developments in the categories of expertise for MercuryCSC; travel, outdoor retail, food and sustainability. Alexi also leads the company's organic and new business growth in domestic and international markets. Prior to joining MercuryCSC, Alexi spent 8 years at Nature Group where he was Chief Marketing Officer, a Central American travel consortium. Alexi led the branding, marketing, sales and corporate social responsibility programs for four affiliated brands—regional airline Nature Air, tour operator Nature Vacations, travel publication Landings and an aviation school. During his tenure Nature Group grew from $1M to nearly $18M in sales, making it one of the fastest growing travel companies in Latin America. Alexi was the project manager behind the carbon reductions and offset initiative, helping Nature Air become the world's first certified carbon neutral airline. He is a graduate of University of California.

Costas Christ is the Director of Sustainability at Virtuoso, past President of the Adventure Council, and past Chairman of the Adventures in Travel Expo Conferences. He also writes a monthly travel column for National Geographic Traveler magazine. His desire for exploration has led him to more than 100 countries including expeditions to some of the world's most remote wilderness regions and archeological sites. Along the way, he has worked for Dr. Richard Leakey in Africa, joined National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Dr. Sylvia Earle, in helping to establish a new marine reserve in Belize, and got to know legendary British explorer, Wilfred Thesiger, to name a few of the extraordinary people he has met in his life.

An internationally recognized expert on sustainable tourism, Costas also serves as the Chairman of the World Travel and Tourism Council's Tourism for Tomorrow Awards, which recognizes leading examples from around the world of environmentally and socially responsible travel. He is a founding member and former Chairman of the Board of The International Ecotourism Society and was appointed the Peace Corps Director in Uganda where he worked on community-based tourism as an economic development strategy. As the Senior Director for Ecotourism at Conservation International, Costas supervised projects in 18 countries.

In addition to his monthly travel column in National Geographic Adventure, Costas' articles and essays on travel and tourism have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe and Sunday Times of London. He is the lead author of Tourism and Biodiversity: Mapping Tourism’s Global Footprint and a contributing author in Wilderness: Earth's Last Wild Places. Costas has appeared many times on television and radio, including CNN, BBC, National Public Radio, ABC News, and PBS to talk about adventure travel.

Duncan has spent over thirty-five years in travel industry sales, marketing and senior management capacities. His first ten years were with Young and Rubicam, Inc. Advertising during which time he handled the advertising for P&O Lines. He joined that company which soon acquired Princess Cruises which was a prime player in the growing cruise industry.

In the mid-seventies he one of the first employees at Royal Cruise Line which initiated the marriage of a 747 and a the 450 passenger Golden Odyssey. During fifteen years at Royal Cruise line he served as Marketing Director and later Executive Vice President. In 1990 he served as President of Seabourn Cruise Line, one of the industry's highest rated products.

For thirteen years Duncan has been involved with educational travel serving as Director of the Travel/Study program for the Stanford Alumni Association for ten years and recently managing Generosity in Action, a foundation structured to support travelers' philanthropy. The Stanford Alumni program, the largest and most highly respected educational travel program in the world, offers over 70 programs per year generating over $22 million sales. The success coming from involving knowledgeable faculty with specially designed itineraries.

Generosity in Action was created out of the enthusiasm of travelers to "give back" to villages and people in countries they visit and the need for a structure to allow donations to be tax deductible. Since his retirement from Stanford, Duncan has expanded Generosity in Action for other travel marketers, serves on the Board of Philanthropic Ventures Foundation and assists travel operators in marketing their products.

Duncan attended Stanford and graduated from University of California School of Business. He and his wife have two grown daughters and seven grandchildren.

Jamie Sweeting is the new Vice President for Environmental Stewardship for Royal Caribbean Cruises and is the former Senior Director of the Travel & Leisure program at The Center for Environmental Leadership in Business (CELB), engaging leading tourism corporations to limit their environmental footprint and maximize their contribution to conservation. Prior to joining CELB, Jamie was Manager of the Ecotourism Program in Conservation International's (CI) Conservation Enterprise Department, where his work involved close collaboration with CI's field offices to develop and implement over 35 ecotourism projects in more than 17 countries. Jamie has a B.A. in Leisure and Business Management from Manchester University, U.K. and a M.T.A. from The George Washington University School.

Keith Sproule's areas of expertise include tourism planning, investment facilitation and community enterprise development. Mr. Sproule has worked and traveled to over 100 countries, with regions of extended experience in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Middle East, North and Southern Africa. His hybrid career includes positions in the public, private and NGO sectors. He has managed large land acquisition and tourism development projects in the US and the Caribbean and served as a senior policy advisor to government ministries, including three years with the Belize Ministry of Tourism, two years with the Egyptian Tourism Development Authority and three years as the Ecotourism Advisor to the Supreme Commission for Tourism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He is a past two-term Chairman of The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) and a current member of the board of the Charture Institute. He is the founder and managing director of The Bentwood Inn, a luxury lodge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Keith currently lives with his family in Windhoek, Namibia, where he manages the tourism portfolio of the World Wildlife Fund Namibia Program, focusing on joint-venture lodges with communal conservancies.

Randy Durband is the past President of Travcoa, past President of INTRAV/Clipper Cruise Lines, and past Executive Vice President of Tauck World Discovery. He has spent his entire 25+ year career in tour operations, working in and leading all facets of the tour business. Throughout his career Randy has developed a strong network by serving on various travel industry boards and committees and has served as a panelist or speaker at many industry events. His board involvement has included several years with the European Tour Operators Association (ETOA), Global Exchange, and the US Travel Market Advisory Board to the Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC).

Randy has long held personal interests in anthropology, linguistics, history, and international affairs. His academic background, including an advanced degree, was in international affairs and history and included many positions as a teaching assistant and leader in academic travel programs. He has combined those personal passions and knowledge with his global tourism experience to create a talent for supporting sustainable tourist practices at environmental and cultural sites throughout the world.

During the last 5 years of work in tourism development, Chris Seek has provided marketing and consulting services to over 300 tourism micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and tourism associations in over 17 countries. Services included business planning, website development, graphic design, Internet marketing, photography, virtual tours, video production, international representation, cluster development, business development training, sustainable tourism certification, cross promotion advertising campaigns, and travel trade seminars.

Prior to founding Solimar, Chris worked in the corporate marketing field, helping multinational companies develop national and international marketing programs. He has worked and lived in Costa Rica, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain, while also traveling extensively through more then 30 countries. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese.

Chris also serves on the board of the nonprofit organization The SAVE Travel Alliance, an organization dedicated to helping emerging tourism destinations connect with the Scientific, Academic, Volunteer, and Educational (SAVE) travel market.

Julie Klein is the Director of Environmental Affairs for RockResorts and Vail Resorts Hospitality, a wholly owned division of Vail Resorts, Inc. She oversees the hospitality division’s sustainability efforts and leads many corporate-wide programs. Headquartered in Colorado, Vail Resorts global resort collection includes resorts across the U.S. as well as several destinations in the Caribbean. Prior to joining the Vail Resorts Hospitality corporate team, she had the privilege of working and living in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming as the Director of Environmental, Health and Safety for Grand Teton Lodge Company, the largest concessioner in the Park. In this position she led an award winning environmental health and safety program certified to the ISO 14001 and OSHA Voluntary Protection Program standards. Prior to working with the Grand Teton Lodge Company, she served as the recycling coordinator for Denver Recycles/City and County of Denver where she guided the City's municipal recycling program.

Before shifting into the discipline of environmental policy and management, she held several marketing communications positions within the ski and tourism industry including work with Colorado Ski Country USA and Winter Park Resort in Colorado.

Her passion for outdoor recreation and tourism and a lifelong commitment to environmental conservation, led her back into tourism where her work could focus on balancing the impacts of mass tourism and protecting resort destinations.

Her work includes volunteer efforts and board involvement for several Colorado based and international conservation and animal welfare organizations. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Speech Communications and Journalism from Colorado State University and a Masters Degree in Environmental Policy and Management with a certification in Ecotourism from the University of Denver.

Richard Weiss is an active/adventure travel industry veteran with over 30 years experience in the field. Originally a New Yorker with an undergraduate degree from Stanford, he moved to Canada in the late 1960s after a disagreement with the US government over his role in foreign policy, particularly in Southeast Asia. He stayed in Toronto for twenty years where he received an MA from the University of Toronto in Classical Chinese Poetry. Richard began his career in the adventure travel business leading wilderness trips for the Sierra Club in the late 1960s canoeing and backpacking throughout Canada and Europe. After a couple of failed but interesting careers (college academic, professional chef, et al.), he quickly got more comfortable and better fed by leading bike trips for Toronto-based Butterfield & Robinson in France and Italy, becoming their Director of European Operations in the mid-1980s. He returned to the US in 1988 to head the international division of Vermont Country Cyclers.

Richard's shift back to more adventurous travel started when he became CEO of Mountain Travel Sobek in 1995. Since then he has held senior executive positions with Backroads and Grand Expeditions, where he had responsibility for five GrandEx companies from Vermont to Boca Raton as President of the Eco/Adventure platform. Most recently Richard spent two years setting up Adventures by Disney, The Walt Disney Company's™ entry in the (so-called) active travel space. Richard supports a variety of non-profit ventures by sitting on a number of boards of directors over the years. These include: The International Ecotourism Society, Environmental Traveling Companions (offering rafting and seakayaking to disabled children), Sustainable Travel International, Global Service Corps, Travelers'™ Philanthropy Fund and others. He currently heads Strategic Travel Consulting, an Oakland-based consulting firm, where he offers all levels of travel-related consulting, and manages his executive and life coaching practices.

Hugh Hough began his advertising career as an art director in Madrid in 1980. For 13 years, he worked in around the globe (Madrid, Colombia, New York) in big, international advertising agencies (Ogilvy, Grey) for big, international clients (Panasonic, Ralston-Purina).

In 1993, Hugh walked away from mainstream Madison Avenue, and opened Green Team, New York's first (and at the time only) environmental advertising agency.

In the subsequent years, Hugh expanded Green Team's core capabilities to include social and cause related marketing, progressive brands and travel. On 2007, Green Team opened its first satellite office, in Hobart, Tasmania. Hugh and Green Team have created work for numerous non-profits, including WWF, Environmental Defense, Conservation International, National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institute. Green Team travel clients include Scotland, Ecuador, Dominica and Lindblad Expeditions. Green Team also works with a number of major corporations, helping them with their environmental and cause campaign. These include Johnson & Johnson, BP and Coca-Cola.

Hugh was recently selected by Al Gore and The Climate Project to be one of 1,000 individuals chosen to present a modified version of Gore's presentation about global warming, chronicled in the film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Faith Taylor currently oversees Wyndham's worldwide sustainability program which includes over 58 brands, over 26,000 employees and over 90,000 locations in 100 countries. She has overseen the development of the company's corporate policies, strategies and branding initiatives since it started in 2006. She is Chair of the American Hotel and Lodging Association's Environmental and Engineering Committee and an Executive Committee member of the World Travel & Tourism Council and International Tourism Partnership organizations where she has participated in setting industry standards and policies. She sits on the Board of Directors for Sustainable Travel International and the New Jersey Chapter of the USGBC.

In 2009 and 2010, Newsweek recognized Wyndham as one of the top 15 Greenest companies in America in the Travel, Leisure and Media sector. She also launched innovative programs such as Clear Air by Pure, an allergy free room program, the hospitality industry's first green uniforms made out of plastic bottles with Cintas as well as participated in the Silver LEED certification of Wyndham's 250,000 square foot corporate facility.

Ms. Taylor has experience in new business and product development as well as marketing and strategic planning. She worked at Wyndham Hotel and Resorts where she was responsible for repositioning the brand through innovation and new product development programs she also oversaw the repositioning, and marketing for the Ramada brand. She has worked at Avon Inc., Apple Computer and International Home Foods. She has an MBA from Wharton business school and received a BA from Stanford University.

Leila has over 17 years' experience in international economic development, in 12 countries. She specializes in sustainable tourism development, private sector development, and local economic development. Leila's work in sustainable tourism development include long and medium term assignments in destinations including Sri Lanka, Jordan, Ghana, Micronesia, and Mozambique, working on tourism SME development, strengthening tourism industry value chains, tourism policy reform, ecotourism development, handcraft development, and other related areas.

Leila is currently the Team Leader of a four year MCC-funded Tourism Marketing Project, to promote Namibia as a Destination to the North American market. Working closely with the Namibia Tourism Board (NTB) and tourism industry stakeholders, Cardno is implementing an extensive public relations and media outreach campaign to increase awareness of Namibia as a tourism destination. Tasks include developing online destination marketing tools and training the Namibian tourism industry on the use of tools. The project is facilitating trade-to-trade linkages through road-shows and participation in select trade shows across North America.

For Cardno's private client's practice, Leila is serving as Team Leader for a contract with British Gas Tunisia to assist in the development and implementation of a regional development/sustainable livelihoods program. This program is working to support local economic development by enhancing local skills, developing MSMEs, creating linkages with the local private sector, promoting sustainability, and linking those activities with the company's business objectives and local communities' needs. Supporting local economic development through this program is helping BG improve the company's social license to operate with the local communities in the areas which they work.

Leila holds a M.A. in International Development (American University), and a M.A. in Sustainable Tourism Administration (George Washington University). She is a native English speaker, and is fluent in Arabic and Spanish. Leila lives in Lima, Peru, with her husband and two daughters.