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 Berkeley.

Dr. Jan Hamrin is the President of the Center for Resource Solutions, a non-profit corporation located at the Presidio in San Francisco, California. CRS is dedicated to encouraging the transfer of sustainable technologies and to fostering international leadership in sustainability by building the human capacity to meet environmental, economic and cultural needs.

Dr. Hamrin has served as advisor to the G-8 Renewable Energy Task Force as well as to numerous legislatures and regulatory commissions both in the US and internationally. She has co-authored three books for NARUC: Regulator's Handbook on Tradable Renewable Certificates, 2003; Affected with the Public Interest: Electric Industry Restructuring in an Era of Competition, 1994; and Investing in the Future: A Regulator's Guide to Renewables, 1993. She is presently working on the development of WREGIS (a western TRC tracking system) and the development of an association of tracking systems in North America. In addition to her other tasks, Jan works with the Chinese Government on renewable policies in that country.

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.

In addition to his role as President of the Adventure Council, Costas Christ serves as Chairman of the Adventures in Travel Expo Conferences and also writes a monthly travel column for National Geographic Adventure 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.

Pat Long is Director of the North Carolina Center for Sustainable Tourism and Professor of Business at East Carolina University .  The Center supports research, community outreach, and education on issues of effective planning and management of tourism-dependent communities seeking long-term socio-cultural, environmental and economic benefits.  He founded the first such center at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he served as Center Director and faculty member in the Leeds School of Business with a co-rostered appointment in the Environmental Studies Program. He has served as President/CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the National Rural Tourism Foundation authorized by Congress (Public Law 102-372) to support tourism development in rural America and was recently elected President of the America Leisure Academy.

His current research focuses on sustainable practices in tourism, tourism planning strategies, and host community adjustments to tourism development. He is fully engaged in a long-term study of the economic and social impacts of second homes in resort communities. Dr. Long serves on the editorial boards of both the Journal of Sustainable Tourism and the Interamerican Journal of Environment and Tourism as well as on the faculty of the Environmental and Ecotourism Management Graduate Program, College of the Americas. He is the recipient of the University of Colorado President's Public Service Award, Procter and Gamble Teaching Excellence Award, CU Alumni SOAR Teaching Recognition, Joseph L. Frascona Teaching Excellence Award and Susan C. Wright Communication of Research Award.

Jamie Sweeting is the 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 is internationally recognized for his experience in areas of tourism planning, investment facilitation and community enterprise development. His hybrid career includes positions in the public, private and NGO sectors. He has managed large land acquisition and development projects in the US and the Caribbean and served as a senior policy advisor to government ministries on three continents. Mr. Sproule has worked and traveled to over 85 countries, with regions of extended experience in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa. He is a recent two-term Chairman of The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) and continues to serve on the Executive Committee. He is presently the Ecotourism Advisor to the Supreme Commission for Tourism in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Note: Keith has been a big supporter of STI for the last few years.

Mary C. Pearl is the President of Wildlife Trust, a global organization dedicated to innovative conservation science, linking ecology and health, and building careers of local scientists and educators in 20 high-biodiversity countries in North America, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

She is the co-founder of the Center for Conservation Medicine, a consortium of Wildlife Trust with Tufts Veterinary School, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the National Center for Wildlife Health and the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. She is also a co-founder of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University, where she serves as an adjunct research scientist. She is editor of the series "Methods and Cases in Conservation Science" at Columbia University Press, and is co- editor of Conservation Medicine (Oxford 2002) and Conservation for the 21st Century (Oxford 1990). She has published numerous scientific papers and is Associate Editor of the academic journal Ecohealth (Springer) and on the editorial board of Conservation in Practice.

She received her undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Yale University. Newsweek magazine profiled Pearl with a 2-page interview in November, 2005, describing her as a leading wildlife biologist who has "spearheaded the development of 'conservation medicine' - a scientific exploration of the links between the health of humans, wildlife and ecosystems." She is a member of the International Women's Forum and the Belizean Grove, two networks of leading women in business, government, and the public sector, and recently served as member of the Task Force on Environmental Sustainability of the UN Millennium Project. Dr. Pearl writes a monthly column, "Natural Selections," for Discover Magazine.

Serving as the "environmental den mother" of the leading network of luxury travel consultants in the world is no easy task, but for Jessica Hall Upchurch the role of Director of Sustainability for Virtuoso comes, well, naturally. Her responsibilities are to first oversee the environmental policies and actions of the corporate entity of Virtuoso, encompassing three major U.S.-based offices, as well as the luxury travel industry's most prestigious conferences. Beyond that primary focus, her goal is to positively influence Virtuoso's more than 7,000 travel consultants in 22 countries, as well as more than 1000 top travel companies around the globe that cater to Virtuoso's affluent clientele. A key opportunity to impact all of Virtuoso's constituents is through the network's domestic and international luxury travel conferences, which Jessica plans to steward toward being carbon offset gatherings, and ideally carbon neutral.

A product of rural Oklahoma with an upbringing on and around farms and ranches, Jessica's sustainability practices are familiar to her, reminiscent of the examples set by her grandparents. With a Master's Degree in Community Health and an in-depth knowledge of alternative modalities, holistic healing and yoga, Jessica has an impressive background in instructional programs and biometric testing with the Cooper Institute, the FAA, the U.S. military, and numerous Fortune 500 companies. She now wants to positively impact an industry that is directly dependent on the continuing awe-inspiring majesty of the world - the travel industry. Her mission is for more travel companies to engage sustainability practices and measurements within their core business models.

As the mother of a toddler and an avid active/adventure traveler herself, Jessica has meaningful reasons to champion preserving the beauty and appeal of the earth, as well as healthy lifestyle habits for its inhabitants.

Francis X. Farrell was named publisher of National Geographic Adventure magazine in June 2003 and was promoted to vice president in January 2006. National Geographic Adventure, winner of four National Magazine Awards, including the 2003 Award for Leisure Interests and the 2002 Award for General Excellence, was launched in 1999 as a quarterly to serve an audience of active, adventurous readers and to propel the National Geographic Society's mission of exploration and discovery into the new century. The magazine has rapidly expanded in both publishing frequency and circulation size and is currently publishing 10 times a year with a guaranteed circulation of 525,000.

Before joining National Geographic Adventure, Farrell was general manager/senior vice president/publisher of The Sporting News. He represented Times Mirror Magazines in its sale of The Sporting News to Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures. Previously, Farrell held a variety of management positions at American Express Publishing with Food & Wine and Travel & Leisure magazines. He began his publishing career in ad sales with Country Living and Southern Living magazines.

Farrell has been a featured speaker on marketing sustainable tourism and adventure travel at The BITE 2005 Travel Conference in Cuenca Ecuador and the First National Conference on Ecotourism in Bar Harbor Maine. He has served on the boards of the Adventure Travel Trade Association and Harlem RBI. He is an avid hiker, cyclist and cross-country skier.

Farrell, his wife, Denise, and their five children reside in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.

Kathy Moyer Dragon, Founder and Owner of The Dragon's Path, and ActiveWomen.com, has spent the past 18 years in the center of the active and adventure travel industry. Having researched, designed, marketed, sold and then personally escorted and facilitated the travel experiences of over 3000 guests, 2/3rds of these being women, on small group adventure and cultural trips around the globe Kathy has developed front line experience and information that few marketing experts in the world can match. These natural focus groups proved to be the ideal arena for defining the growth of the active woman's market; from how women select a trip, to why they are traveling; from what products they love (can't stand or wish for) to how different generations of women perceive themselves in an active environment. All these questions and answers have changed over the past decade as the active woman market has evolved and yes, exploded. As a passionate entrepreneur, Kathy has been instrumental in the growth of niche companies including Vermont Country Cyclers, Country Walkers, Whole Journeys (a Whole Foods Market Company) and her own company The Dragon's Path. She has a reputation within the Adventure Travel Market as a trusted leader in all aspects of the industry. Kathy is a frequent presenter on the influence of women in the adventure travel market as well as consultant on marketing to active women. Most recently she has presented at the first Marketing to Women conference in the United States and is designated to speak at J. Walter Thompson's Mature Market Conference this fall. The development ActiveWomen.com and associated aggregated Blogs (weblogs) is a natural step beyond travel, offering a trusted resource for women decision makers in travel and active lifestyle choices. Watch as this on-line and off-line community grows

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 currently the Director of Environmental, Health and Safety for the Grand Teton Lodge Company, a subsidiary of Vail Resorts, Inc. She has the privilege of working in and living nearby Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. As the largest concessioner in the Park, her work has included championing cross-functional environmental protection programs framed within an ISO 14001 certified environmental management system. 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 life long commitment to environmental conservation, led her back into tourism where her work could focus on efforts to balance the impacts of mass tourism and protecting our Country's beautiful natural places.

In her efforts to support the greater community surrounding Grand Teton National Park, Julie also serves on the boards of Jackson Community Recycling, Greater Yellowstone Teton Clean Energy Coalition, and is technical advisor to Yellowstone Business Partnership - Uncommon Sense, a regional peer-to-peer sustainable business leadership program. Julie 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.