Dr. Don Hawkins is an expert in tourism policy, strategic planning, workforce development and management education with 40 years of international experience. In 2003, he received the first World Tourism Organization (WTO) Ulysses Prize for individual accomplishments in the creation and dissemination of knowledge in the area of tourism policy and strategic management. Don holds the endowed Eisenhower Professor of Tourism Policy Chair at the George Washington University School of Business. Don has consulted all over the world including North American, Caribbean, Latin American, European, African, Middle East, and Asia/Pacific Regions. His doctoral degree was in Park Management, awarded by New York University in 1967. He is credited with over 110 publications, including books, journal articles, monographs, project reports and educational materials.

Dr. Twining-Ward, STI's Assistant Vice President of Destination Stewardship, is a sustainable tourism planning and development specialist. She has 18 years of international consulting experience, including the design and management of sustainable tourism initiatives in the South Pacific, Caribbean, and Sub Saharan Africa. She is currently a sustainable tourism advisor for the Seychelles Sustainable Tourism Label and tourism consultant for the World Bank Africa Region. Dr. Twining-Ward is a certified member of the ACP Consultants' Network, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Surrey, UK, and editorial board member of the Journal of Sustainable Tourism. She is the author of UNWTO and UN Women's Global Report on Women in Tourism 2010 and has published widely in peer-reviewed academic journals.

Megan Epler Wood founded The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) in 1990, the oldest and largest non-profit organization in the world dedicated to making ecotourism a tool for sustainable tourism development worldwide. She was its President & CEO from 1991-2002. Since 2003, Megan’s firm EplerWood International has devoted itself to aiding some of the poorest countries in the world with sustainable tourism development, including the nations of Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, and Honduras.

Her published works includes; Ecotourism: Principles, Practices and Policies for Sustainability for UNEP in 2002. She has lectured at Columbia Business School, Harvard University, Wellesley, Duke University, University of Vermont, and The George Washington University. She was named a Senior Fellow at the Institute at the Golden Gate in 2010 where she is developing next generation thinking on the development of tourism as a sustainable economic development tool in collaboration with leading universities, NGOs, and business professionals.

Megan became the Executive Director of the Planeterra Foundation in late 2010, where she is leading a global effort to scale up the community and environmental benefits from sustainable tourism development worldwide in close collaboration with its corporate sponsor, Gap Adventures.

Costas Christ is an internationally renowned expert on sustainable tourism. Costas served as a founding member and former Chairman of the Board of The International Ecotourism Society and is an Executive Board member of Sustainable Travel International. His work has taken him to more than 100 countries across six continents to support tourism as opportunity for protecting the environment and sustaining the social and economic well being of local communities. Costas has in depth understanding of institutional issues related to tourism development and small islands. He has been involved in a number of Sustainable Tourism Masterplans.

Judy Karwack is the Founder and Owner of Small Planet Consulting, a sustainable tourism consultancy launched in 2002. Prior to founding Small Planet, she held senior consulting positions with Deloitte, ARA Consulting and KPMG Consulting/Bearing Point. Judy also is the owner of Jubilee Travel, a retail travel agency founded in 1986, and has over 30 years of tourism industry experience. She is recognized for her special expertise in emerging destinations, indigenous tourism and experiential tourism development.

Judy is passionate about authentic, experiential, sustainable travel. Her key interest is tourism that provides destinations, communities and companies with long-term economic and social benefits while protecting their natural and cultural heritage. Judy has worked around the globe on sustainable tourism projects, many of them in the world's most disadvantaged countries. International assignments in recent years have taken Judy to Palestine, Guyana, Jamaica, Brazil, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Barbados, Guatemala, Thailand, Fiji and Japan. She also participated in several multi-year projects that spanned most countries in the Caribbean region.

Judy combines her education, business and professional experience to support clients to prepare policies and action plans for sustainable tourism growth, and to secure resources to implement them. She leverages her strong industry network, international product knowledge and niche marketing expertise to create strategic partnership initiatives that enhance local tourism value chains. Judy has a reputation for achieving outstanding ROI results when assisting destinations and organizations to create, package and market authentic, unique tourism experiences targeting the international consumer.

Judy has delivered sustainable tourism presentations and workshops around the globe, including the UN's International Year of Ecotourism Summit, ATTA's Adventure Travel World Summits, The International Ecotourism Society's events, Caribbean and Canadian Sustainable Tourism Conferences, and International Institute for Peace through Tourism Summits.

Mariah C. Morales' interest tourism and destination management began over two decades ago. She spent more than 10 years as guide and operations manager for one of Alaska's premier tour companies in one of the world's busiest cruise destinations: Skagway, Alaska. It was in Skagway that she began to study the challenges surrounding responsible cruise port development.

Morales' background in cruise destinations includes Alaska's Inside Passage, Port Zante on the Island of St. Kitts and most recently participation in an EplerWood International team on the development of a two-year action plan for cruise and stay-over tourism planning in Belize. In 2010, Morales served as Teaching Assistant specializing in cruise-related destination management for Epler Wood's course: Environmental Management and Tourism at the Harvard University Extension School. In 2007, she earned an MA in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University culminating in her master's paper, "Resource Sustainability in the Transition from Agriculture to Tourism: A Case Study of St. Kitts."

Morales is committed to the pursuit of practical strategies for improving natural and human resource management, increasing livelihoods, and building community/stakeholder partnerships for tourism planning. Her experiences include strategic planning, training/capacity building, and project management and evaluation with the U.S. Smithsonian Institution, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, state and regional parks and planning commissions, the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis, and the Belize Tourism Board.

Eric Ricaurte is a sustainable tourism specialist with a combination of experience in both sustainable tourism product development and sustainability measurement. He has helped several global hospitality companies measure and report on sustainability, in addition to his 10 of experience in operations and consulting in diverse nature and cultural tourism projects throughout Latin America. Eric is a frequent speaker, organizer, and writer in the topic of sustainability measurement within the hotel industry. His work includes the first hotel property GRI sustainability report in and the first hotel report following the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research.