The Authors

Benjamin Cashore is Associate Professor, Environmental Policy and Governance, specializing in Sustainable Forest Policy, at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is Director of the Yale Program on Forest Certification and is courtesy jointed appointed with Yale's Department of Political Science. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto, BA and MA degrees in political science from Carleton University, and a certificate from Université d'Aix-Marseille III in French Studies. He was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University during the 1996-1997 academic year. He has held positions as Assistant Professor, School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, Auburn University (1998-2001); postdoctoral fellow, Forest Economics and Policy Analysis Research Unit, University of British Columbia (1997-1998), and policy advisor to the leader of the Canadian New Democratic Party (1990-1993). He is co-editor of Forest Policy for Private Forestry (with Teeter and Zhang), CAB International; and coauthor of In Search of Sustainability: The Politics of Forest Policy in British Columbia in the 1990s (with George Hoberg, Michael Howlett, Jeremy Raynor and Jeremy Wilson) from the University of British Columbia Press.

Cashore is also author or co-author of several articles that have appeared or are forthcoming in Policy Sciences, Governance, the Canadian Journal of Political Science, Canadian Public Administration, Canadian-American Public Policy, Forest Policy and Economics, and the Forestry Chronicle, as well as chapters in several edited books published by Oxford University Press, the University of British Columbia Press, the University of Toronto Press, CAB International, Ashgate, and Macmillan UK. Cashore was awarded (with Steven Bernstein) the 2001 John McMenemy prize for the best article to appear in the Canadian Journal of Political Science in the year 2000 for their article, "Globalization, Four Paths of Internationalization and Domestic Policy Change: The Case of Eco-forestry Policy Change in British Columbia, Canada."

Graeme Auld is a doctoral student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he is undertaking research on the factors influencing the effectiveness of voluntary, private regulatory programs in various industrial sectors. This includes a current collaborative project that examines the forest certification policy choices made by US industrial forest companies.

Mr. Auld earned his Bachelors of Science in Forestry from the University of British Columbia (1994-99) and holds a Master of Science from Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences (1999- 2001). His work experience includes internships with the Norske Institutt for Skogforskning in Norway (1997) and the British Forestry Commission’s Northern Research Station in Scotland (1998). Before beginning his doctoral studies he spent one year as a research assistant at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Forest Resources Management (2001-2002) and another year holding a similar position at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (2002-2003). Since beginning graduate studies at Auburn, Mr. Auld's research work has examined the political aspects of forest certification and has lead to serveral collaboratively authored presentations, papers, and reports on the topic.

Deanna Newsom works in the Rainforest Alliance TREES (Training, Research, Education, Extension and Systems) Program, conducting research to improve certification systems and to better understand the effects of certification. Ms. Newsom holds an M.S. in Forestry (2001) from Auburn University. While there, she received a Top Ten Graduate Student award and earned a German Academic Exchange Service scholarship to study at the Institute of Forest and Environmental Sciences at Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany. Before beginning graduate work, Ms. Newsom spent four years as a wildlife biologist in the coastal temperate rainforests of British Columbia, Canada. She holds a B.S. in Biology (1995) from the University of Victoria. She lives with her husband and son in Old Town, Maine.

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