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

Luis Felipe grew up in the country side of Brazil, in the city of Campinas. He received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Catholic University of Campinas. His passion for hospitality and tourism started during his internship at the Millennium Hotels in New York, as a marketing management assistant. To continue pursuing his passion for tourism, Luis moved to Europe to attend to the post-graduate program in hospitality management and tourism at the Swiss Hotel Management School (Montreux / Switzerland). Upon graduating, Luis returned to the US for a hotel management program in Vermont, where his interest in tourism deepened with a new appreciation for sustainable tourism, ecotourism development and community based tourism. After 3 years in Stowe VT, he returned to his home country to create a hospitality and tourism consulting company to develop sustainable tourism. He now also holds a MBA in Economy of Tourism from the State University of São Paulo. Luis’ love for ecotourism has allowed many trips around the world and also in the northern region of Brazil, where he has developed a sustainable tourism project in the Amazon. Luis’ dream is to help Brazil along the path to sustainable tourism development.

Susan Guyette, Ph.D. (Métis – Micmac and Acadian French) has 25 years of direct experience working with indigenous and rural communities in cultural tourism, as well as cultural centers and museums. She is an award-winning author – prior books include Sustainable Cultural Tourism: Small-Scale Solutions; Planning for Balanced Development: A Guide for Rural and Native American Communities, the co-author of Zen Birding: Connect in Nature, and the author of several texts for American Indian Studies. She is the owner of Santa Fe Planning & Research in New Mexico (USA) and the Executive Director of the organization Cultural Resilience.

Eric Lombardi is the Executive Director of Eco-Cycle, Inc., and CEO of his global consulting firm
Zero Waste Strategies International. Lombardi is a specialist in resource conservation, social
enterprise development and public-private project development. Eco-Cycle is a national pioneer
in the recycling industry and has grown under Lombardi’s tenure to become the largest community-
based Zero Waste organization in the U.S.A. with a staff of 80 and processing of over 55,000 tons
of diverse recycled materials per year (2011). Lombardi is often a keynote speaker and consultant
on the social and technical aspects of creating a “Zero Waste – Or Darn Near” society.

Lombardi works nationally and internationally as a project consultant, keynote speaker and
workshop leader for government and private sector clients across the USA, New Zealand, England,
France, Scotland, Romania, Australia, Tobago, American Samoa, Wales and Saipan. His work has
covered such diverse topics as the Waste/Climate Connection, the creation of recycling facilities, the
collection and marketing of “hard to recycle” (HTR) materials such as electronic scrap, the benefits
of a social enterprise approach, the politics of growing community recycling programs, and the
strategies for long-term recycling business survival. He is currently serving as a Special Advisor to
SUEZ Environnment (Paris), the largest integrated water/waste company in the world, Sustainable
Travel International, he is a Steering Committee Member for Zero Waste International Alliance,
and is a member of the ICLEI Community Climate Protocol Waste Advisory Committee, and is the
Environmental Representative on the ANSI SCS-202 Standards Committee on Climate Metrics.

Lombardi has both facility and program design experience, including the creation of the first
curbside recycling program and design/construction of the first MRF (materials recovery facility) in
North Carolina (1986). He has designed and built numerous community recycling centers in Boulder
County, Colorado, worked as a facility and program consultant for the Wal Mart “Green Store” in
Kansas, designed, built and operated the first “Center for Hard-To-Recycle Materials” (CHaRM) in
the USA (Boulder), was lead consultant for the creation of a for-profit paper recycling program in
Romania, and led the design effort of the new MRF in Boulder County that was declared “the nicest
MRF I’ve ever seen in the world” by George Weyerhaeuser, the V.P. of paper recycling for the global
100 corporation of the same name.

Lombardi was invited to the Clinton White House in 1998 as one of the Top 100 USA
Recyclers to advise on national recycling issues. He co-founded and served as the President of the
national GrassRoots Recycling Network (www.GRRN.org), and is a co-founder of the global Zero
Waste International Alliance, based in Wales (www.ZWIA.org). He served from 1997-2004 on the
National Recycling Coalition’s (NRC) Policy Work Group, and was an executive Board member of
the NRC from 1991-1995. In 1992, he co-founded the National Nonprofit Recyclers Council. Since
getting an advanced degree from Washington University (St. Louis) in Engineering and Public Policy,
Lombardi has been working at the interface of where society/technology/business come together to
bring beneficial change to all the stakeholders.

Dr. Ed Sanders has a broad background in sustainable development planning, environmental finance, ecotourism project development, and international public policy issues. He co-founded Eco Tourism International, an ecotourism consulting firm specializing in market assessments, feasibility studies and project planning. He is a former Vice-Chairman of the Board of The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) and currently serves on a part-time basis as Director of Special Projects at the Center for Sustainable Tourism in the Business School at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He co-authored The Business of Ecolodges: The Economics and Financing of Ecolodges (TIES, 2001) and authored a comprehensive study of the U.S. outbound ecotourism market for the World Tourism Organization, The U.S. Ecotourism Market (WTO, 2002). He is a partner in a 13,000-acre ecotourism and conservation project in southern Belize. Dr. Sanders had previously co-founded an international environmental consulting firm (Sanders International, Inc.) and an international business consulting firm (IPAC, Inc.). Prior to that he served as Staff Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee following a career as a civil servant in the President’s Office of Management and Budget where he rose through the ranks from Budget Examiner to Associate Director. Ed has a BA in economics from Pomona College, a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University, and attended the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.