Resources > Experts Bureau

The Travelers’ Philanthropy Experts Bureau is composed of tourism industry experts and professionals all with extensive experience in responsible travel, as well as particular expertise on one or more of the following areas: philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, marketing, donor solicitation and cultivation, internet-based giving, monitoring and evaluation, community development, micro-enterprises, social empowerment, and environmental conservation. CESD has created the Experts Bureau as a resource (along with the Travelers' Philanthropy film and a forthcoming handbook of best practices) to help expand and professionalize initiatives by tourism companies to provide funds, material resources, and expertise to community and conservation projects. Experts Bureau consultants are available to work with travel companies and other clients (community organizations, NGOs, aid agencies) in developing new travelers’ philanthropy programs, or evaluating and enhancing existing programs. They are also available to carry out field projects, research, give talks or offer seminars on travelers philanthropy and responsible tourism. For a listing of consultants and their specialties, please see below. Project inquiries or general inquiries to Experts Bureau members may be sent via CESD's Travelers’ Philanthropy program, by contacting its Coordinator Laura Driscoll. Also contact Laura if you are interested in joining the Experts Bureau, or would like to suggest others who might be included.

Laura Driscoll
CESD Coordinator, West Coast Office
E: ldriscoll@ecotourismcesd.org
T: (650) 723-0894

Experts Bureau Consultants

• Peter John Massyn, CEO, African Safari Lodge Foundation, Tourism & Concessions Specialist
• Karen Lewis, Founder-owner, Lapa Rios Ecolodge, Costa Rica
• Fred Nelson, Executive Director, Maliasili Initiatives
  
• Mary Jo K. Viederman, Communications Specialist, Corporate Social Responsibility Consultant
• Sam H. Ham, Professor of Communication Psychology, University of Idaho
• Martha Honey, Director, Washington, DC, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development (CESD)
• William Durham, Bing Professor in Human Biology and Anthropological Sciences at Stanford University, and Director, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development, Stanford University
• David Krantz, DC Coordinator, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development
• Laura Driscoll, West Coast Coordinator, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development

Peter John Massyn
CEO, African Safari Lodge Foundation, and Tourism & Concessions Specialist

Peter John Massyn is currently the CEO of the ASL Foundation and a private consultant to, amongst others, the World Bank and International Finance Corporation. He has extensive experience in tourism as a form of rural development, including the structuring and funding of community ownership using philanthropic sources. He has taught at various universities and has been active in the private sector as a tourism entrepreneur and consultant. Mr. Massyn maintains expertise in the fields of tourism, conservation, rural development and land reform. He has worked for more than a decade in numerous African countries and is fluent in several languages (English, French, Dutch and Afrikaans, and can also converse in German and Portuguese).

Karen Lewis
Founder-owner, Lapa Rios Ecolodge, Costa Rica

Karen Lewis has been the co-founder and owner of the Lapa Rios Ecolodge since 1991. The ecolodge is located in a private nature reserve spread over 1,000 acres of Central America's last remaining lowland tropical rainforest. As an exemplary model for community-based ecotourism, Lapa Rios has won worldwide awards for social and environmental excellence and is a featured sustainable tourism pioneer in many international publications and research projects. Ms. Lewis employs only community members at the ecolodge, and manages operations according to Costa Rica’s highest sustainable tourism certification (CST) standards. In 1992-1993, she helped construct the Carbonera School which provides philanthropic opportunities for the guests of Lapa Rios. As a collective effort, the ecolodge owners and guests help maintain and supply Carbonera and other rural schools throughout the Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica.

Fred Nelson
Executive Director, Maliasili Initiatives

Fred Nelson has worked on ecotourism, conservation policy, and community-based natural resource management in eastern Africa since 1998. From 2000-2005 he served as the first Tanzania programme director for the Sand County Foundation Community Based Conservation Network. During this period, he worked with a number of pastoralist communities in northern Tanzania and helped to establish the Tanzania Natural Resource Forum. Mr. Nelson has worked with numerous communities across northern Tanzania to develop community-based tourism enterprises and establish community conservation practices. He is a member of the IUCN Southern Africa Sustainable Use Specialist Group and IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic, and Social Policy.

Mary Jo K. Viederman
Communications Specialist and Consultant on Corporate Social Responsibility

Mary Jo Viederman is an independent communications executive with more than 15 years work experience on issues of social and environmental change for nonprofits, academic institutions and consumer brands. As the former VP of Communications and CSR for Lindblad Expeditions, Ms. Viederman was vital to the company’s partnership with the National Geographic Society, as well as their successful travel philanthropy programs.

Within the tourism industry, her expertise comprises development, creation and execution of marketing/branding/communications platforms. The outcome of her work is brand creation and an increase in consumer loyalty around social and environmental issues. Her additional strengths include; developing successful strategic partnerships between companies and non-profits, designing cutting edge programs and philanthropic platforms, and securing national media coverage and building the programs into brand identity. Ms. Viederman’s range of expertise includes cross-cultural awareness, diversity, climate change, eco-tourism, responsible travel and traveler’s philanthropy.

Sam H. Ham
Professor of Communication Psychology
University of Idaho

Dr. Sam Ham is Director of the Center for International Training and Outreach and Professor of environmental communication and international conservation in the University of Idaho's Department of Conservation Social Sciences. He also serves as Deputy Director of the Tourism Research Unit at Monash University, Australia. Dr. Ham’s work has focused on applying communication theory to designing travelers’ philanthropy programs. His projects have included the successful Galapagos Conservation Fund campaign developed for Lindblad Expeditions, a fund which now generates more than US $400,000 for conservation and local community development. His redesign of the campaign increased donations by Lindblad guests some 277% in the first year of operation. He is also the author of Environmental Interpretation, the world’s leading text on applied interpretation, as well as 300 other publications. Dr. Ham’s training in applied communication has reached more than 39,000 people worldwide.

Martha Honey
Director, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development (CESD)
Washington, DC,

Martha Honey has written and lectured widely on ecotourism and certification issues. Her books include Ecotourism and Sustainable Development: Who Owns Paradise? (Island Press, 1999) and Ecotourism and Certification: Setting Standards in Practice (Island Press, 2002). She worked for 20 years as a journalist based in East Africa and Central America and holds a Ph.D. in African history. She was the Executive Director of TIES from 2003 to 2006.

William H. Durham
Bing Professor in Human Biology and Anthropological Sciences, and Director, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development
Stanford University

William Durham is CESD's Director at Stanford, is the Bing Professor in Human Biology in the Department of Anthropological Sciences, and the Yang and Yamazaki University Fellow. Co-editor of The Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America (Michigan, 1995), Bill has particular interest in ecotourism as a means to address conservation and development issues in Central America, the Amazon Rain Forest, and Galapagos.

David Krantz
DC Coordinator, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development
Washington, DC

David Krantz is CESD's Washington Coordinator and is facilitating a variety of the center's projects. David’s background includes work as an international trade paralegal, in hospitality management at a DC hotel, and over two years of experience in adventure and ecotourism in the developing world as he backpacked through South America, Eastern Europe, and Southern Africa. Prior to joining CESD, David coordinated environmental conservation initiatives in the tourism industry with Conservation International’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business. He holds aMasters of Tourism Administration from the George Washington University.

Laura Driscoll
West Coast Coordinator, Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development
Stanford University

Laura Driscoll is the project manager and primary contact for Travelers' Philanthropy, a program of the Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development (CESD), a US-based nonprofit organization. Laura is CESD's Coordinator at Stanford, CA, overseeing the Travelers' Philanthropy website and program, helping to secure funding, organizing conferences and events, and assisting with all aspects of CESD's work. She graduated from Stanford University in 2007 with both an M.A. and B.A. in Anthropological Sciences. Her master's research examined the cultural effects of ecotourism on indigenous identities in the rain forest region of southeastern Peru.