Opening Plenary Session
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
8:30am–9:45am
Arlington Ballroom Salon IV
Panel Discussion: From Science to Society – Advancing Ecosystem Services for Decision Making
The benefits of systematically considering ecosystem services in decision making are well understood but finding paths to doing so has at times been challenging. This plenary features four speakers offering diverse, state-of-the-art perspectives on the role of ecosystem services in society and decision making – ranging from White House, international, and private-sector efforts to embed ecosystem services in decision making to improving indigenous engagement in natural capital accounting in Australia.
Dr. Tania Briceno
Chief Economist
Intrinsic Exchange Group
Dr. Tania Briceno has more than 15 years of experience as an ecological economist conducting environmental valuations, socioeconomic analyses, and ecosystem service assessments. She oversees IEG’s standards for ecosystem service valuations and ensures they are implemented properly for each IEG NAC. Prior to joining IEG, Tania worked in various organizations conducting ecosystem service valuations for government agencies, special interest groups, and the private sector. She served as Lead Economist at Conservation Strategy Fund and was part of the leadership team for Earth Economics. She also worked for the National Round Table on the Environment and Economy in Canada and at various universities in Europe and North America. Tania holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Economics from University of Montreal, a Masters in Ecological Economics from Leeds University, and a BA in Economics and International Development from McGill University. In 2022, she received the Herman Daly Award from the US Society of Ecological Economists in recognition of her work to employ ecological economics to create practical applications and implement solutions that are sustainable in scale, equitable in distribution, and efficient in allocation.
Stephenne Harding
Senior Director for Lands
White House Council on Environmental Quality
Stephenne is the Senior Director for Lands at the White House Council on Environmental Quality where she leads a team working on America the Beautiful, conservation, restoration, and protection of America’s iconic lands. The team works to imbue the importance of conservation and restoration in all the administration’s actions. Prior to returning to the White House Stephenne ran her own consulting practice, Great Northern Strategies, supporting non-profits at the nexus of policy and politics.
Prior to those roles, Stephenne served as National Geographic Society’s Senior Director for the Campaign for Nature, a Senior Policy Advisor for U.S. Senator Tom Udall (D-NM), an Associate Director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Deputy Director at the Department of the Interior and a Policy Adviser to Senator Jon Tester (D-MT). She holds a Master’s in Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and an undergraduate degree from Willamette University.
Before graduate school, Stephenne was vagabond who lived and traveled on every inhabited continent and worked as a raft guide, backpacking guide, and a ski instructor in the U.S. and Germany. When not at work, you can find her still traveling as much as possible and working to get outside to hike, bike, float, fish, and ski with her husband, Shaun and their dog, Marra.
Anna Normyle
Ph.D. Student
Australian National University, Fenner School of Environment & Society
Anna is a Westpac Future Leaders Scholar completing her doctoral studies at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University. Anna’s research interests include applied GIS and remote sensing, and ecosystem accounting, with a specific focus on cultural and environmental management applications in Indigenous Australia. Her doctoral project is working collaboratively with the Yawuru Traditional Owners of the land and sea Country of Australia’s Kimberley region to assess how Indigenous knowledge and land management practices can be incorporated within Australia’s National System for Environmental-Economic Accounting.
Dr. Klara Johanna Winkler
Deputy Science Director
NSERC - ResNet, Postdoctoral Researcher, Bright Spots at McGill University
Klara is a sustainability scientist interested in human-nature relationships and processes of sustainable transformation. She uses a governance perspective to research these phenomena on multiple levels of social-ecological systems – from local to supranational. With her research, Klara aims to better understand how actions of individuals fit into the broader network of societal activities and how they relate to and affect each other. Working landscapes in highly-developed countries are the focus of her research as they are the places where change is urgently needed in order to provide a stable ecological system that can contribute to human well-being today and in the future.
