Emilio Vilanova
Senior Program Officer, Improved Forest Management (IFM)
As Senior Program Officer, Improved Forest Management (IFM), Emilio supports the development of new IFM methodologies, updates existing IFM methodologies, and engages stakeholders to align methodology advancement with emerging technologies.
Born and raised in Venezuela, with a background in forestry, his 20+ years of professional experience includes educational activities at both undergraduate and graduate levels, scientific research in forest ecology and management, and outreach for forest conservation. Before joining VERRA, he worked as an assistant professor in Forest Management in Venezuela, a forest-consultant for the FAO-Forestry program, and as postdoctoral scientist at UC Berkeley. More recently, he worked as a forest carbon analyst at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), where he focused on overseeing carbon-based projects aimed at the conservation of high integrity tropical forests. This task required providing scientific and technical advice to multiple partners and field programs, using sound and high-quality data and innovative global-scale analyses that helped guide program/portfolio design, inform/support global policy advocacy positions, and/or advance scientific understanding of the underlying processes related to forest carbon.
Emilio is a field-based scientist by nature. Throughout his career he led numerous forest inventories across various conditions in the tropics and temperate zones, allowing him to develop a deep understanding of forest systems, their ecology, and management. As a lifelong career goal, Emilio is extremely interested in the knowledge–practice gap to improve the decision-making process and develop solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental problems. As a result of his work, he has authored or coauthored many scientific publications mainly in the topics of forest ecology and management.
Emilio holds a forestry engineering degree and a Master of Science degree in Forest Management both from Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela, and a PhD in Environmental and Forest Sciences from University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He lives in Bedford, Massachusetts with his wife, and his two children.