The Team
Professor Rod Keenan
Project Director
Professor Rod Keenan has over 30 years’ experience in forest research leadership, education, management and policy in a number of Australian states and with the Federal Government. He has facilitated interactions between researchers, catchment management organisations and local managers in regional think tanks and workshops. He was leader of the Hardwood Plantations Initiative in Queensland, assessment of plantation land suitability in NSW, a review of the impacts of forest plantations on water yield and quality and analysis of the interaction between carbon sequestration and water yield. As Director of the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research, he coordinated the development of multi-disciplinary teams that collaborated with state and local governments to support improved decision making capacity on climate change impacts and adaptation options.
Dr Jodi York
Dr Jodi York is a sociologist with a diverse interdisciplinary research history and a passion for driving and informing social change with measurable impact. She has published qualitative and quantitative research in sociology, economics, accounting and management, and has worked in business, academic, government and civil society settings in the US and across Australasia. The focus of her PhD dissertation at University of California, Berkeley, was competing narratives of natural resource use between farmers, foresters, and conservationists.’ Her current focus is helping businesses, non-profits, investors and philanthropists to tackle entrenched social problems and deliver greater impact–how to fund it, how to create it, how to measure & report it, how to leverage networks to multiply it.
Dr Krzysztof (Chris) Dembek
Dr Krzysztof is a strategist with a diverse interdisciplinary education and experience. He has worked across different industries in both academic and business settings across Europe and Australasia. He is passionate about creating solutions to complex problems and about involving business in this process. His work focuses on findings the best ways to leverage the potential of investments to create positive social and environmental impact, and how this impact can best be measured and communicated. His expertise concentrates on designing and implementing sustainable business models that are able to create value for multiple stakeholders simultaneously.
Dr Dean Severino
Dr Dean Severino is a Research Fellow in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences. His PhD examined the effects of fertiliser addition on native forest soil water chemistry. He has over 20 years’ experience working in native and plantation forest research, development and management. He has worked in a range of fields including soil and plant nutrition, genetics, empirical growth modelling and biomass estimation and more generally plantation silviculture for productivity improvement. He has worked with a range of conventional and niche eucalypt species, and has also worked in carbon sequestration and native forest policy.
Dr Nerida Anderson
Dr Nerida Anderson is a social researcher with interests in the social and psychological aspects of human-environment interactions, in particular the human dimensions of natural resource management and forest management. Her research work has application for understanding social and psychological responses to rural landscape change. In her PhD she investigated factors influencing community perceptions and evaluations of plantation forestry in Tasmania, looking in particular at the way evaluations of plantation forestry were related to different perceptions of rural landscapes and the place meanings attributed to those landscapes. Herresearch also includes: integrating ecological modelling with social and environmental psychology to incorporate social values for forests within indicator frameworks for sustainable forest management; development and testing of a psychometric scale to measure social values for public land across different contexts; and research examining social and psychological factors associated with urban water use.
Braden Jenkin
Braden Jenkin brings over 30 years experience in domestic and international forestry: from the smallest scale producers through to large-scale global corporate operations. Projects and works have been undertaken in South Africa, Europe, the UK, India, PNG and New Zealand and have included significant consultation and interactions with markets, processors, trees growers and agriculturalist. This provides a foundation to allow the capture of data and information from a broad range of stakeholders and sources, combined with the ability to communicate at a wide range of culturally appropriate levels. To ensure the utility of any outputs, his experience allows the application of cultural, biological, policy and commercial frameworks to extrapolate such information into an Australian context (for testing of relevance and fit). Significant analytical works have been undertaken of supply chains and financial models providing a further foundation to support the understanding of the information collected. He hold a BSc (Forestry), a Grad. Dip of Managements and an MBA. He is a Gottstein Fellow and a Member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the Australian Forest Growers.
Dr Lyndall Bull, BSc, BForSc (Hons), PhD, MIFA, GAICD
Dr Lyndall Bull has extensive global experience in the forest sector, including in strategic management, innovation and product development, market analysis and research management. Lyndall has served on a range of Boards including the CRC for Forestry and as Chair of the South Australian Forest Industry Development Board. She currently serves on the Boards of Sustainable Timber Tasmania, Forestry Corporation of New South Wales and is the Chair of the Reference Panel for the Western Australian Timber Industry Development Plan. Lyndall is the founder and Principal of Lynea Advisory where she provides advice to a range of clients in the primary industry sector regarding new product development, innovation, research management and sustainability. Lyndall has a PhD (focusing on forest product development), a Bachelor of Forest Science (Hons) and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Melbourne.