[MPWG] PRESS RELEASE: Sustainable Herbs Program Announces Inaugural Members of Advisory Group

[De Angelis, Patricia]

(View this announcement as html at:
http://abc.herbalgram.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=43939.0&dlv_id=100505)

AUSTIN, Texas (October 21, 2019) — The Sustainable Herbs Program (SHP) and
the American Botanical Council (ABC) welcome 16 inaugural members to the
new Advisory Group. These highly regarded professionals bring many years of
experience working on a wide range of relevant disciplines, including
botanical raw material sourcing and sustainability, regenerative and
sustainable agriculture, botany, ethnobotany, ethnobiology, horticulture,
pharmacognosy, wild harvesting, and herbal medicine.

SHP Director Ann Armbrecht, PhD, said: “I am so grateful to have the
support and guidance of these individuals, all of whom are leaders in
creating conversations about sustainable practices for the botanical
industry. We are greatly honored to have them join us to help guide the
development of new programming and educational content…for the botanical
community. We very much look forward to working with them to help us
forward our educational and inspirational mission.”

Mark Blumenthal, founder and executive director of ABC, added: “We see SHP
as a collaborative effort, and these SHP Advisory Group members represent a
wide field of expertise and organizations in the botanical medicine and
conservation communities.”

A more complete description of each member’s biography is available in
the Advisory Group section of the SHP website. (
http://abc.herbalgram.org/site/R?i=bTh6yhYi9rVglKYlGIxSwA)

Josef Brinckmann
Brinckmann has worked with medicinal plants since 1979 and serves as the
Medicinal Plants and Botanical Supply Chain Research Fellow of Traditional
Medicinals, Inc. (Sebastopol, California), a manufacturer of herbal
medicinal products. He is also an ABC Advisory Board member and a
contributing editor of ABC’s peer-reviewed journal HerbalGram. Brinckmann
is a member of the Medicinal Plant Specialist Group of the International
Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN’s) Species Survival Commission and
serves as vice chair of the Board of Trustees of the FairWild Foundation, a
Switzerland-based nonprofit standards-setting organization for the
sustainable wild collection of medicinal and aromatic plants. He received
the 2013 American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) Herbal Insight Award,
the 2016 ABC Champion Award, and in 2016 was conferred an honorary degree
of Doctor of Humane Letters in Healing and Sustainability honoris causa
from the California Institute of Integral Studies and American College of
Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Bill Chioffi
Chioffi has more than 21 years of experience with the production of herbal
supplements, including vertically integrated manufacturing of botanical
liquid extracts and concentrates. He also has experience in international
and domestic regulatory and good agricultural and collection practices
(GACPs) auditing, social responsibility/sustainability management and
program development, agroforestry and supply chain development planning,
political advocacy, clinical research guidance, and education. He is the
director of Botanical Consulting International and has served on various
boards, including the AHPA Executive Committee as vice chair and the AHPA
Board of Directors for two terms. He is also a founding board member of the
Appalachian Beginning Forest Farmer Coalition and a current advisor to the
United Plant Savers, reflecting his commitment to conservation.

Bethany Davis
Davis is the director of advocacy and government affairs of
FoodState/MegaFood. She is the president of the Coalition for Supplement
Sustainability, a group of supplement and ingredient companies that united
to support a non-GMO (genetically modified organisms) and sustainable
supply chain. She serves on the Board of Trustees of ABC and AHPA. Davis is
deeply engaged with regenerative agricultural practices, sustainability,
and transparency as they relate to the supplement industry. She holds a MS
in Regulatory Affairs and Health Policy from Massachusetts College of
Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston and is a certified coach with the
Conscious Leadership Group.

Trish Flaster
Flaster, an ethnobotanist and botanical ingredients sourcing and
sustainability expert, serves as executive director of Botanical Liaisons,
LLC, an ethnobotanical consulting firm that focuses on new products based
on traditional knowledge and development of authenticated botanical
reference specimens. Flaster also conducts field studies on sustainable
supplies. For more than 30 years, she has been the editor of “Plants and
People,” the newsletter of the Society for Economic Botany. With extensive
herb industry experience, including formerly working in the research
department of Celestial Seasonings, Flaster is the cofounder of IDDI,
IngredientID.com. She holds a master's degree in ethnobotany from the
University of Colorado at Boulder and serves on the ABC Advisory Board.

Edward Fletcher
Fletcher has worked in the horticultural industry for more than 35 years,
starting with propagating and growing native American wildflowers for his
family’s ornamental nursery business in North Carolina. He has extensive
experience working with farmers, growers, and herb producers around the
world and offers consulting services via his company Native Botanicals,
Inc. Fletcher has been the chairperson and is a current member of the AHPA
Board of Trustees and chair of the AHPA Botanical Raw Materials Committee.
He has worked with the United States Agency for International Development
as a medicinal plant expert on the Island of Dominica to develop a line of
medicinal teas based on the traditional knowledge of the Kalinago people.
Fletcher continues to work to improve the quality of botanical raw
materials, focusing on cultivation and post-harvest handling techniques.

David Hircock
Hircock is the executive director of corporate affairs of Estée Lauder
Companies, having initially started with its subsidiary, Aveda. He has
worked extensively around the globe on issues related to human rights and
biodiversity conservation. He also has worked with indigenous peoples,
particularly related to the supply chains of raw materials and services for
essential oils. A passionate advocate for human rights, Hircock has worked
since 2005 with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s teams
committed to the eradication of child labor and slavery in India.

Holly Johnson, PhD
Johnson is the chief science officer of AHPA. She previously served as
laboratory director of Alkemist Labs, an accredited natural product testing
laboratory that specializes in botanicals. Johnson has a PhD in
pharmacognosy and was awarded a US National Institutes of Health (NIH)
fellowship for training at the University of Illinois at Chicago/NIH Center
for Botanical Dietary Supplements Research. She did extensive ethnobotany
fieldwork and botanical collecting and completed a postdoctoral research
fellowship at the Institute for Ethnomedicine in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Johnson is active in sustainability initiatives at AHPA and in
standards-setting activities with AOAC International and the United States
Pharmacopeia (USP) for foods and dietary supplements. She is a member of
USP’s Medical Cannabis Expert Panel, the Editorial Board of the Journal of
AOAC International, and the Advisory Boards of ABC and the American Herbal
Pharmacopoeia (AHP). Johnson has more than 20 years of experience in the
lab and in the field with natural products and botanicals and has spent
many years conducting research and teaching at the University of Hawaii.

Sarah Laird
A forester and ethnobiologist by training, Laird has diverse interests,
including forest-based traditional knowledge, livelihoods, conservation,
governance, and the commercial use of biodiversity. Since the mid-1990s,
Laird has collaborated with local communities around Mt. Cameroon in
southwestern Cameroon on ethnobiological research and knowledge exchange
programs to support and conserve threatened traditional management
practices and cultural forests. Laird also works on the international trade
of medicinal plants and other non-timber forest products, including their
governance, certification, markets, and sustainability, and, since 1990, on
the ethical and conservation implications of the commercial use of
biological and genetic resources, including through the Convention on
Biological Diversity. Laird is the co-director of People and Plants
International, a bioeconomy research associate at the University of Cape
Town, South Africa, and the co-director of the Voices for BioJustice
program.

Danna J. Leaman, PhD
Leaman, a conservation biologist/ethnobotanist, is an independent
consultant and is affiliated with the Canadian Museum of Nature as a
research associate. Leaman received her PhD in biology from the University
of Ottawa, Canada, in 1996 based on ethnobotanical research in East
Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. A member of the IUCN’s Species Survival
Commission, she is co-chair of the Medicinal Plant Specialist Group and the
Red List authority for medicinal plants. She is a founding member of the
Board of Trustees of the FairWild Foundation. Among her many affiliations,
Leaman is a member of the ABC Advisory Board.

Susan Leopold, PhD
Leopold is an ethnobotanist and passionate defender of biodiversity. She is
the executive director of United Plant Savers. She currently serves on the
boards of directors of Botanical Dimensions and the Center for Sustainable
Economy and is a board member of the AHPA Foundation for Education and
Research on Botanicals (ERB Foundation), an Advisory Board member of ABC,
and a member of the IUCN’s medicinal plant specialist group. She is a proud
member of the Patawomeck Native American tribe of Virginia and the author
of the children’s book Isabella’s Peppermint Flowers, which teaches about
Virginia’s botanical history. She lives on and manages a productive farm,
the Indian Pipe Botanical Sanctuary, with her three children in Virginia,
where she raises goats, peacocks, and herbs. She is an avid recreational
tree climber, in love with the canopy just as much as the herbs of the
forest floor.

Sebastian Pole
Pole encountered the world of traditional herbal medicine in 1991, when he
met an Ayurvedic doctor in India. Pole and Tim Westwell started Pukka Herbs
in 2001 to connect people with herbs and do as much good as possible. Pukka
Herbs is now one of the most successful organic herbal tea companies in the
world. As well as formulating all of Pukka Herbs’ organic herbal teas and
supplements, Pole has run his own herbal practice since 1998. He is a
registered member of the Ayurvedic Practitioners Association, the Register
of Chinese Herbal Medicine, and the Unified Register of Herbal
Practitioners. Fluent in Hindi, a registered yoga therapist, an obsessive
gardener, and passionate about running a business that benefits everyone it
connects with, Pole wants to bring the power of plants into peoples’ lives.
He is also an advisor to the FairWild Foundation and AHP.

Anant Darshan Shankar
Shankar is the managing trustee of the Foundation for Revitalization of
Local Health Traditions (FRLHT) and vice chancellor of the University of
Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology (TDU) in Bengaluru,
India. Since 1991, FRLHT has overseen the creation of the largest in situ
conservation program consisting of 110 medicinal plant conservation areas
(MPCAs) for conserving wild gene pools of threatened medicinal botanicals
of India in the country. TDU also leads translational research in the field
of Ayurveda-biology, a new transdisciplinary domain that combines systemic
perspectives of Ayurveda with the molecular approaches of biology.
Shankar’s work has received several national and international awards,
including the Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application from
the Rockefeller Foundation (1998), Columbia University’s Center for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s International Award (2003) for
revitalization of traditional systems of health care in India, and the
Padma Shri by the Government of India (2011).

Erin Smith
Smith is a clinical herbalist and ethnobotanist who has been working with
medicinal plants for more than 30 years. She has worked internationally
with indigenous communities on traditional medicine, natural resource
management, community-based conservation, and traditional knowledge
preservation, including with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations and as the former managing director of Global Diversity
Foundation – North America. She has taught internationally on herbal
medicine, ethnobotany, and the human/nature relationship for more than 15
years. Passionate about botanical sourcing, social impact, and
sustainability issues in the natural product industry, Smith is co-chair of
AHPA’s Sustainability Subcommittee and currently oversees education and
sustainability at WishGarden Herbs in Colorado.

Anastasiya Timoshyna
Timoshyna is TRAFFIC’s senior program coordinator for sustainable trade.
She is based in Cambridge, UK, and has more than 10 years of experience
working on issues of wildlife trade, with a focus on implementing best
practices in sustainability of harvesting and trade in wild-collected
plants in the source and consumer countries. This involves engagement with
companies from around the world and relevant policy work, including in the
contexts of implementing Conventional in Trade in Endangered Flora and
Fauna (CITES) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Timoshyna has
experience with standards and certification schemes, in particular the
application of the FairWild Standard for harvesting/trade in wild-collected
plants. She is a co-chair of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission,
Medicinal Plant Specialist Group, and a member of the Sustainable Use and
Livelihoods Specialist Group.

Anne Wedel-Klein
Wedel-Klein grew up with a passion for botanicals as a fourth-generation
member of the Martin Bauer family. Founded in 1930, the Martin Bauer Group
sources more than 200 cultivated and wild-collected botanicals from more
than 80 countries, supplying ingredients to provide solutions for the food,
beverage, and dietary supplement industries. More than a decade ago, the
Martin Bauer Group developed its own sustainable sourcing standard and has
implemented it with like-minded customers and partners. Many of the
company’s projects are designed to help improve the living standards of
local peoples and maintain biodiversity. Wedel-Klein holds an MBA and is
heading the sustainability strategy of the Martin Bauer Group.

Steven Yeager
Yeager is trained as a field botanist and wild harvester. He is the
director of quality at Mountain Rose Herbs where he oversees laboratory
operations, including the company’s identity program as well as assuring
good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and Food Safety Modernization Act
compliance. He serves on multiple organizations’ boards of directors,
including AHPA, AHPA’s ERB Foundation, United Plant Savers, and the Native
Plant Society of Oregon. Yeager is co-owner of the Columbines School of
Botanical Studies in Eugene, Oregon, and has been an instructor with the
school since 1997.
About the Sustainable Herbs Program

SHP was initiated with the invaluable support of 18 inaugural
underwriters that represent leading stakeholders in the herbal supplement
and natural products industries. These underwriters include botanical
ingredient suppliers, branded product manufacturers, and a leading dietary
supplement trade association. ABC and SHP are grateful to these
underwriters for their generous and timely support:Ingredient suppliers:
Applied Food Sciences, Euromed, Indena, RFI, Valensa, and Verdure
SciencesHerbal product manufacturers: dōTERRA, EuroPharma/Terry Naturally,
FoodState/MegaFood, Gaia Herbs, HumanN, Integria/MediHerb, Nature’s Way,
New Chapter, NOW Foods, Standard Process, and ThorneIndustry trade
association: United Natural Products Alliance

More information about the Sustainable Herbs Program can be found at
www.sustainableherbsprogram.com.
About the American Botanical Council:
http://abc.herbalgram.org/site/R?i=tBtuDoYVNEGZDd0LaMl32g.
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