Team Member Group: Board of Directors

Rebekah grew up in Alabama and earned a BA in Anthropology from Auburn University and a JD from Tulane Law School with a certificate in Environmental Law. She first fell in love with the mountains of western North Carolina at a summer camp in the Asheville area. As a law student she interned with the Southeast’s leading non-profit environmental law firm and represented community organizations as part of Tulane’s Environmental Law Clinic. After briefly practicing law in Raleigh, Rebekah returned to the non-profit world when she joined Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy (now Conserving Carolina) in 2009 with AmeriCorps Project Conserve. She now fulfills roles of grant administration and land protection, particularly projects with public recreation access. Rebekah enjoys exploring the mountains and rivers of North Carolina and beyond, kickball, reading, and cooking.

Alex is President and CEO at Eastwood Forests, a company dedicated to forestland investments that generate competitive financial returns and positive ecological impacts. Prior to that, Alex was the Chief Forester at The Forestland Group,  an Assistant Professor of Forest Management at Northern Arizona University’s School of Forestry and before that, he was the manager of the Yale Forests at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Alex has also served as an adjunct faculty member at Virginia Tech and serves on the USDA Forestry Research Advisory Council. As vice president, Alex brings a wealth of forestry knowledge and strong leadership skills to help guide EcoForesters’ future. In his spare time he takes pride in managing a modest wood pile and attempts to heat his home with wood as much as possible.

Rob founded EcoForesters in 2015 out of a desire to increase the large scale restoration of degraded Appalachian forests through the use of positive impact forestry. As co-founder and Executive Director of Forest Stewards at Western Carolina University from 2006 to 2014, Rob worked on thousands of acres and with hundreds of landowners, seeing the urgent need to restore ecological resilience to our forests first hand. In addition to the Appalachian region, he has also worked for forestry and conservation organizations in Ecuador, Colorado, and New England. When he doesn’t have his head in the trees professionally, Rob enjoys getting out in the woods with his three kids and playing music with friends. Rob’s love for forests goes back to a childhood with a lot of time spent escaping the urban confines of Atlanta and backpacking in the southern Appalachians, culminating in his 2001 thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.