ISA Board of Directors

Pedro Mendes Castro has worked as an environmental manager for the utility industry for the past 28 years. For the last 16 years, he has served as technical coordinator of vegetation management for Cemig, one of the largest Brazilian utilities in the southeastern part of the country.

Pedro served as president of the ISA Brazilian Chapter (SBAU) for four years and since 2010, he has been one of two certification exam proctors for the chapter. He has also served on the ISA Test Committee and as the Brazil Chapter’s representative on the ISA Board of Directors from 2007 through 2009. As fruit of his labor, Portuguese-speaking countries can rely on an ISA Certified Arborist^® exam in that language and a recently-published Portuguese version of the Arborists’ Certification Study Guide.

Living in a country with so many trees and limited knowledge of arboriculture, Pedro firmly believes that only through a huge educational effort will it be possible to move forward and provide good tree service to the country’s population. With his will and persistence, Pedro is sure to help ISA make the world better through sound arboricultural practices.

Paul Johnson is the urban and community forestry program leader for the Texas A&M Forest Service. Paul is an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) Board Certified Master Arborist®, an ISA Certified Arborist Municipal Specialist®, and is Tree Risk Assessment Qualified. He is past chair of the Southern Group of State Foresters’ Urban and Community Forestry Committee and is a member of the ISA Board of Directors.

Paul is a Municipal Forestry Institute alumni, graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in forestry, and has been a radio talk show host, newspaper columnist, extension horticulturist, university adjunct instructor, and plant health care specialist.

Paul believes that “Trees Are Key” to healthier and happier communities.

Anne Beard has worked in the arboriculture field for more than 30 years. She is a Certified Arborist Utility Specialist® and is TRAQ Qualified.  She has been actively involved in the tree industry through her position as System Forester at Public Service Company of New Mexico and Texas New Mexico Power Company, through the ISA, and in local communities. Anne has, by her efforts, attempted to inform her customers, the general public, and industry professionals about the importance of trees, their benefits to the environment, and their proper care. She has many varied experiences speaking at local, national, and international venues.

Anne has served ISA in many ways, including ISA Midwest Chapter Board, Rocky Mountain Chapter representative (UAA), ISA Certification Test Committee, and Utility Arborist Association president. She received the UAA President’s Award for her contributions to Utility Arboriculture. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Forestry-Administration and an MBA.  She currently serves on the ISA’s Finance Committee, Executive Committee, Governance Committee and she chairs the ISA Ownership Linkage Committee.

Jim Flott is an ISA Certified Arborist^®, an ISA Certified Municipal Specialist^®, an American Society of Consulting Arborists (ASCA) Registered Consulting Arborist, and an ISA Tree Risk Assessment Qualification instructor/assessor. He has more than forty years of work experience managing and supervising commercial and municipal arboriculture, urban forestry, and horticulture programs and projects.

Jim is a former board member of the ISA Pacific Northwest Chapter (PNW), serving as education director, president-elect, and president of the chapter. In recognition of service, Jim has received the PNW Municipal Arborist and Volunteer of the Year awards.

Jim is passionate about education and sharing information with green industry colleagues and the public. He is also the primary author of the education plan for the PNW Chapter. He served on the Washington Community Forestry Council for more than 10 years promoting and fostering municipal arboriculture and urban forestry statewide.

Jim has many years of experience serving on industry boards and conference committees including roles in leadership. He has attended ISA Leadership Workshops and understands that ISA is the governing trade association for our industry. As an ISA Board member, he brings experience to ISA in the areas of strategic planning to help set and review the organization’s mission and goals, plan for the organization’s future, assist in ISA programming and projects, and evaluate ISA’s progress. ISA is a member-driven organization, and Jim continues to foster that ideal while working to improve the trade association for all members. He looks forward to serving the membership.

Russ Carlson has worked in the field of arboriculture since 1977 as a commercial arborist and an independent consulting arborist. Throughout his career, Russ has taken a multidisciplinary approach to arboriculture with a broad knowledge of trees, the environment, and the associations of trees and people.

Since 1983, Russ has been an ISA Certified Arborist^® with the ISA Pennsylvania-Delaware Chapter, and with ISA when the program became international in 1993. In 2004, he earned the ISA Board Certified Master Arborist® credential. He has been a member and Registered Consulting Arborist of the American Society of Consulting Arborists since 1994. In 2010, he became a Certified Tree Risk Assessor and achieved the ISA Tree Risk Assessment Qualification when the program was initiated.

Russ has presented workshops, seminars, and lectures at various venues and served as an instructor at the American Society of Consulting Arborists (ASCA) Consulting Academy from 1997 through 2010, developing and teaching the Report Writing and the Forensic Investigations training modules.

He has been active in the arboriculture industry, serving on ISA, Penn-Del Chapter, and ASCA committees and boards, including strategic planning committees and the governance committee. Russ also represented ISA on the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers for eight years.

Russ has been an active volunteer at the Tri-State Bird Rescue Clinic for 13 years. He enjoys birding, hiking, photography, and travel.

Caitlyn Pollihan has served as the executive director of the Council of Western State Foresters (CWSF) and the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition (WFLC) since 2009. In this role, she facilitated the development of the organization’s strategic goals and agendas and worked with members and CWSF/WFLC staff to ensure the organization’s success. Prior to this role, Caitlyn was the CWSF/WFLC governmental affairs director where she was instrumental in the passage of key legislation and educating CWSF and WFLC members on legislative proposals and national policy with western implications. 

Caitlyn previously served as the staff vice president for government and environment affairs for the Home Builders Association of St. Louis and Eastern Missouri. In this role, she worked on state and local legislative initiatives, green building programs, and helped create and implement a ground‐breaking approach to building site safety inspections with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  

Caitlyn serves on several national coalitions and committees, such as the USDA Planning Rule Implementation Federal Advisory Committee and the American Society of Association Executives’ Public Policy Committee. She also participates in the USDA Forest Service State and Private Forestry Board.

Caitlyn holds a bachelor’s degree in contemporary media and journalism/public relations from the University of South Dakota and a master’s degree in organizational communication from the University of Missouri‐St. Louis. She has a Certificate in Nonprofit Organization Management from the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Institute for Organization Management and has earned the Certified Association Executive (CAE) credential, the highest professional credential in the association industry. 

Gordon Mann has over 40 years of experience managing trees where people live from the municipal, non-profit, and private tree care perspectives. He is a past president of the Western Chapter ISA, California Arborists Association, and the American Society of Consulting Arborists. He serves as a Certification Proctor, and is a Director on the California Urban Forests Council Board. He is a past Director of the Society of Municipal Arborists (SMA) and serves as their alternate ANSI A300 Committee representative. He is a past chair of the ISA International Tree Climbing competition and the Northern California Tree Climbing competition.

Gordon believes that the messages we share on the importance and value of trees, and the opportunities for tree care jobs, have to get outside of the ISA membership and raise the awareness of all people who own and impact trees. The publicly managed trees are usually less than half of a community’s tree canopy, and it is important for the tree owners to understand our industry standards in regards to managing their trees. As a member of the ISA Board, Gordon wants to remind our members that ISA’s efforts and messages are only as powerful as our individual efforts in our local areas.

Dana Karcher manages the Alliance for Community Trees program at the Arbor Day Foundation in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. She is an ISA Certified Arborist® with experience working with non-profits, municipalities, and utilities for more than 15 years. She is a member of both the Utility Arborist Association and the Society of Municipal Arborists.

Dana’s years of service to the industry include board president and board member of the Western Chapter ISA. Other leadership service includes board member and president of the California Urban Forests Council and member of the California Community Forestry Advisory Committee. She recently retired as chair of the ISA Nominating and Elections Committee. Additionally, Dana has been a member of ISA’s Governance and By-Laws Committee and chaired a number of Women in Arboriculture networking breakfasts at the ISA Annual International Conference.

Having worked extensively with the Governance and By-Laws Committee, Dana understands the model in which ISA is governed. Additionally, her experience in many facets of arboriculture practice brings a unique viewpoint to the ISA Board of Directors. She believes that the board should be dedicated to supporting the needs of the membership and endeavors to serve with that in mind.

Skip Kincaid is an ISA Board Certified Master Arborist^® (MW- 0155BM), an ISA Certified Arborist Municipal Specialist^®, an ISA Tree Risk Assessment Qualification instructor/assessor, and a Certified Forester with the Society of American Foresters (#1516). He has more than 35 years of work experience in the profession and currently serves as the director of urban forestry with Hansen's Tree Service in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was previously commissioner of forestry for the City of St. Louis, managing a staff of more than 200 and an annual budget exceeding $10 million, and before that was a senior consulting urban forester and ran a successful urban forestry consulting firm for 18 years.

Skip is a founding member of an urban forestry non-profit that recently provided its 100,000th tree to local communities. He served as a member of the National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council and also served as chair of the Missouri Community Forestry Council and the Missouri Chapter of the Society of American Foresters.

Skip has served the Midwest Chapter of ISA as program chair for several annual conferences. At the international level, he served ISA as chair of the Certification Test Committee and is currently the Credentialing Council chair. Skip also spent four years with the Tree Risk Assessment Qualification (TRAQ) Committee developing the new credential and now serves as mentor for new instructors. He has taught TRAQ more than 40 times in the US and Canada and has travelled to Taiwan and New Zealand to introduce the concept of certification and the new Tree Risk Assessment Qualification.

Skip is committed to spreading the word about the science of arboriculture within the ISA structure and is passionate about the ISA mission of utilizing research, technology, and education to promote proper tree care around the world.

As a third generation arborist, Tom Wolf has life-long experience in arboriculture and a lasting passion for the tree industry. He is a graduate of The University of Tennessee with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Tom previously served as president of Wolf Tree Experts before it became a division of the Davey Tree Expert Company, and he is currently vice president of national business development for Davey Utility.

Tom has been an ISA member for 33 years and an ISA Certified Arborist® since 1992. A native of Knoxville, Tennessee, he has served in a variety of leadership roles, including president of the Southern Chapter ISA, vice chair of the ISA Council of Representatives, judge for the ITCC, member of the ISA Membership Committee, trustee for the Tree Fund, and chair of the City of Knoxville Tree Board.

Nicolaas Verloop has worked in arboriculture for the last 30 years. After school, he worked for three years in England, France, and the United States, after which he started his own landscape gardening company. After selling his company, he served as the director for several leading green industry companies. During that time, Nicolaas and three associates founded GreenGuard, a company which develops and produces biological products especially for landscapers, tree care companies, and councils. Currently, Nicolaas is working as a partner of TFI, a specialized company that is creating optimal tree-growth opportunities for trees in the urban environment.

Nicolaas has a great interest in business strategies, marketing, and education for our profession. For the last eight years he has served on the KPB-ISA Dutch Chapter Board and has served the Dutch Employers’ Association for the last four years as a board member of the tree department. Both associations wish to stimulate the arboriculture profession and opportunities for good education.

Nicolaas has served ISA as a chapter executive and as a member of the Student Subcommittee and the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Committee. He was a member of the ISA Council of Representatives (CoR) for three years before being named the CoR Chair from 2014 to 2016.

Chris Walsh is the founder and managing director of Treetech Specialist Treecare Ltd in New Zealand, a multi-faceted greenspace management company employing over 100 staff members in Christchurch and Wellington. The client base of the company is wide-ranging from residential, council, and commercial sectors. Treetech has always been an industry leader and has embraced technological advances, which have provided the company with a competitive edge in the procurement of contracts. The company is committed to the highest quality of service and the conservation of trees. This approach is focused on adding value by using hands-on, experienced professionals to provide insight in developing projects within agreed budgets that are in tune with client objectives and the environment.

Chris holds a Certificate in Arboriculture (Merrist Wood, UK), National Certificate in Arboriculture, Trade Certificate in Horticulture and Amenity Turf Management, and a National Certificate in Horticulture. He holds an ISA Tree Risk Assessment Qualification gained in New Zealand in April 2014 and is a licenced Quantified Tree Risk Assessment (QTRA) practitioner. He has worked in the arboricultural and horticultural industries for 25 years.

Chris has served on the New Zealand Arboricultural Association Executive Committee, the ISA New Zealand Chapter since 2009, and was the 2014-15 president. In his role with ISA, he has attended two ISA Leadership Workshops at ISA Headquarters in Champaign, Illinois, USA.

Dr. Cecil Konijnendijk joined the Department of Forest Resources Management at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, as a professor of urban forestry in July 2016. Cecil is a Dutch national who moved to Canada from Sweden, where he headed the landscape department at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

He obtained his MSc in forestry from Wageningen University, Netherlands, and did his doctoral work at the University of Joensuu (now the University of Eastern Finland). Cecil has also previously held professorships at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Hong Kong.

His research and teaching focus on urban forestry, urban green space governance, green infrastructure planning, cultural ecosystem services, and relations between people, nature, and trees in an urban context. Projects have taken him across the globe with emphasis on Europe, Southeast Asia, and now North America. Cecil has published widely on these topics and authored several textbooks. He is editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening and book series editor for Springer’s Future City series. Cecil’s research is often closely connected to practice, building on his past experiences as an urban forestry consultant.

Cecil has been a long-standing member of ISA’s Science and Research Committee and a past president of the Arboricultural Research and Education Academy (AREA). When moving to Vancouver, he joined the Pacific Northwest (PNW) Chapter of ISA and is involved in organizing the 2018 PNW conference in Vancouver.

Scott Prophett is corporate safety director for the F.A. Bartlett Tree Expert Company. He has served in the field of arboriculture for more than 30 years, working in positions from new-hire ground worker to president and owner.

As a business person, Scott is experienced in strategic planning, budgeting, financial management, operations, and the oversight of all to create successful teams. As a volunteer, he has experience and understanding of ISA from both the chapter and the international levels. Scott has served on ISA chapter committees for more than 25 years and on ISA committees for more than 20 years. He has experience in marketing ISA membership, programs, mission, and products through training courses and committees in several countries and has volunteered his expertise for publications and videos produced and marketed by ISA. Scott’s main interest in serving on the ISA Board of Directors is to ensure ISA’s strategic planning, programs, and policies fit the current and future needs of both members and the organization.

Scott is the recipient of ISA’s Award of Achievement, the ISA True Professionals of Arboriculture recognition, ISA Southern Chapter Excellence in Arboriculture Award, TCIA’s Award for Operational Safety, and the Army Corp of Engineers’ Award of Excellence for Occupational Safety and Health.

Gail Nozal is a Board-Certified Master Arborist (MN-0276B) and has over 25 years of experience in the municipal, non-profit and commercial sectors of arboriculture. Currently she is a manager at S&S Tree and Horticultural Specialists, a Davey Company; focusing on the consulting and plant health care divisions. 

She is a member of both the Minnesota and Wisconsin Chapters of the ISA. Gail earned her master’s degree in Forestry at the University of Minnesota. Her years of service in Minnesota has included Chair of the Certification Committee in the Minnesota Chapter, ISA Certification Liaison Committee, as well as recently serving on the ISA Credentialing Council. In addition to her service in the Minnesota chapter, she has also been involved with the Minnesota Shade Tree Advisory Committee, which serves as the state urban forestry council in Minnesota. While involved with MnSTAC, she was involved in chairing several committees as well as currently serving as Board Member. 

Gail is passionate about teaching youth, volunteers and professionals about opportunities in arboriculture, the ISA Certified Arborist program and getting them involved in professional organizations to further their careers and/or volunteerism. She believes serving on the board is an opportunity to continue to expand and share her passion by encouraging more to join the field of arboriculture.

John Gathright is a permanent resident of Japan. He holds a Doctorate of Bio-Agriculture from Nagoya University and lectures at Chubu University. He has conducted extensive research into the physiological, psychological and societal benefits of purpose specific, tree-climbing and tree-assisted therapy programs. He is a pioneer and leader in this field. 

John founded Tree Climbing Japan in 1997. This was Japan’s first technical tree-climbing school. It has grown into a national organization with 4,000 certified tree climbers who have helped over 250,000 individuals of all ages and abilities, to climb trees in urban forests and green spaces.

Dr. Gathright created the Japan Arborist Association, an ISA affiliated organization and the Arborist Training Institute of Japan.

In 2000, John established Tree Hab, a non-profit organization that works with societies, government, doctors and child care facilities in order to enable mentally and physically handicapped children to also experience the joy of climbing a tree.

When not climbing trees, training tree-climbing instructors or enjoying the smiles of the children and families he helps, he can be seen sharing his expertise at events and conferences around the world.