Our team

Brian Boggs designs and builds handmade chairs that are comfortable and built to last a lifetime. He also thinks deeply about technology, tools and the human-scale machinery that can best accomplish his complementary goals of comfort, quality, functional aesthetics and efficiency. Brian has redesigned and manufactured numerous ancient tools—from the spokeshave to the shaving horse—and he is a widely acknowledged master of traditional woven bark seating. Brian was a founding board member of GreenWood and one of our original artisan instructors, leading training workshops in Honduras and Peru since 1993. Visit Brian’s Work

Curtis Buchanan has been making Windsor chairs for more than 30 years and examples of his work may be found at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, in Virginia. At home in the diverse Southern Appalachian forest, Curtis enjoys access to a variety of high-quality hardwood logs, which he splits by hand. Parts are shaped at the lathe and using a drawknife at the shaving horse. Employing these traditional greenwood techniques, which ensure straight wood fibers and uncompromising strength, Curtis has led many GreenWood workshops in Honduras and Peru since 1993. He also teaches chairmaking in his own shop and produces Windsor chair plans for sale through his website. He is a founding board member and an original GreenWood instructor.

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John Curtis has been steeped in sustainable forest management and reduced-impact logging for decades. He currently assists forest communities in the Yucatan Peninsula to develop dimensioned wood products that meet the standards of local, national and international markets. A former partner in the Luthier's Mercantile, John has worked in most sectors of the wood-products industry, from timber harvesting and sawmilling to container import and export and the marketing of processed parts. He is a founding member of the Woodworkers Alliance for Rainforest Protection (WARP) and a GreenWood board member. John provides expertise to GreenWood on a wide range of wood-processing subjects.

René Delgado is the founder and director of Taller Escuela in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He holds an M.S. in furniture design and construction from the School for American Crafts, Rochester Institute of Technology, in New York. Following graduation, René worked for Wendell Castle and then returned to Puerto Rico, where he built a career over more than 25 years as a teacher, sculptor, designer and master furniture maker. He also serves as an instructor at the School of Plastic Arts and Design and the University of Puerto Rico.

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Aaron Fedarko is a full-time furniture maker and instructor. After a 16-year career in the specialty metals business, he spent two years honing his woodworking skills at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. Today, he runs his own furniture shop and teaches classes at the Center. He joined the GreenWood team in 2011, instructing indigenous Yanesha carvers in the Peruvian Amazon in the use of hand tools, sharpening, wood drying and the quality control of wood products. Aaron graduated St. Lawrence University with a B.A. in Spanish Literature and Economics, and he received an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh.

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Michael Fortune’s work has been exhibited around the world and is installed in six Canadian embassies, but he primarily designs and builds “highly resolved,” one-of-a-kind furniture for private residences across North America. Michael employs traditional wood- and metal-working techniques, in combination with innovative bending processes, adapted from the aerospace and boatbuilding trades. In a career spanning more than four decades, Michael has taught at schools and craft centers across the continent, as well as in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. He has consulted for GreenWood and other organizations in Belize, Mexico, Trinidad, Tobago and Guyana.

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Andy Jack conducted several GreenWood training sessions in the Peruvian Amazon, where he worked with 20 indigenous Yanesha artisans in six remote villages. He helped install new benches, foot-powered lathes and sharpening systems, and contributed to quality control and workshop infrastructure. Andy has apprenticed to Curtis Buchanan and has worked closely with Pete Galbert and Don Weber. He had this to say about his first GreenWood workshop: “I like to pass on what I’ve learned. To teach it to someone from a different culture was the ultimate rush.” A 2008 graduate of Purchase College, State University of New York, with a B.F.A. in sculpture, Andy makes a wide range of chairs and treenware in his shop in Kent, Connecticut.

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Alex Karney joined GreenWood in 2011 as a consulting forester in Honduras. He conducted primary research in the collection of bigleaf mahogany (S. macrophylla) samples for DNA analysis, evaluation of heart rot, the formulation of research and planting plans, and documentation of deforestation combining satellite data with field inspections. Alex collaborated with the Missouri Botanical Garden in the taxonomic classification of an unidentified artisan plant species—the mimbre vine now known as Monstera maderaverde. Alex holds a B.S. from the University of Toronto, where he also obtained a Master's degree in Forest Conservation. He currently works in ravine and habitat restoration in Toronto.

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Following an organ-building apprenticeship, Scotty Lewis worked for five years as a furniture apprentice to Michael Fortune. He has been woodturning since 2009 and he designed and installed a two-man bicycle lathe in the Dominican Republic. He refined that design, installing two lathes in subsequent turning workshops for GreenWood in Honduras. These inspired our artisan production of carving mallets, exported to Lee Valley Tools. Scotty currently teaches high school shop at St. Stephen Catholic Secondary School in Bowmanville, Ontario, where his students build everything from outdoor sheds to fine furniture.

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Tim Manney designs and builds fine chairs, tools and carved or bent greenwood spoons in his Portland, Maine, workshop. He instructed Yanesha artisans in the Palcázu Valley of Peru in 2011 and 2012 as part of two GreenWood training teams. The workshops he conducted focused on tooling, sharpening and improved production efficiencies.

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Michael Caplin is an attorney specializing in social entrepreneurship and nonprofit management. As chief executive of Turtle Island Group, he provides strategic counsel to nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.

Filippo del Gatto has dedicated his professional life to working with more than 30 indigenous peoples’ organizations, community forest enterprises and civil society groups in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. An essential part of his work has focused on strengthening core capacities—such as self-governance, advocacy, forest monitoring, fundraising, partnership building and capturing revenues from natural resources. He holds master’s degrees from the Universities of Florence, Oxford and London. Filippo is a founding director of GreenWood.

Nickie Irvine is a former associate professor of anthropology at Stanford University and a founding board member of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). She served as Director of the Indigenous Resource Management Program and later as Field Program Director at Cultural Survival and has consulted for a wide variety of organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, The World Bank and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. She was an advisory board member of IMAFLORA (Instituto de Manejo e Certificação Florestal e Agricola) and a board member of both WARP (Woodworkers Alliance for Rainforest Protection) and GreenWood. Nickie holds a B.A. in Biological Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.F.S. from Yale University in Forestry and Environmental Studies and a Ph.D. in Ecological Anthropology from Stanford.

Dick Jagels is emeritus professor of forest biology, University of Maine, where he taught for more than 30 years. He holds a B.S. in wood science, an M.S. in forest pathology from SUNY-Syracuse, and a Ph.D. in plant structure/function from the University of Illinois. Dick has written the wood-technology column for WoodenBoat magazine for 42 years and has published more than 300 research and technical papers in scientific journals. He is currently Museum Director at the Resource Center, Craig Brook National Atlantic Salmon Hatchery, East Orland, Maine.

Hank retired in December 2010 from the position of Associate Chief of the U.S. Forest Service. During his 37 years of public service, Hank worked in seven national forest units, the California Regional Office, and at the Washington, DC, headquarters of the Forest Service. He began his career as a surveyor, which he performed in northern Arizona and northeastern Washington State. He served as a timber sale contracting officer in northern Idaho, and was the principal administrative officer on national forests in Montana and Oregon. At headquarters, he worked in law enforcement, and as a U.S. Senate staffer. He was Director of the Agency’s Budget Office for eight years, before becoming Deputy Chief for Operations and ultimately retiring as Associate Chief.

Silas Kopf has been building studio furniture since 1973, and his work is found in museums and private collections around the world. A graduate of Princeton University with a degree in architecture, Silas apprenticed to Wendell Castle for two years. In 1988 he studied traditional marquetry with Pierre Ramond at the École Boulle in Paris, supported by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Silas incorporates a wide variety of techniques in his furniture. The standards are exacting and most of his marquetry is made of wood, sometimes accented with other materials. Over the last 20 years, he has designed and executed the veneered marquetry on five art-case grand pianos for Steinway & Sons. He was named a Master of the Medium in 2015 by the Smithsonian Institution. Silas provided the original inspiration for GreenWood through his creation in the 1980s of the Woodworkers Against Rainforest Destruction (WARD), and he was a founding GreenWood board member.

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Furniture maker, artist and educator Wendy Maruyama has been creating innovative work for 40 years. Former head of the Woodworking and Furniture Design Program, California College of Arts and Crafts, Wendy was a professor of woodworking and furniture design at San Diego State University from 1989 to 2015, where she is now professor emeritus and works full time in her San Diego studio. Wendy’s early work combined references to feminism and traditional craft. Her newer work moves beyond the boundaries of studio craft into the realm of advocacy and social justice. Wendy’s work can be found in many national and international museum collections, including the Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

As a forestry professional, Leonora is guided by building resilience in forest ecosystems and engaging forest-based communities in stewardship and sustainable economies. In the Southwest, her work with the Forest Stewards Guild spans wildfire risk mitigation, forest health and restoration, youth environmental education, and empowering women landowners across the country through the Women Owning Woodlands program. Leonora is also passionate about the intersection of forestry and sustainable agriculture in the tropics. A 2015 Fulbright grant took her to the Amazon to study traditional açaí production and certification systems best suited to family farmers. Most recently, she conducted a supply-chain analysis of yerba mate agroforestry in Brazil. Leonora holds a B.A. in Economics from Smith College and a Master of Forestry degree from the Yale School of the Environment.

Ellie Richards is an artist who looks to the tradition of woodworking and the “made world” to inspire her eclectic sculptural creations and installations. She has traveled extensively to explore the role that improvisation and play have in the artistic process—notably to Ghana, where she worked in a shop building hollow forms in wood. She is a three-year resident artist at Penland School of Craft, where she is establishing her studio and practice.

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Laura is a forest ecologist and silviculturist who has researched the ecology and management of temperate and tropical forests and trees in the U.S., Mexico, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Niger, Indonesia, three Congo Basin countries and the miombo woodlands of Mozambique. Her ongoing bigleaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) research was initiated in 1989 and contributed to the listing of that species on Appendix II of CITES. Laura is an honorary fellow at Bioversity International, one of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) centers, headquartered in Rome, Italy.

Donna Stauffer is a diplomat with 28 years of experience in international development. She is currently a member of USAID's Senior Foreign Service working on the Development Leadership Initiative, which aims to double the size of the agency's foreign service workforce. In her previous field assignments in Mozambique, Nepal, Botswana, Madagascar and Sudan, Donna has focused on community-based and transnational natural resource management, agriculture, democracy promotion and women’s empowerment. She holds an M.S. in Environmental Studies from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, an M.S. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University, and a B.A. in politics from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.

Dave Straley is a certified public accountant, professional money manager and investment counselor, whose company, 3rd Creek Investments manages more than $90 million in assets. Dave was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua from 1974 to 1976 and a USAID officer in Costa Rica and Indonesia. He has consulted with USAID in 10 other Latin American and African countries and has more than 20 years’ experience in the design and management of federally funded foreign-aid programs. Dave is a longstanding trustee of the Arthur B. Schultz Foundation, a board officer of the Lahanton Audubon Society and a former GreenWood treasurer.

3rd Creek

3rd Creek Foundation

Bob Taylor co-founded Taylor Guitars with Kurt Listug in 1974 at the age of 19. Bob’s love of making guitars and innovating both guitar design and building methods has been his passion for more than 45 years, and it continues to this day. Along the way, Bob began thinking deeply about the sources of wood used in guitar making. Today, Bob and Taylor Guitars have their hands in many projects designed to improve how wood is sourced, used and regrown.

Taylor Guitars

Robin Wood is a trailblazer in the use of local timbers and the revival of traditional woodturning techniques. Using a foot-powered pole lathe, Robin turns stylish, functional bowls and plates. His extensive research into the history of the craft led to his publication of The Wooden Bowl (Stobart Davies Ltd., 2005). Inspired by Scandinavian woodworking, Robin conducts spoon- and bowl-carving courses and builds individually hand-crafted benches, bridges and other countryside furniture. A founder and chairman of the Heritage Crafts Association, Robin was named "Artisan of the Year" in 2009 by Country Living Magazine and Balvenie Whisky.

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