Jan Church McAlpine
Former Director, United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) Secretariat – Department of Economic and Social Affairs; President and CEO of McAlpine International Consultants
Jan Church McAlpine is currently based in Berrien Springs, Michigan. She is the former Director of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF), based at UN Headquarters in New York. The UNFF is a body in the United Nations made up of 197 countries in the United Nations. She previously served as the Senior Advisor and lead negotiator for Forests in the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC, and in that role headed the interagency and stakeholder process in the development of the President’s Initiative against Illegal Logging (PIAIL). She also led in the development of the Congo Basin Forest Partnership at the Department of State, launched at the WSSD in Johannesburg by Secretary Colin Powell in September, 2002. Ms. McAlpine conceived and developed the Asia and Africa Forest Law Enforcement and Governance Ministerial processes, working with the World Bank, the UK and the governments of Indonesia and Cameroon, subsequently with many other partners, including the EU. In 2007 and 2008, Ms. McAlpine was a Visiting Scholar and Senior Researcher at the University of Michigan’s School for Natural Resources and Environment, where she co facilitated and chaired the first National Summit on Adaptation to Climate Change and edited the proceedings for the Summit. She also helped to establish the Central Africa Forest Research Initiative. Ms. McAlpine served in the U.S. Government from 1989 to 2013; she worked in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) focusing on international policy issues, including developing the first advisory committee to the Administrator on trade and environment issues. Subsequently she worked at the White House, first with the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and then in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as the trade negotiator on forest timber, tobacco, and head of delegation to the International Tropical Timber Organization (also served as Chairman of the Council), and US Trade Representative to the Montreal Protocol. Prior to her career in the U.S. Government, Ms. McAlpine worked for 11 years for the Water Environment Federation, an international science and educational association in the water quality field. Currently, she is a professional tutor at Southwestern Michigan Regional College.
She is a Councillor of the World Future Council.