Tiago Oliveira is a PhD and Forest Engineer with 30 years of experience in national and international activities, specialising in the topics of wildland fire risk management and governance.

He was appointed by the Prime-Minister in the aftermath of the 2017 wildfire season, to lead the creation of the Integrated Rural Fire Management System in Portugal. He has also been Chairman of the Board of the Portuguese Agency for Integrated Rural Fire Management since January 2019.

Tiago chaired the Organising Committee of the 8th International Wildland Fire Congress and is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Wildland Fire.

Previous posts include:
Head of the Department of Innovation and Forestry Development (2016-2017) at The Navigator Company

Head of Forest Protection, responsible for fire prevention and suppression operational programs and R&D project, from 2008 to 2016.

Assistant Lecturer at MedFor Master (2013-2017)

Advisor of the XV and XVII Portuguese Governments (2004)

Head of Inventory and GIS unit (1998-2003) and Assistant Research (1994-1998) at National Geographic Agency.

Besides several communications and papers, Tiago has developed his personal and professional skills in strategy, planning, risk analysis, forest investment, change management, communication, project management, natural resource surveying, GIS and remote sensing.

Born in Scotland, Val Charlton has lived in Cape Town, South Africa for most of her life and loves the outdoors. She deems it a privilege to have been able to work with communities and conservation organisations for a large part of her career. Community-based fire management is her area of specialty, working with people that live in fire-prone landscapes across the globe.

Val promotes Integrated Fire Management practice to address landscape fire risks and hazards, This includes 20 + years of Wildland Urban Interface/Intermix facilitation in both urban and remote rural communities, collaborating with private landowners, government and conservation agencies in multi-stakeholder social ecology/economic projects in various countries.

As a practitioner, her work has encompassed initiating and co-creating green, youth and female focused employment programmes and opportunities that are also of benefit to the wider community, thus improving the likelihood of sustained community-driven hazard reduction and resilience action. Elements of climate adaptation, disaster resilience and socio–environmental– economic projects, community-based natural resource management, food security, the use of nature–based solutions, early childhood development and a variety of capacity building courses are brought in to support Integrated Fire Management practices.

Believing that it is critically important to work collectively and share experience, Val sits on the Cape Floristic Region Partnership Committee, the International Liaison Committee for the IWFC series and is an advisor to the EU FIRE-RES project which partnered with the Circular Bioeconomy Alliance to launch the Wildfire-Resilient Landscapes Network at COP28.

Marc started in this fire world as a firefighter in 1989. From there, he became a fire-ecology forester in 1997. Marc started his current position as Incident Commander and Wildfire Strategic Analyst at Catalan Fire Service in 1999.

Since then, Marc has created the GRAF teams and directed their division, along with establishing a prescribed burn plan and wildfire training programme. He is also involved in international support missions as the EU ECPM wildfire expert.‍

Marc is a founder and former President of the Pau Costa Foundation, now on its Advisory committee. He also teaches at the University of Lleida Master Fuego as a Professor and serves as the advisory board member at Leverhulme Wildfire Center.

Marc has been recognised by the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF), winning the Safety Award at Boise in 2015. He also won the Montero de Burgos award for Communication at Forest and Wildfires in Madrid 2017. In 2022, he received the Felip Costafreda award for the work he did for the farming community and their role in landscape management against wildfires.

Since 2021, Marc has been back at school, doing a PhD in boundary layer physics, and wildfire changed fire spread patterns at WUR (NL).

Jim started his career training as a teacher in Liverpool before working in management consultancy across a range of sectors including defence and utilities. His career in local government spans nearly two decades with previous roles at Staffordshire County Council and Cumbria County Council. 

Jim took up post as Chief Executive with Aberdeenshire Council in February 2015.  He is Returning Officer for Aberdeenshire Council and Clerk to the Lieutenancy of Aberdeenshire.

Jim is Chair of the Scottish Resilience Partnership and a past chair of Solace Scotland, continuing to work across public services locally and nationally to ensure the most effective team approach. He is passionate about working with communities to help people achieve their dreams and live their best lives.