Meet The Team – EplerWood International

Megan Epler Wood

FOUNDER & PRESIDENT

Megan Epler Wood is a conservationist, ecotourism pioneer, research leader andconsultant on questions of managing sustainable tourism for destinations, business, and civil society. She has led her firm EplerWood International since 2003 to design net positive regional tourism development projects working in over 35 countries with support from the World Bank, IFC, IDB, GIZ and USAID. Since 2010 her research and teaching with Harvard and Cornell universities vetted a wide range of solutions to help protect destinations using business management techniques dedicated to long-term conservation and local well-being, environmental and public health, social science, advanced technology and landscape design, and biodiversity research. She is dedicated to helping global industry and governments to leverage the positives of tourism while genuinely addressing the tough questions of managing tourism as it scales upward without the local skills, metrics, or governmental oversight required. Epler Wood wrote her 2017 book, Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet and the 2019 report Destinations at Risk: The Invisible Burden of Tourism to address these gaps and review solutions. Her latest 2020 report, A Marshall Plan for Tourism: Can it be built? asks how a travel and tourism economic recovery from COVID 19 can be financed via blended investment which focuses on small and medium enterprises and destination sustainability for the long-term.

O’Shannon Burns

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

O’Shannon is a Washington, DC-based sustainability consultant who has developed and managed sustainability, conservation, and tourism initiatives in both the business and nonprofit sectors. She joined EplerWood International as Program Director in 2020 and has focused to date on capacity building for the sustainable management of tourism destinations, investment in sustainable tourism models, and frameworks for the recovery and resilience of destinations in Southeast Asia and Canada.

She spent almost a decade at National Geographic—first administering grant programs for explorers, scientists, and storytellers at the Society, and then overseeing a number of programs and partnerships for the company’s travel business. O’Shannon created and was appointed to National Geographic Partners’ first full-time sustainability position, overseeing sustainability for National Geographic Expeditions and serving as an internal sustainability leader and expert.

O’Shannon holds a Master’s in Sustainability from Harvard’s DCE and a Bachelor’s in Physical Geography with a concentration on climate science from Penn State. She graduated from Harvard’s Extension School in May 2020, and for her capstone project she partnered with EplerWood International to develop a feasibility study for Symbiosis Resorts.

Stefanie Cainto

COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

Stefanie Cainto manages EplerWood International’s communications efforts via public relations, social media, and events. She is a journalist-turned-digital marketer whose strengths lie in strategic campaign planning, analytics and data-driven marketing. Although she started her career in publishing, Stefanie found her passion for the travel industry as a strategist in a hospitality-focused marketing agency. She has worked with more than 100 clients—including Marriott, Visit San Diego and Auberge Resorts—to reach new audiences and foster relationships with existing ones.

Stefanie currently owns a digital marketing consultancy that serves impact- and experience-focused businesses. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from the University of Florida. She is a graduate of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation‘s Volunteers As Chesapeake Stewards program.

Dr. Vicente Molés

SENIOR CONSULTANT

Dr. Vicente J. Molés is an international consultant with more than 25 years of experience in international development programs and tourism. He advises several multilateral development institutions and the International Sustainable Tourism Initiative (ISTI) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Molés has worked for the Valencian Government (Spain), European Commission in Brussels, Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID) in Bolivia, UNWTO Themis Foundation as the Director, and at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Brazil.

His experience in the tourism sector covers issues related to global strategic alliances, strategic planning, sustainable tourism, learning and management of development programs, and projects within public and international institutions. Dr. Molés is an Industrial Engineer, receiving a Doctorate in Industrial Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and a Master’s degree in Hotel and Tourism Management from the University of Valencia. He is an Instructor at the Harvard Extension School.

Sofia Fotiadou

RESEARCH MANAGER

Sofia Fotiadou is the Eco-design & Sustainability Lead for an international company specializing in the design and construction of major transport infrastructure based in Paris. She is also the Research Manager at the International Sustainable Tourism Initiative (ISTI) of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health overseeing the Tourism and Environmental Health in a Changing Climate project. Within this project, she has worked on the development of an ISTI Framework for Sustainable Destinations and a pilot implementation of the framework, funded by GIZ, in two destinations in Tunisia.

Sofia is an Architect-Engineer and holds a Master’s degree in Sustainability from Harvard University DCE. She has a strong technical background with many years of experience in buildings and infrastructure, design and construction. As a researcher, she has worked on research on Mediterranean tourist destinations with a focus on direct and indirect impacts of tourism’s water and energy consumption, short and long-term effects of climate change on destinations, and carbon management at the accommodation and destination level.

Dr. Mark Milstein

SENIOR ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT ADVISOR

Dr. Mark Milstein is the Clinical Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He conducts research in and oversees the Center’s work on market and enterprise creation; business development; clean technology commercialization; and sustainable finance.

Dr. Milstein frames the world’s social and environmental challenges as unmet market needs which can be addressed most appropriately through business innovation and entrepreneurship so that the private sector can achieve financial success by creatively addressing problems such as climate change, ecosystem degradation and poverty. He works closely with a variety of firms in renewable energy and carbon markets, life sciences and sustainable agriculture, consumables, food and nutrition, health care and hospitality management, as well as finance and international development.