DR. ANN BARTUSKA
Senior Advisor
Resources for the Future
Dr. Ann M. Bartuska is a Senior Advisor at Resources for the Future (RFF), an environmental economics think tank in Washington, D.C., where she focuses on sustainable forest management and natural climate solutions. Prior to RFF, Dr. Bartuska served as Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics (REE) within the U. S. Department of Agriculture from 2010 to September, 2017. She also held the position of Acting Under Secretary for REE and Acting Chief Scientist for USDA from December, 2016 till her departure from USDA. Prior to that, she was Deputy Chief for Research and Development (R&D), U.S. Forest Service (FS), which she held from 2004 to 2010.
Dr. Bartuska has extensive experience in natural resources, spending her career operating at the interface of science and policy. She has held positions at North Carolina State University and with The Nature Conservancy, serving as Executive Director of their Invasive Species Initiative. She has held numerous positions with the U.S. Forest Service, including the first Director of the Ecosystem Management office, and Director of Forest and Range Management, where she was responsible for both the timber and grazing programs of the National Forest System. She is proud of the fact that she has worked on both public and private land issues.
Dr. Bartuska was elected President of the Ecological Society of America (2003) and has served on the Board of the Council of Science Society Presidents; she is also is a member of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). She was on the Nicholas School for the Environment, Duke University, Board of Visitors and twice served on the LTER (Long-Term Ecological Research) Advisory Board of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Bartuska also served on the inaugural Multi-Disciplinary Expert Panel (MEP) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), chartered by UNEP and co-chaired the Science and Technology Roundtable for Sustainability of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). While Deputy Under Secretary, she served as Vice-Chair of the Civil Applications Committee (CAC), coordinating Federal civilian applications of satellite-obtained imagery with the intelligence community. She is currently is a member of NAS’s standing committee on Science Communication and on the Board of Environmental Science and Toxicology (BEST).
She is an ecosystem ecologist with degrees from Wilkes College (B.S.), Ohio University (M.S.) and West Virginia University (Ph.D.). Her research focused on ecosystem processes in landscapes disturbed by coal mining.