Dr. Igor Lacan is a University of California Cooperative Extension Advisor for the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in urban forestry. His program of applied research and extension provides technical and policy tools to advance sustainable environmental management. Focusing on urban trees and urban water, he develops research projects on emerging issues in urban landscapes. He produces extension and outreach materials that transfer findings from the University of California and other academic sources to the practitioners, and he serves as a technical resource for landscape professionals, planners and architects, local governments, Cooperative Extension colleagues and other academics, and tree-focused non-governmental organizations. 

Dave Muffly  is the former Senior Arborist at Apple, who selected, grew, and planted the 9,000 trees within the 175-acre Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, bringing to life Steve Job’s vision of a tree-rich park resembling the Stanford hills.  As Canopy’s first program director, Dave orchestrated the planting of 500 trees in Palo Alto neighborhoods.  Later, while serving on the Canopy board of directors, Dave designed Canopy’s East Palo Alto Tree Initiative, the award-winning planting of 1,000 drought-tolerant trees along the Bayshore freeway. Dave’s wisdom and insight, gained from 30 years of observing, growing, planting, researching, and stewarding nearly 100,000 trees, is unparalleled.  His mission in life is to create the best possible urban forests in California, capable of adapting to the changing conditions brought by climate change.  He’s continuing his research and experiments with species native from other areas, to select and grow those that he believes will survive and thrive in California. 

Dr. Erica Spotswood is a Senior Scientist in the Resilient Landscapes program at the San Francisco Estuary Institute where she leads projects related to urban ecology and ecological resilience. Current projects address how regional planning can integrate with local project-scale design, and how urban greening efforts can be coordinated to contribute to broader regional goals for biodiversity and ecological resilience. Her areas of expertise include urban ecology and plant community ecology. Before joining SFEI, Erica conducted postdoctoral research with Katherine Suding, and received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in the department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.