IAWF board member since 2019,
President, Grassroots Wildland Firefighters
North American Burn Team, The Nature Conservancy
Former Chief of Fire and Aviation, Yosemite National Park

Kelly is the President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing the public with information and education regarding much needed wildland fire workforce reforms. Her organization advocates on behalf of thousands of wildland firefighters.

She is also very active as a Burn Boss for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) mentoring and coaching other TNC employees and nonprofit organizations to help them become more skilled and proficient in applying “good fire” on the landscape.

After 35 years as a fulltime federal wildland firefighter, Kelly retired federal service in 2019 for an opportunity to pass her knowledge to the next generation through her volunteer work as a subcommittee chair of IAWF hosting “Ignite Talk” presentations and serving as the President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

She is a Burn Boss; Fire Behavior Analyst; Operations Section Chief; and Operations Branch Director and served on Interagency Incident Management Teams for over 20 years. She has served as a Fire Management Officer for both the US Forest Service and the National Park Service in Moab, UT; Carson City, NV; Placerville, CA; and Yosemite, CA. She is a strong advocate and leader for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion promoting gender parity throughout the Wildland Fire Community. Her current work includes providing leadership for the Women-in-Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchange (WTREX) and Indigenous Cultural burning Training Exchanges (TREX) events.

Dr. Carol Baldwin is PI and Project Coordinator of the Great Plains Fire Science Exchange and Extension professional at Kansas State University.  She served on the Kansas Department of Health and Environment subcommittee that wrote the Flint Hills Smoke Management Plan, and led outreach efforts for Plan implementation in a region with high annual prescribed burning. She participated in the Wildland Fire Leadership Council’s Smoke Data Gaps Working Group meeting and the NWCG Smoke Managers Subcommittee.  She co-wrote the publication Prescribed Burning Communication Kit for presenting factual information to elected officials about prescribed burning risk and benefits.  Current research includes sampling grassland smoke from prescribed burning in situ using drones to provide PM_2.5 and ozone data for improving smoke models.  Her work has been largely in the Great Plains region of the United States in an area characterized by open agricultural and rangeland landscapes and private land ownership.

Having served for the last ten years as the Senior Professional Staff member on the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, overseeing the wildland fire and forestry portfolios, Bryan Petit has been instrumental in the creation and enactment the last decade’s most important pieces of wildfire-related legislation. These include the Wildfire Management title in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Wildfire Management Technology Advancement Act, and the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act.

Bryan previously worked as a wildland firefighter and a prescribed burn boss, but is a forester
by training—having earned an undergraduate degree in Forestry from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina and a Master of Forestry degree from Yale University. Bryan has worked for several Federal and State agencies and non-profits prior to beginning to work on natural resources policy. Upon moving to Washington, DC, where he currently resides, Bryan served as a career staffer in the Office of the Secretary at USDA, advising policy officials on forestry and wildfire matters.  Upon completion of the Senior Executive Service-Career Development Program, Bryan transferred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where he began staffing then-Chairman Ron Wyden (of Oregon).  Now, he staffs Senator Joe Manchin (of West Virginia) who serves as the leading Democrat on the Committee.

Dr. Toddi Steelman is the Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.  She a past-President of the International Association of Wildland Fire. The author of four books, Steelman has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, as well as opinion and editorial pieces in Nature, the Globe and Mail, The Hill and the Los Angeles Times. She has brought her 20 years of wildfire expertise to bear in a variety of venues including the Royal Society (UK), National Academy of Sciences (US) and as an invited keynote speaker in Canada, Germany, Australia and the United States. Her research agenda has focused on understanding community responses to wildfire, and how communities and agencies interact for more effective wildfire management on large, interjurisdictionally complex wildfires, much of which has taken place with her valued colleague and fellow Fire Chaser, Dr. Branda Nowell.