Organizing Team

Myles Gray – Executive Director

Joining ABI as the Program Director in July 2023, Myles brings professional experience in the science and business of biochar to help us manage our many programs in market and technology development.

We look forward to his help to promote biochar, demonstrate urban, farm, and field applications, and enhance our education and outreach. He is already immersed in a full slate of challenging activities and has been engaging our academic, industry, and policy partners

Connect with Myles on LinkedIn

Tina Metzer – Director of Projects and Partnerships

Joining ABI as the Director of Projects and Partnerships, Tina will focus on partnership development, stakeholder engagement, and managing events including the annual conference to support industry coordination and growth. As the co-founder of RuralRISE and the National Center for Resource Development, Tina has been actively engaged in fostering collaboration, rural economic development, and strengthening ecosystems especially in rural communities.

Tina has been involved in planning and organization of the conference since 2022. “We see this conference as a catalyst for the industry. It’s where ideas turn into partnerships, projects move toward implementation, and the broader market begins to take shape. Bringing this community together is one of the most important things we can do to support the growth of biochar.”

Connect with Tina on LinkedIn

Tera Lewandowski – Director of Agricultural Markets

Joining ABI in 2025 as Director of Agricultural Markets, Tera brings robust experience in horticulture, soil science, and composting, alongside strategic leadership in agricultural market development. Her efforts center on expanding biochar adoption through the fertilizer, soil amendment, and horticulture sectors, while fostering collaboration across industry, research, and policy domains.

Tera is actively building market pathways for biochar by engaging producers, academics, and business leaders, and promoting regenerative practices grounded in climate-smart science. Her outreach includes webinars, influencer engagement, and interdisciplinary education to elevate the visibility and impact of biochar innovation.

Connect with Tera on LinkedIn

Brandon Smith

Joining the team in February 2026, Brandon brings more than 30 years of experience in agricultural research, conservation, and applied soil health. He is nationally recognized for leading the development of the USDA-NRCS Soil Carbon Amendment Standard (Practice 336), was the first registered Technical Service Provider approved to deliver the practice and has since planned and certified biochar applications on thousands of acres nationwide.

Brandon’s work centers on advancing agricultural standards, technical guidance, and best management practices for biochar, ensuring agricultural applications are science-based, practical, and scalable.

Brandon previously spent 14 years with USDA-NRCS and has held faculty and research appointments at the University of Tennessee and the University of New Hampshire. He has also served in leadership roles with Ashwood Biochar and Stircor Services, advancing large-scale biochar production, product development, and agricultural market adoption.

Lauren Boritzke Smith – Communications

Lauren Boritzke Smith brings nearly a decade of experience in communication and design in the nonprofit landscape to the ABI team on a freelance basis. As the founder of Heartseed Creative, Lauren offers creative communications and design services to nonprofits and small businesses creating impact on the climate crisis. Lauren was introduced to climate change communications through her interest in food access, public health, and stewarding plants – from reporting on food deserts, participating in WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), to advocating for the importance of diverse ecosystems and healthy soil. Based in Minnesota, she’s also an avid urban farmer, reader of fantasy novels, and state park hiker.

Elza Vulcane -Marketing and Communications

Elza scales meaningful initiatives through communications, marketing, and media partnerships. She translates complex information into clear, consistent messaging that helps connect the details to how things actually show up in the world. Nature-based, circular solutions like biochar are very close to her heart and she’s been on the conference team since NABC2025.

Emily Kahn -Sponsorship & Exhibitor Manager, North American Biochar Conference 

President & Founder, Green Fern Events 

Emily brings 20 years of experience producing large-scale events and driving growth for global impact and environmental conferences. As Sponsorship & Exhibitor Manager for NABC, she is excited to build on the relationships established last year while cultivating new, lasting partnerships that support the continued growth of the conference as well as the biochar industry.

Email: emily@biochar.org for Sponsorship and Exhibitor Information

Sarena Baker-Event and Conference Manager

Sarena brings her experience in planning and managing conferences and nonprofit events to the ABI team, overseeing everything from logistics and vendors to registration and onsite operations. She has also supported policy and energy-focused events through her work with the National Energy Resources Organization (NERO) and Smart Policy Group, where she helps coordinate events each year for policymakers, government representatives, and energy-sector stakeholders. She is excited to help American Biochar Institute’s mission of advancing the use of biochar.

Maureen Walsh, Executive Director-U.S. Biochar Coalition and Co-Partner Founder Smart Policy Group

Maureen has served as the Executive Director of the US Biochar Coalition since November of 2023. She has spent the last two decades serving as a senior legislative, regulatory and government relations advisor to a wide range of corporate and not for profit clients. She uses her comprehensive knowledge of Congress and the Administration to advance mission critical client objectives on a wide array of issues including, but not limited to, energy, clean tech, biofuels, environmental sustainability, agriculture, transportation, and high technology. 

She provides the USBC with creative and proactive government relations strategies shaped by the association’s legislative and policy goals and objectives and implements these strategies through hands on lobbying, strategic consulting, and advocacy services.

Maureen’s other experience includes five years with one of Washington, DC’s largest and well known government relations firms. While there, she focused on government affairs and federal funding opportunities for a broad range of clients including educational and healthcare organizations, technology companies, Fortune 100 firms, and foreign, state and local governments. She also served as Google’s first federal lobbyist before returning to law school.

Maureen has a J.D. Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in History and Art History from James Madison University.

Deirdre Selling, Marketing and Communications Manager – U.S. Biochar Coalition Marketing and Communications Manager and Manager at The Smart Policy Group

Deirde comes to USB and SPG with a B.A. in Political Science and a blend of skills in communication, design and policy. Her experience includes social media management across platforms and she has experience with graphic design for professional materials. 

Kathleen Draper-Emeritus Board Member USBI, IBI and Author

Kathleen Draper has been an active participant in the biochar industry for more than a dozen years. She was the Board Chair of the International Biochar Initiative from 2019 – 2023 and was a Board member of the U.S. Biochar Initiative from 2017 – 2024. She focuses on education, research and consulting on a variety of biochar uses and markets both in the agricultural space and in composites for the building and packaging industries. 

Kathleen has co-authored two books on biochar: BURN Using Fire to Cool the Earth, and Terra Preta How the World’s Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change and Reduce World Hunger and has written white papers and articles about biochar for a decade. She has spoken about biochar to audiences around the world and has organized biochar study tours in the US, Nepal, Sweden, Finland, Austria, the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

Garner Robinson, CEO-Robinson Lumber Company

Garner Robinson leads Robinson Lumber Company, a sustainable wood products manufacturer founded in New Orleans in 1893 and run today by the fifth generation of the Robinson family. The company owns and operates manufacturing and concentration yards, buys directly from sawmills in rural communities across the United States and the global south, and serves customers in more than seventy countries.

In 2025 he founded Robinson Carbon, the company’s industrial biochar arm. Robinson Carbon permanently removes carbon by converting wood manufacturing residues that would otherwise combust or decompose into stable biochar for horticulture, agriculture, and pollution remediation. Its first commercial reactor came online in Indiana in 2026, with additional sites under development across the US South.

A New Orleans native and Columbia graduate, he ran the company’s Brazil subsidiary before returning home to build its Asian export business. He served as an Intelligence Officer in the US Navy Reserve from 2010 to 2018, serves on the boards of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, and owns Faulkner House Books in the French Quarter townhouse where William Faulkner wrote his first novel.

Brooklyn Legge, Strategy Lead-Robinson Carbon

Brooklyn Legg is Strategy Lead at Robinson Carbon, where she drives commercial strategy, market development, and go-to-market planning for the company’s biochar carbon removal program. She holds a degree in Renewable Materials Management and Marketing from Oregon State University’s College of Forestry and co-authored a publication on Industry 4.0 adoption in U.S. wood products manufacturing. Her hands-on background spans sawmill quality control to market analysis, giving her a rare end-to-end view of the wood products value chain. There’s no place she’d rather gather this industry than her homebase of New Orleans, a city whose soul is built on the same blend of tradition and innovation that drives this work forward.

Dr. Isabel Lima, Scientist-Lima Consulting LLC

Dr. Isabel Lima is a scientist and consultant specializing in biochar science, agricultural waste valorization, and carbon-based materials for environmental remediation and soil amendment. With more than 25 years of research experience at USDA-ARS, she pioneered manure-derived biochars and activated carbons, developed patented technologies, and contributed to national standards for biochar testing. She now leads Lima Consulting LLC, providing expert guidance to industry, government, and research organizations.

She is thrilled to welcome NABC to New Orleans this year. As someone who calls New Orleans home, she’s excited to see leaders in biochar, climate innovation, and sustainable land management gather right here in her backyard. She believes New Orleans has always been a place of resilience and creativity that makes the city such an inspiring and fun place to explore the future of biochar. She cannot wait to share that spirit with everyone joining us at the conference.

John Webster-Biochar Entrepreneur and Consultant 

John Webster is a biochar entrepreneur and consultant based in Salt Lake City, Utah, with experience spanning commercial biochar production, supply chain development, and applied deployment. He is the founder of GoBiochar and Director of Development for BiocharOnSite.org, a stewardship-focused program advancing scalable, place-based biochar solutions.

John operated a commercial pyrolysis system from 2020 to 2024 and previously served as Communications Director for the U.S. Biochar Initiative. His work focuses on practical biochar integration for agriculture, forestry, infrastructure, carbon management, and community-scale climate resilience across North America.