Meet the Board

Hugh Locke, BES

Hugh Locke brings a wealth of experience in tree planting, agroforestry and regenerative agriculture. He is Co-founder and President of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance that plants an average of one million trees a year with its farmer-members in Haiti. He is also Co-founder and Partner in Smallholder Data Services, which recently released a series of groundbreaking reports on the current status and future potential of smallholder regenerative agriculture around the world.

Jim Massey, MS

Jim Massey is an influential figure in the field of business, leadership, and corporate governance. He is the #1 best-selling author of Trust in Action, a guide to help leaders tackle the biggest problems facing society. For more than two decades, Jim created industry leading programs with ground-breaking global partnerships. Most notably, Jim established one of the world’s first Net Zero programs which included a 50M tree planting program in partnership with One Tree Planted.

Trent Preszler, MS, PhD

Trent Preszler is Professor of Practice in the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University and serves as Director of the Henry David Thoreau Foundation Planetary Solutions Initiative. After growing up on a cattle ranch in South Dakota and attending a one-room schoolhouse on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, his first job out of college was a White House internship for President Bill Clinton. Preszler received his BS from Iowa State University and his MS and PhD from Cornell University. His memoir, Little and Often, hit #1 on the Amazon books bestseller list and was a Best Book of 2021 by USA Today. His second book, Evergreen, chronicles America’s rise to global economic power viewed through the lens of Christmas trees.

Kristina Messdaghi, MBA

Kristina Messdaghi is an astute leader and innovator who employs a blend of strategic, analytic, creative, and operational skills to solve complex global business problems. Known for unlocking growth and commercializing intelligent technologies that transform industries, she is an expert in spotting early trends and turning opportunities into revenue-generating, paradigm-shifting technologies and businesses.

Founder of startups in AI, ML, Neural Networks, Decision Intelligence, Search, Cloud, and Biofuels, Messdaghi has held executive roles at SAP, Ariba, Cleantech Group, Omniture, BEA, Commerce One, and HPE (Novadigm). She serves as a consultant, advisor, and mentor to investors, entrepreneurs, executives, and teams across various sectors—and formerly as a mentor for the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. She received her MBA from the University of Liverpool, UK.

Starry Sprenkle-Hyppolite, PhD

Dr. Starry Sprenkle-Hyppolite is a restoration ecologist specializing in tree restoration and agroforestry. She is the Senior Director of Restoration Science for Conservation International (CI) supporting science-based tree restoration and quality monitoring across the tropics. 

Starry has published peer-reviewed papers mapping the Carbon Dioxide Removal “ecosystem,” the climate mitigation potential of increasing tree cover in agriculture, and predicting areas of natural forest regeneration. Before joining CI, she spent 15 years working in the humanitarian-development nexus in Haiti, including launching a successful community-based agroforestry program in the Artibonite Valley in 2005, which is still working and has helped people to plant more than 5 million trees.

Scott Poynton, MS

Scott has worked at the frontline of the sustainability/impact sector in 30 countries, for 30 years. His groundbreaking work with The Forest Trust pioneered responsible sourcing, sustainability certification in tropical forest countries and regenerative supply chains.

His work with some of the world’s largest agribusiness and food companies pioneered the first ever No Deforestation, No Exploitation and No Peatland clearance policies for Nestlé, Asia Pulp and Paper, Golden Agri Resources and Wilmar International. His work led the transformation of the palm oil sector away from destructive environmental practices and human rights abuses. He also led the transformation of the wooden garden furniture sector, and pioneered the first FSC certification in the Congo Basin.