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Marcia Bernicat, a career member of the Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, is currently Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.

Ambassador Bernicat served as Ambassador to Bangladesh from 2015-2018 and to Senegal and Guinea-Bissau from 2008-2011. Previously she was Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Human Resources, a position she held from 2012-2015. Domestically she served in the Department of State as Office Director for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan in the Bureau of South Asian Affairs from 2006 to 2008; and from 2004 to 2006 as the Senior-Level Director and Career Development Officer in the Bureau of Human Resources. Ms. Bernicat was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Bridgetown, Barbados from 2001 to 2004, and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Lilongwe, Malawi from 1998 to 2001. She was Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Casablanca, Morocco from 1995 to 1998, Deputy Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India from 1992 to 1995, and Desk Officer for Nepal and India in the Bureau of Near East and South Asian Affairs from 1988 to 1990.

Earlier in her career, Ambassador Bernicat was Special Assistant to Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead, Watch Officer in the Department’s Operations Center, Consular Officer in Marseille, France, and Political/Consular Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Bamako, Mali. She is the recipient of the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award and numerous other Department awards.

A native of New Jersey, Marcia Bernicat received a Bachelor of Arts in History from Lafayette College and a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. In 2018 she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Public Service by Lafayette College. Prior to joining the Foreign Service,

Ms. Bernicat gained private sector managerial experience working for the Procter and Gamble Manufacturing Company on Staten Island, New York. Her languages are French, Hindi, and Russian.

Dr. James Berner graduated from the University of Oklahoma Medical School in 1968, completed an internship at Marion County General Hospital at Indiana University in Indianapolis.  He completed his military service in the Republic of Vietnam, and the  Pensacola Naval Hospital, then completed residencies in Internal Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, and in Pediatrics at the University of Oregon Health Sciences Center, in Portland, Oregon.  He joined the Indian Health Service in 1974, and served as a staff physician in Sitka, Alaska, at the Mt. Edgecumbe IHS Hospital, and the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage.  From 1984, until 2006, he served as Director of Community Health, and as a part-time clinician in the Department of Pediatrics.  He assumed the role of Senior Science Director in the Department of Community Environment and Health in 2006 and held that position until he retired in October of 2019.

The publication of the Arctic Council’s first Arctic Human Health Assessment In 1998, raised public awareness in Alaska of the presence of industrial and agricultural environmental contaminants in traditional food species, and in Arctic residents.  The possible human health effects, especially in pregnant women and infants, prompted him to seek funding for the eventual creation of a maternal/ infant biomonitoring program for Yupik residents of Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta, from 1998-2013, utilizing grant funds from the EPA and CDC.  The Arctic warming trend resulted in the Arctic Council undertaking the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA),  finished and published in 2005, with personnel from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium as authors of many sections of the Human Health chapter of the ACIA.  The emerging climate-related environmental human health threats documented in the ACIA was addressed with another EPA grant to fund the Rural Alaska Monitoring Program, which created a village-based environmental monitoring capacity, using a partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).

Dr.  Berner’s involvement with Arctic population health, environmental contaminants, and Arctic climate and health interactions, resulted in his participation as a member of the Arctic Council Arctic Monitoring Assessment Program’s Human Health Assessment Group, the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board, and the Science Advisory Panel of the North Pacific Research Board, as well as the Science Advisory Panels for a series of NIH center grants at UAF for environmental research, and capacity building.  The development of a One Health focus at UAF over the last decade is a culmination of the growing interest and capacity at UAF and the Alaska Native worldview of the interconnectedness of the health of the environment and human health.

Dr. Nikoosh Carlo is the founder and chief strategist at CNC North Consulting. She has extensive experience working to advance community-based solutions to climate change. She helps clients develop a vision for their climate and Arctic priorities, navigate building momentum to achieve change, and foster partnerships to drive forward movement. Dr. Carlo has a special interest in advancing initiatives that support climate equity and the health and well-being of Arctic residents and Indigenous peoples.

Dr. Carlo previously served as senior advisor for climate and Arctic policy to the Governor of Alaska (2017-18), a senior advisor at the U.S. State Department for the U.S. Chairmanship of the Arctic Council (2015-17), and the executive director of the Alaska Arctic Policy Commission (2013-15).  

Dr. Carlo is Athabascan Indian and has deep roots in the Interior Alaska communities of Fairbanks and Tanana, where she was raised. Dr. Carlo received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California San Diego and a B.S. in psychology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Brooke Woods is Koyukon Athabascan from Rampart, Alaska, a small village on the Yukon River. She currently lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with her five children and attends the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Fisheries Science. She received a Tribal Management
Associate of Applied Science degree Spring of 2017.

She is currently employed with Tanana Chiefs Conference in the Hunting and Fishing Task Force as the Fisheries Policy Analyst and Outreach Coordinator. Brooke also serves as the Executive Chair for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The fish commission was founded in 2014, Tribes and First Nations along the Yukon River and its Tributaries are working as a unified voice for the conservation and restoration of Yukon River Fisheries that protects traditional way of life and well-being.

Marit H. Hoveid has her degrees from the University of Oslo (Cand. Polit.) and from NTNU (Dr.Polit) in pedagogy. She has been a member of the EERA (European Educational Research Association) council and executive committee for several years. Her research interest revolves around questions related to teaching and learning processes. She has edited several books and is the current editor-in-chief of Nordic Journal of Education and Practice

Halvor Hoveid has his degree from the University of Oslo in pedagogy and was recognized as an associate professor in pedagogy in 2007 and a full professor in 2015 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

He has worked with teacher education for almost 30 years. His research is related to philosophies and theories of education.

Dr. Emily Jenkins, Ph.D., DVM, BSc Hon., is Professor, Department of Veterinary Microbiology, Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, and previously served as the Wildlife Disease Specialist for the Government of Canada. She teaches in parasitology, public health, One Health, and emergency management.

Her research takes a One Health approach to diseases that transmit among animals and people via food, water, vectors, and the environment in the North.

Locally, she serves as chair of the Wildlife Health Research Fund and University Northern Studies Committee. More broadly, she is Canadian representative to the Terrestrial Working Group of the International Arctic Science Committee, a member of the Alaska CDC and Native Tribal Health Consortium One Health working group, and the Climate Change and Infectious Disease working group, International Circumpolar Surveillance of Emerging Infectious Disease, Arctic Council.

She also serves as Associate Editor of the International Journal for Parasitology – Parasites and Wildlife and on the Editorial Advisory Board of Food and Waterborne Parasitology. 

Dr. Susan Kutz is a Professor in the Department of Ecosystem and Public Health at the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. 

Since her first foray into the Arctic in 1988, she has worked there continuously, addressing issues at the animal-environment-human interface. In partnership with local communities, she has developed community-based wildlife health surveillance programs with the goal of early detection of change in wildlife populations, protection of public health, and facilitating the incorporation of local and traditional knowledge into wildlife co-management.
Her research brings local, traditional, and scientific knowledge together to understand the impacts of a warming Arctic on the health of muskoxen and caribou and the consequent effects on food security in the Arctic. 

She is recognized around the CircumArctic for her wildlife health expertise and recently co-edited the first edition of the book Reindeer and Caribou Health and Disease. She also pioneered the Northern Community Health veterinary program in the Sahtu Settlement area, NWT, where she and her team have delivered annual veterinary services to five Dene communities for over a decade while at the same time providing young veterinarians with unique cross-cultural experiential learning opportunities. 

Arja Rautio, MD, Ph.D., VP Research University of the Arctic, Professor in Arctic Research, Thule Institute and Faculty of Medicine, University of Oulu, Finland.

Her research interests are on population studies, Indigenous health and wellbeing, research ethics, and One health and climate change.

The on-going projects are EU-funded:

• (H2020-BG-2016-2017) Permafrost thaw and the changing Arctic coast, science for socio-economic adaptation, Nunataryak,
• (H2020-FP-2014-2020, Nro 825762) Metabolic effects of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals: novel testing METhods and adverse outcome pathways, EDCMET
• (ENI-2017-387477) Development of think tank functions of the Northern Dimension Institute, and Arctic Council project on One Health.

Dr Rautio is working as a national key expert in the Human Health groups of the Arctic Monitoring Assessment Programme (AMAP) and the Arctic Council's Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG). She has been a member of the Social and Human Sciences Working Group of the International Arctic Science Committee. At the moment she is a board member of International Union of Circumpolar Health and Chair of Nordic Society for Circumpolar Health.

Dr. John Walsh is the Chief Scientist of the International Arctic Research Center and President’s Professor of Global Change at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He is also the Co-Director of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy. His research has addressed arctic climate and weather variability, both as observed historically and predicted for the future. 

Walsh was a lead author for the 2014 U.S. National Climate Assessment and for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Prior to moving to Alaska in 2003, he spent 30 years on the faculty of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois.

He has co-authored a textbook, Severe and Hazardous Weather.

Brooke Woods is Koyukon Athabascan from Rampart, Alaska, a small village on the Yukon River. She currently lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with her five children and attends the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Fisheries Science. She received a Tribal Management
Associate of Applied Science degree Spring of 2017.

She is currently employed with Tanana Chiefs Conference in the Hunting and Fishing Task Force as the Fisheries Policy Analyst and Outreach Coordinator. Brooke also serves as the Executive Chair for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The fish commission was founded in 2014, Tribes and First Nations along the Yukon River and its Tributaries are working as a unified voice for the conservation and restoration of Yukon River Fisheries that protects traditional way of life and well-being.