For Today's Show/Epler Wood International

GUEST:

Megan Epler Wood
Founder and President
Since 2003, Megan has led EplerWood International, fostering sustainable tourism development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She has managed projects for USAID, the World Bank group, the Inter-American Development Bank, Harvard University's Center for Health and the Global Environment, Cornell University's Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, and the Planeterra Foundation, among others. EWI has completed over twenty contracts and raised millons of dollars of investment for sustainably designed tourism and community development projects in over twenty countries. 

Mission

EplerWood International (EWI) provides market-based approaches to sustainable tourism development in response to the rising global demand for sustainable tourism projects that meet economic development needs. The firm provides innovative systems for business, NGOs, and governments in lesser developed nations to build competitive resource efficient economies that benefit all members of society.

Tools

EWI provides market research, business plans, financial and investment plans, and other economic and social entrepreneurship tools to help countries or destinations build the capacity they need to deliver sustainable and ecotourism professionally. EplerWood International oversees the development of sustainable tourism as a tool to economically benefit underserved rural populations and as a means to support the conservation of protected areas and biodiversity. The firm is well versed in developing sustainable tourism strategies on a national and regional basis. Our work in countries from Cambodia to Honduras to Sierra Leone has consistently leveraged the practical approaches and concrete outcomes donors and local leaders have been searching for.

Corporate Capacities

• Industry: advising adventure and ecotourism operations, hotels, tour operators, cruise, and transportation;
• Environment: managing sustainable development of mainstream and ecotourism;
• Poverty alleviation: creating income-generating opportunities for the bottom billion;
• Business: developing micro to medium-sized enterprises in local economies;
• Government: advising regional and national planning of tourism development, growth and policies.

Strategic Partnerships

• Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard School of Public Health
• Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, Cornell University Johnson School of Management
• Sustainable Travel International
• The International Ecotourism Society
• United Nations Environment Programme