Rosa Goodman

Tell us a little bit about yourself
“I was born on a farm in Indiana (USA) and have since travelled and lived all over the world —mostly for studying and research. I fell in love with tropical forests when I studied at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center in Costa Rica in 2005. I did my PhD at the University of Leeds and came to Sweden in 2017.”

What is your experience from global development work?
“I have worked a lot on carbon dynamics in managed forests and the climate change mitigation potential for tropical forests. Now I am expanding my focus to include wood product and market development. It’s complicated, but we see it as the only way to bring the enormous potential of natural forests to life and actually make things happen. My goal is always to harness the support of the Sustainable Development Goals (like limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C, restore 350 million ha of degraded land and forests) to find solutions that work for people from the bottom up.”

How can you contribute to SLU´s global mission?
“As network coordinator for the Forest Science faculty, it is my goal to build our internal network of people working in low-income countries because I think SLU could make a huge contribution to the forestry industry across the world. I also actively connect SLU with other networks in Sweden, such as the Gothenburg-based Focali network, and am on the steering committee for the upcoming DevRes2020 conference to be hosted at Umeå University this August.”