Mr. Richard Pace (CEO) is co-founder and President of UDM Land Sciences, a developer of GIS-based ecological asset and liability systems for use by the real estate industry. The Company holds copyrights and a provisional patent on Internet spatial technologies, land and property assessment methods, and an integrated Real Estate Decision Support System. UDM also provides a variety of land survey and environmental services. He has been responsible for EAM project development, managing partnerships with The Nature Conservancy, Rhode Island Economic Policy Council, and several others.  Mr. Pace holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and an M.F.A. in Visual Language Studies from Indiana University . He began his career developing science publishing and information systems for the University of Chicago Press and later co-founded Scientific American Library involving a restructuring of W.H Freeman Publishers.

Dr. Edward Straker (Associate) is an energy systems engineer and environmental scientist with extensive experience developing and managing technical services businesses, e-commerce, and international joint ventures. Dr. Straker was an Executive VP and Board Member for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) with a 30 year record of developing and operating the company's environmental and energy staff of 3000 professionals in 50 offices. Edward Straker provided SAIC with energy and environmental systems capabilities including new technology analysis, commercialization assessment, marketing strategies, and acquisitions.

Mr. Peter Gengler (CFO) co-founded UDM Land Sciences. He holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in graphic design. Mr. Gengler has practiced for thirty years specializing in large-scale way finding systems and identity programs. In the eighties, Mr. Gengler and Mr. Benno Wissing, a founding partner of the firm Total Design – one of the leading design firms in Europe - created the Wissing Gengler Group. Their design projects ranged from airport signage systems to corporate identities and product design. Mr. Gengler also has extensive experience in asset markets from his family history with the New York Stock Exchange.

Dr. Edward Sanders (Treasurer) is an economist who evaluates sustainable development projects and prepares economic analyses, market surveys, business plans, and financing proposals.  He previously served in high-level U.S. Government positions (Associate Director of OMB and Staff Director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).  Following his government service, he co-founded two international business and environmental consulting firms – IPAC, Inc. and Sanders International, Inc.  He is a founding partner in an innovative 20-square-mile conservation and ecotourism project in Southern Belize that anchors a 90-square-mile public/private conservation zone protecting the country’s last stretch of tropical forest connecting the mountains to the coast.  He has a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University and attended the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School .

A Senior Counselor at USEPA ( Partner in mid 2008) who is an economist. He provided policy and management counsel, focusing on strategic planning, inter-Agency and cross-program leverage and integration, and the linkage of conservation and conventional environmental management. He also represented EPA on matters of international conservation policy, primarily through the IUCN and its World Commission on Protected Areas, of which he served as Vice Chair. From 2000 to 2004, he was Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute focusing on the application of business management theory and practice to conservation, as well as the role of global change (biophysical, socioeconomic and institutional) in managing protected landscapes. From 1995 until 2000, he was Deputy Assistant Administrator of the EPA Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation. In this capacity he was the senior career manager of a 400- person technical staff responsible for economic and risk analysis, environmental statistics and information, global climate change policy analysis and regulatory innovation and efficiency. Between 1985 and 1995 he served as director of multiple policy analytic offices encompassing issues of agriculture and natural resources.

Ms. Mary Snieckus (Chairman of the Board) is a forester and natural resource policy analyst. She has consulted with agencies and national NGO's on forestland conservation and management issues, and evaluated forest policy impacts and effectiveness.  She has recently been working to establish a consortium of federal agencies and national organizations to facilitate ecosystem service markets. As the first Executive Director of the Forest Stewards Guild, she led the expansion of programs and membership, and contributed the organization's views on forest management and natural resource policies to professionals and policymakers at local, state and national levels. She worked with high-level USDA officials to develop and implement programs to address land conservation issues. Her career began in the field, as a forester working with farmers and forestland owners to design and implement conservation practices. She holds a BS in Forest Science from the University of Wisconsin , and an MS in Forest Policy from the University of New Hampshire .

Strategic Partners

Matthew Felton (GIS and Internet Applications) is the Director of the Towson University Center for GIS (CGIS) in Towson , Maryland , which coordinates Maryland ’s Spatial Data Infrastructure and is a geospatial hub for many east coast GIS projects. He has a M.S. in Information and Telecommunication Systems from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Geography and Economics from Towson University . He co-chaired Maryland ’s strategic and business planning committee for Statewide GIS Coordination.

Mr. Kevin Essington, Director, Borderland Program, The Nature Conservancy

Dr. David Gregg, Executive Director, Rhode Island Natural History Survey

Dr. Stephen Swallow, Environmental and Natural Resource Economist, University of Rhode Island