Megan Epler Wood

Megan Epler Wood is a thought leader, pioneer, teacher, speaker and consultant on questions of managing sustainable tourism for destinations, business, and civil society. She has led her firm EplerWood International since 2003 to design net positive regional tourism development projects working in over 25 countries with support from the World Bank, IFC, IDB, GIZ and USAID. From 2010-2021 her research and on-line courses at Harvard University vetted a wide range of solutions to help protect destinations using science-based, technology-powered measures together with socially and environmentally responsible business development techniques. As Managing Director of the Sustainable Tourism Asset Management Program (STAMP) at Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, she leads research on sustainable use of global resources and is presently dedicated to addressing the tough questions of Building Back Better tourism sustainably as it scales upward after the historic COVID 19 downturn of 2020-2021. Epler Wood has produced two key reports on this topic in 2020 found here in partnership with the Pacific Asia Travel Association. She wrote her 2017 book, Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet while at Harvard and the 2019 report Destinations at Risk; The Invisible Burden of Tourism working with the Travel Foundation and Cornell to speak to a broad audience and address the gaps in governance, business and civil society models for meeting the aspirational goals of sustainable tourism worldwide.