15 December
Local Date: Dec 14 2024 |
Local Time: 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Morais is an Associate Professor of Sustainable Tourism and a Tourism Extension Specialist at North Carolina State University. He is also the lead in(ve)stigator of People-First Tourism Lab, a participatory action research collective started at NC State and now involving researchers and community development partners globally (P1tLab.ncsu.edu). Morais supports small communities and microentrepreneurs across the State of North Carolina and internationally. Morais integrates the insight and energy of an increasingly rich team of scholars in disciplines ranging from Cultural Anthropology, Humanitarian Engineering, Social Business, Community Psychology, Design, and Computer Science. His disciplinary home is Social-psychology and through this lens he investigates how tourism microentrepreneurship is developed and how it may affect host communities ability to harness economic opportunity in their own terms. |
Dr. Kazem Vafadari is Director of International Center for Asia Pacific Tourism (iCAPt); and Academic Director of the Kunisaki City Research Center for world agriculture heritage in Oita, Japan. He is a Professor and Vice Dean for International Affairs, College of Sustainability and Tourism at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU). He worked with United Nations University and Kanazawa University in Japan before joining APU in 2011. He is an expert on sustainable tourism, natural resource management and tourism applications of agriculture heritage landscapes. His research background also includes community building, rural revitalization and destination branding. |
Leigh is Managing Director of the Institute for Tourism Leadership Australia and of Healthcare P/L. He is a former City Manager from Southeast Queensland, a national HR Manager and an educator. Leigh’s professional interests are in exploring the links between diversity, inclusion, resilience and wellness in communities. He has devised an Executive Wellness Leadership model in partnership with Australia’s GreenX7 and Thirdi, that he uses to mentor small communities and individual businesses. He was heavily involved in leadership training for resilience in bushfire natural disaster affected parts of Australia immediately before the pandemic. |
David is an experienced business consultant and management trainer. He has established Destination Capacity Co., in New Zealand to provide mentoring to businesses and small communities as they develop. He is a former Senior Manager (Education and Development) at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (Zurich), and a qualified trainer for the Global Sustainable Tourism Council. In addition, he researches, teaches and guest lectures on both service management and destination management related topics at several international tourism schools. In 2017, David was involved in UNWTO’s International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development as a speaker and research contributor, and in the virtu |
Marcus is Co-founder and Principal Consultant of Thirdi Management (https://insightintoimpact.com.au), a social impact measurement and sustainability evaluation specialist firm specializing in the development and use of management tools that enable organizations and communities to identify their core focus, measure social impact, track accountability, and deliver quality services at lower cost. His approach simplifies complex social perspectives to place community input into the heart of decision-making. With a PhD in conflict management during community-based tourism initiatives, Dr. Curcija has applied his proprietary process to resilience and decision-making in over 24 countries. To learn more about his work, please visit his recent showcase in Sustainability Leaders Project. |
Duarte B. Morais Moderator | |
Kazem Vafadari Moderator | |
Leigh Bennett Panelist | |
David Ermen Panelist | |
Marcus Curcija Panelist | |