Jessica Grillo, Founder & Principal Consultant

I started my career watching ecosystems and livelihoods collapse together. As Director of Livelihoods for the USAID Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET), I spent four years working in regions where the line between environmental destruction and human suffering was impossible to ignore. That experience shaped everything that came after: a deep conviction that you cannot solve ecological problems without addressing the communities that depend on those ecosystems, and vice versa.

For two decades, I have worked across 30 countries with farmers, communities, NGOs, corporations, UN agencies, and standards bodies — helping them build sustainability strategies and measurement systems that are rigorous, equitable, and actually work in the real world. I co-designed a forest conservation standard and quality framework for the Equitable Earth Coalition, built the IDH Salary Matrix for living wages in global agriculture, brought social sustainability to the forefront for Rainforest Alliance, and helped leading standards and platforms enable 30+ global companies to advance measurable commitments across complex landscapes.

In 2019, I founded Heartwood to do this work on my own terms — with the depth of engagement and the quality of thinking that complex problems require.

I live in Bend, Oregon, in the heart of wildfire country, in a landscape that is changing fast. More and more I am focusing the skills I've built globally — systems thinking, stakeholder facilitation, program design, performance measurement — here at home.

Jessi holds a Master's in International Development from Clark University's Department of Sustainability and Social Justice (formerly IDCE). She serves on the Board of Directors for Living Wage For US. Jessi is currently working toward her NFPA Wildfire Mitigation Specialist Certification.

Jessica Grillo

Associated Consultants

Will Crosse

Anna Buxaderas

Will has over 20 years of experience designing and implementing inclusive conservation initiatives across Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. With experience working at the intersection of sustainable land use management and value chain development, Will is passionate about building collective action among communities, governments, NGOs, and the private sector to create aligned business cases and shared value for conservation in threatened forest landscapes. He is a firm believer that conservation and restoration must

centre on the customary traditions, rights and needs of communities to create equitable and durable incentives that address the root causes of biodiversity loss.

Between 2005 and 2022, Will worked for the Rainforest Alliance and Conservation International designing science-based frameworks and tools for monitoring, evaluating and adaptively managing nature-based solutions that support economic prosperity for rural communities while delivering durable conservation outcomes. More recently, he was Vice-President of Impacts at Everland overseeing a team responsible for project due diligence and impact evaluation and reporting. During this tenure, he also helped design Equitable Earth, a pioneering voluntary carbon market standard and platform focused on ending deforestation and biodiversity loss by driving climate finance directly to Indigenous Peoples and local communities via community-led forest conservation projects.

Will holds an MSc. in Oceanography from the University of Southampton, UK. He is currently based in Nairobi where he enjoys exploring the natural and cultural wonders of East Africa with his family.

Will and Jessi worked closely at Rainforest Alliance, and recently worked together again for Equitable Earth

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Anna Buxaderas

Anna is always on a quest for the ingredients of a creative, happy and sustainable life and the recipe for a fair and just world where all living creatures can exist, thrive and flourish. Willing to re-connect with nature after twenty years of corporate work and big city living, she moved with her partner to a small rural community, between the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean sea, where she now balances her consulting work with tending a vegetable orchard and some art practice. She loves the taste of freshly picked ripen tomatoes, the sound of bells and knowing her neighbours.

During her work at different positions for multinational corporations from various sectors, Anna was responsible to develop, implement, audit and certify integrated quality, environment and health and safety management systems in Europe, South Asia, and Latin America, gaining expertise on project and team management as well as awareness on the difficulties and challenges of driving change and promoting the sustainability agenda within complex organisations.

After her MBA, she established herself as an independent consultant and, for the last 10 years, she has helped scheme owners, companies and producer organisations to improve the requirements and audit process methodologies of sustainability schemes and company codes of conduct by providing benchmark, research, gap analysis and expert advice.

Anna also works in collaboration with other small consultancy firms, where she supports the development and implementation of sustainability strategies and provides training on sustainability topics such as certifications and living wages.

Anna has worked with Jessi on the IDH Roadmap on Living Wages and other related corporate initiatives.

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