Ryan Smith

Ryan is a second-year Master of Forestry student at The Forest School, at the Yale School of the Environment. He is specializing in agroforestry and tropical forest restoration.

Prior to coming to Yale, Ryan spent over 3 years working with smallholder farmers in Latin America. He has managed restoration efforts and supported long-term research on nontimber forest products in the Peruvian Amazon. In Ecuador, he helped an organic certified cacao cooperative verify ecological outcome resulting from management. In temperate North America, Ryan is studying barriers to adoption of agroforestry, with a particular interest in growing a chestnut industry in the Eastern United States. As an apprentice forester at the Yale Forests, Ryan conducted forests inventories and developed silvicultural prescriptions, managing for long-term ecological resilience and financial sustainability.

Ryan graduated with a B.S. in Environmental studies from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC. In his free time, he enjoys mountain biking, rock climbing, and salsa dancing.