Jan McAlpine was appointed by the UN Secretary-General in November 2008 to head the Secretariat of the United Nations Forum on Forests Secretariat, based at UN Headquarters in New York, and serve as its Director. She served previously as the Senior Advisor and lead for Forests in the US Department of State in Washington, DC and before that with the Environmental Protection Agency and at the White House, first with the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and then in the Office of the US Trade Representative as a negotiator on issues relating to international forest and timber trade.