Matt Huber, Executive Vice President, Belfort Furniture oversees day-to-day operations. Matt is responsible for moving Belfort Furniture forward with technological advances such as implementing ecommerce into the company’s revenue stream and online design help services. He has a keen eye for new trends in merchandising to draw a younger consumer to the showroom. Currently, Matt is overseeing a store expansion to include 160,000 square feet of additional retail space.
Rene de Kok is the Commercial Director of Scancom International AS, a Danish manufacturer of Garden furniture with manufacturing plants in Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil. Rene is based in Vietnam where Scancom has its biggest production presence and major showrooms. Rene’s experience with retailers from around the world and their environmental and social compliance requirements together with Scancom’s company policy of doing business the right way gives us a vast experience in our business.
Erika Heet is the Editor-in-Chief of Interiors magazine. She is the former Los Angeles Editor of Dwell and the former Editorial Director of Dwell on Design, and spent eight years as a senior editor at Architectural Digest. Her work has appeared in 1stdibs.com’s Retrospective magazine, the Berkeley Fiction Review and Sierra Magazine. Erika has long championed original and sustainable design, and lives with her artist husband and two children in Topanga, California.
Kathryn has been the VP of Sales for Libeco Inc. since early 2007 and has a passion for natural fibers and empowering employees to reach their greatest potential. She has held management positions in the retail and wholesale textiles industry with companies such as F. Schumacher, Williams-Sonoma Inc., and Revman International. She is an active member of WithIt and a current Board Member of ITMA, the non-profit organization which sponsors Showtime, the largest wholesale textiles show in North America. She is married and currently living in Norwalk, CT.
Warren Clark is the Visual Projects Manager and Director of North East Regional Sales at Home Trends & Design (HTD) . . . one of the founding members of SFC. HTD's primary vision is to create the world’s best solid wood furniture from sustainable and reclaimed materials. Warren has helped HTD become one of Inc.
Jillian Pritchard Cooke is the founder of Wellness Within Your Walls, which aims to connect the global family with healthy eco-sensitive products that result in beautiful, sustainable, non-toxic environments.
Blake Millinor, Valdese Weavers
Gat Caperton is the president and CEO of Caperton Furnitureworks, a West Virginia manufacturer of hand-made, solid-wood home furniture that he acquired from its founder in 1996. Caperton Furnitureworks, originally named Tom Seely Furniture, the 40+ year-old business now employs over 100 skilled people in Berkeley Springs and sells its furniture throughout the U.S. In 1990, Caperton received a B.A. in Economics from Davidson College, where he also played on the school's football team.
Amy Smith is Senior Program Officer with World Wildlife Fund’s Global Forest and Trade Network-North America (GFTN-NA) program. She assists companies in understanding the sources of their forest products, implementing responsible sourcing policies, increasing the amount of credibly certified products in their supply chain, and in making market linkages between wood buyers and suppliers that share a commitment to responsible forestry and trade.
Jeronimo (Jerry) Cooklin founded the Sustainable Furnishings Council to transform the home furnishings Industry and to help preserve the world’s forests. Involved in the furniture Industry since 1986 and in Sustainable Development since 1998, he put these two together to form SFC in late 2006. Founder of PaTS, a Peruvian nonprofit org in the Peruvian Amazon working since 2000 with Yanesha indigenous community members to become artisans and business people to create a sustainable living for their families while preserving their forests. Founded MaderArt & Tecnolog
