Staff

Sophie Bastable lives on a farm in the mountains of central Portugal and shares her home with goats, chickens, two dogs, a cat, her partner and their toddler. She co-coordinates EPN’s forests, climate and biomass working group, with a particular focus on the organisational and strategic management of the group. Sophie has worked in the nonprofit sector all her life –  as a fossil fuel activist, a permaculture teacher, a wild land advocate, and a bioenergy campaigner. In her free time she helps out on a Forest School programme, where she gets to play in the forest with a group of under-5 year olds every week. What she likes most about the Global Paper Vision, is its emphasis on facilitating collaboration in order to take collective action – since it is only by working together effectively, that real change can be achieved.

Elizabeth Underwood is the Director of EPN North America. She comes to EPN with over two decades of experience in government relations, fundraising and non-profit management. She previously served as the executive director for New River Conservancy, North America’s oldest river.

Elizabeth received her Ph.D. in Public Policy from the J. William Fulbright College of the University of Arkansas. She also holds a Master’s degree in Higher Education from the University of Arkansas and an undergraduate degree in Literature from UNC Asheville. In 2013 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study higher education in Germany.

She is an avid outdoor adventurer with a special affection for whitewater kayaking.

Augustyn Mikos is the EPN International Coordinator. He is based in Cracow, Poland but often you can meet him roaming old forests of Białowieża Primeval Forest or Bieszczady Mountains in the Carpathians. His roots are in grassroots movements opposing degradation of last remaining fragments of old-growth forests in Poland. He shares his time between EPN and Association Workshop for All Beings, a Polish environmental NGO working for climate and biodiversity protection. He is co-author of several reports on forest management and the bioenergy sector in Poland.

Kim Porter is EPN North America’s Resource and Development Coordinator. She has been a core member of EPN since 2008, helping to shape its growth as a hub for collaboration across environmental and social justice campaigns. With over two decades of experience in the nonprofit sector, Kim brings deep expertise in coalition-building, project development, fundraising strategy, and organizational management.

Before joining EPN, Kim worked with leading institutions in conservation and experiential education. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kim is committed to fostering inclusive, cross-regional partnerships that advance just and sustainable solutions in the forest, paper, and biomass sectors. She is based in Western North Carolina and enjoys hiking, paddling, traveling, and reading.

Sergio Baffoni lives between Berlin and Rome, and from there he is coordinating the campaign to protect Indonesian rain-forests, run by the Environmental Paper Network together with around 50 national and international organisations. He has worked from for Greenpeace as researcher and forest campaign coordinator, taking part in field expeditions and investigations on illegal logging in Africa, Amazon, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. He helped to establish Terra! a new grassroots organization in Italy.

Mateus Carvalho lives in sunny Lisbon, in Portugal, where he was raised and born. He grew up with forest fires in the summer being the “new normal” in his eucalyptus-dominated country, frustrated with the decades-old, bad forest management. He is the Coordinator and Campaigner of EPN for Paper Packaging, focusing on reduction on consumption and the evolution of PPWR: Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation in European institutions. His studies are in economics, where he was mainly interested in its intersection with overall environmental sustainability. His background includes marketing for a telecommunications company, activism in human rights and climate change, associationism and political activism. He was one of the co-founders of the party Volt Portugal in 2020. Experienced in campaigning in both the activist and political spheres, he sees his favorite part in the Global Paper Vision the goals on reducing greenhouse gases emissions, as climate change has been a constant in the last decade.

Reija Mikkola is based in Helsinki, Finland where she lives with her family. She co-coordinates EPN’s Biomass Action Network with a focus on policy and networking. Her activist roots are in Greenpeace but her experience spans also to the field of development cooperation and global education. For the last five years she has worked in the grassroots organization Finnish Nature Association (Luontoliitto) focusing on youth-led activism and forest conservation. She now divides her time between EPN and Finnish Nature Association. Reija has a multicultural background having lived in Mexico and Canada, and having family connections to Brazil. She is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. Her core strengths lie in movement building and strategic campaigning, driven by a passion for transforming field-based insights into powerful collective action. In her free time she enjoys dancing, capoeira, meditation and roaming in forests.

Caleb Cordes began working with EPN in 2023 and draws from a background in copywriting and creative design as a Digital Media Specialist.

He studied Critical Theory and Theology at Lee University before pursuing a decade-plus path in the music industry as an artist, tour manager, and musician for hire.

Outside of his multi-hyphenate work, he is an avid runner on the trail systems of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.