Scott Poynton

Scott Poynton has served as Executive Director of the Tropical Forest Trust (TFT) since its inception in March of 1999. He anchors the organization with a deep knowledge of timber operations in tropical countries gained from two decades of experience managing a variety of complex public and private sector forestry and wood production initiatives in 19 countries. Poynton helped establish the TFT while working as Managing Director of the Vietnam subsidiary of ScanCom International, the world’s largest supplier of wood outdoor furniture products. Poynton presided over tremendous growth in ScanCom Viet Nam while simultaneously developing a company-wide environmental policy to verify the legitimacy of tropical timber used by its Southeast Asian suppliers and manufacturers. Prior to his work at ScanCom, Poynton served as a forestry specialist for the World Bank, where he led forestry-related economic development efforts in Romania, Vietnam and India. In addition, he headed up a variety of projects in Vietnam, Laos, Russia and Papua New Guinea for an international consultancy that helps private sector companies improve forest business and management practices. Poynton began his career in forestry when he was only 21 years old and one of his first jobs involved supervising planning for wood production for a large native Eucalyptus forest in Tasmania. Poynton holds a Master of Science (Forestry) from Oxford University where he was awarded the Oxford Forestry Institute’s Jubilee Prize.