Learn more about the Slate of Directors for the 2024-2028 Term. All IPS Officers are elected for two-year terms, serving from one Biennial to the next. The Board of Directors is divided into groups elected for four-year terms. The groups are elected at alternating biennials to ensure continuity within the IPS Board.
Robert Blenker
Past President
Palmetto, Florida, USA
Mr. Blenker brings decades of overseas grassroots development and non-profit experience as well as private sector skills. Since 2000, he has worked as a renewable energy executive, bringing clean energy to markets around the world. His previous experience includes nearly 14 years as senior international staff for the US Peace Corps, as well as overseas stints as a journalist. He has lived in nine countries, worked in 23, and visited more than 100. Blenker’s interests in palms stems from their importance as “charismatic key indicator species” for threatened habitats around the world. Some of the most interesting species come from some of the most diverse and fragile micro-habitats and serve as reminders that our world is varied and perishable and that we must be leaders in preserving its rich diversity. His involvement with the IPS dates to before his first biennial in Rio in 2010. Since then, he has participated in the biennials in Thailand/Vietnam, Miami/Cuba, and a mid-term in Madagascar. In addition, he is an active member of the Central Florida Palm and Cycad Society. Born in Wisconsin, and raised in the mid-West, he call the west coast of Florida home, although he divides his time between Florida, Grenada, Jamaica, and Latin America. Mr. Blenker is past chair and continues as a director of the Caribbean Student Environmental Alliance. He speaks English, Spanish, and Portuguese. He holds a BS in Wildlife Management/Natural Resources Administration from The Ohio State University where he won the Konrad Lorenz Award for outstanding ethological studies. He also holds an MAIA in International Administration and Development Economics from Ohio University.
Bill Baker, Ph.D.
Editor
Kew, United Kingdom
Bill Baker is a Senior Research Leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK and Honorary Professor in the Department of Biology at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has a lifelong passion for plants, discovering palms (by way of orchids and alpine plants) in 1994 when he commenced his doctoral studies under the mentorship of John Dransfield on the evolution and classification of rattans (Calamus, etc.) and their relatives. He was an early adopter of DNA methods in palm research. Bill and his collaborators built the genetic foundations that underpin the evolutionary classification of the family that we use today, radically reconfiguring subfamilies, tribes, subtribes and genera, as well as revealing remarkable novelties such as Dransfieldia, Manjekia and Wallaceodoxa. An avid fieldworker, he has explored extensively for palms in the Indo-Pacific region, especially New Guinea and Madagascar. Bill has published over 260 scientific articles and books, mostly on palms. He is a co-author of Genera Palmarum – the Evolution and Classification of Palms (2008) and, in 2024, he led the publication of the benchmark monograph The Palms of New Guinea, which documents all 250 species found on the largest tropical island in the world. Bill has undertaken several service roles in the palm community, including co-founding the European Network of Palm Scientists in 2001, chairing the IUCN Palm Specialist group from 2009 to 20018, and serving as subject editor for palms for the journal Phytotaxa for more than a decade. With Scott Zona, he currently co-edits the IPS journal PALMS.
Juliano Borin
Board Member
Brazil
Agronomist, landscape designer, and educator. Juliano works as a botanical curator at Instituto Inhotim, Brazil. He is also the current president of the Brazilian Palm Society and a board member of the Brazilian Network of Botanical Gardens. Passionate about the beauty of palms and the complexity of tropical forests, he enjoys plant collection expeditions and traveling the world to explore plants and cultures. Juliano aims to contribute to the dissemination and use of palms in landscaping within botanical gardens and private collections. Honored to be part of this group and collaborate with everyone to enhance our awareness of nature.