Features Features Women in Forestry
Next-gen leaders: Stephanie Parzei

This year marks the 10th edition of CFI’s Top 10 Under 40 award, where we celebrate the bright young champions of our industry. We are very proud to present our industry’s top of the crop – the young leaders, innovators, change-makers, mentors who achieved so much at a young age, inspiring others, and giving back to their communities.

To acknowledge and highlight each winner’s contributions, CFI will feature one of 2022’s winners every week for the next 10 weeks.

This time, we introduce our readers to Stephanie Parzei, Interfor’s senior advisor for environment and forest certification, based in Nairn Centre, Ontario.

Stephanie has managed the implementation and maintenance of various certifications, including forest management, fibre sourcing, chain of custody and controlled wood for EACOM Timber.

The 34-year-old has been identified as a future leader within the company and has built and implemented an environmental management system for the manufacturing facilities. She has served as chair of the Central Canada SFI implementation committee for the past three years, and serves on the environment committees of FPAC and NCASI.

Stephanie is a provisional RPF in Ontario and is seen as a forest certification and sawmill environment expert within the Ontario forest sector. Stephanie also sits on certification advisory committees on the Timiskaming and Abitibi River forests.

“Under her leadership and through her pragmatic approach, she has provided guidance and advice in the achievement of dual certification and successful recertification for multiple and complex forests in northeastern Ontario. She has also been instrumental in the improvement of environmental management systems for these forests,” says colleague William Byman.

Next week we will showcase the achievements of winner Monika Patel.