Kelpie Wilson is a writer and a mechanical engineer with a passion for wild nature and renewable energy. Throughout the 1990s, Kelpie was a forest protection advocate with the Siskiyou Regional Education Project, located in rural Oregon, where she lives off-grid and grows a large organic garden. She then turned to environmental journalism, where she learned about biochar. From 2008 to 2012 she worked for the International Biochar Initiative as a project developer and managed the multi-stakeholder process to create the first set of standards and testing guidelines for biochar. Since 2012, she has worked as an independent consultant on biochar production technologies and biochar markets for biochar companies, NGOs and government agencies. She pioneered development of the Flame Cap Kiln biochar production technology for use by forestry contractors and small farms, and presents many workshops each year bringing this technology to end users. She is a founding board member of the USBI.

Kathleen is the Chair of the IBI Board of Directors. She is also the US Director of the Ithaka Institute for Carbon Intelligence. The Institute is an open source network focusing on beneficial carbon sequestration strategies which simultaneously provide economic development opportunities both in the developed and developing world. She is an editor and writer for The Biochar Journal, sponsored by the Ithaka Institute. Kathleen also works with various different universities and individuals on projects that are investigating the use of biochar in cement and other building and packaging products to develop products with lower embodied carbon which can be made from locally available organic waste. She has written extensively about various topics related to biochar and is a co-author of the book "Terra Preta: How the World's Most Fertile Soil Can Help Reverse Climate Change and Reduce World Hunger" and “BURN: Using Fire to Cool the Planet”