Board of Directors

Anne E. Russon, PhD (Exec. Director)
Since 1989, Anne has been studying intelligence and learning in ex-captive Bornean orangutans rehabilitatedand released to free forest life.  Studies have been affiliated with orangutan projects in Tanjung Puting National Park, Central Indonesian Borneo, and Orangutan Reintroduction Projects in East and Central Indonesian Borneo.She has published numerous research and popular articles on orangutan intelligence, scholarly and popular books on great ape intelligence. She has contributed to several documentaries on orangutans as scientific advisor and participant.
 
She serves on advisory boards for several orangutan support organizations (Alchemy Films, Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation–Indonesia, the Orangutan Conservancy, Orangutan Network).

Rob Laidlaw
Rob has spent more than 30 years campaigning to protect animals of all kinds. His work has taken him from Canada's north to tropical Asia and includes more than 1,000 visits to zoos around the world. He is a Chartered Biologist, avid outdoorsman, and cave explorer, a founder of the wildlife protection organization Zoocheck Canada, and author of two books.

Kristin Andrews, PhD
Kristin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at York University, and foudner of York's Cognitive Science program. Her interests in animal and child social cognition and communication have always extended beyond the armchair, and she dirtied her hands with dolphins in Hawaii, children in Minnesota, and orangutans in Borneo. Her book Do Apes Read Minds? Toward a New Folk Psychology , which argues that a more empirically adequate account of folk psychology will lead to better research programs in comparative cognition, will be published by MIT Press in 2012.

Laura Adams, MA
Laura is currently working on her PhD in Psychology at York University under the supervision of Dr. Suzanne MacDonald. Her research focuses on cognitive development in orangutans. She travels to Indonesian Borneo to study infant and juvenile orangutans at rehabilitation projects. These young orangutans are orphaned due to reduced habitat from palm oil plantations and the illegal pet trade. They are rehabilitated to be released back into the rain forest to help preserve this endangered species. For her master's degree in 2004 she observed social learning: how young orangutans learn what to eat from each other. For her PhD she is studying the cognitive and social aspects of play.

Treasurer - Michael Reid, MA
Michael is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He has been involved in primate and orangutan conservation since 2002. His research focuses on disease organisms of orangutans, orangutan and disease co-evolution and orangutan evolution. He is also interested in diseases of conservation importance to orangutans and other apes such as Tuberculosis. He is a past co-chair of the Conservation Committee of the American Society of Primatologists and has been volunteering with BOS Canada since 2008.

Secretary - Charmaine Quinn
Charmaine is dedicated to working with animals in need and donating her time and her heart to them. Her weekends are spent at the Toronto Wildlife Centre, the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada, the Toronto Zoo and Story Book Farm. Her love for orangutans has her volunteering her time at the Toronto Zoo as an interpreter for the orangutans. Charmaine has made several visits to Borneo where she worked at the rehabilitation centre where she cared for orphaned and ex-captive orangutans.

Scientific Advisors
Dr. S. Wich
Dr. R. Shumaker
Dr. I. Singleton