Alan Koch owns and operates Gold Country Orchids where he specializes in miniature and compact Cattleyas along with miniature species. Alan started growing orchids in 1969 with three Cymbidiums given to him by an aunt. While in college he became interested in other orchids and discovered many would grow outdoors in Southern California. He has moved five times as his orchid obsession has led to the need for more growing space. With the last move, he purchased 10 acres of land in Lincoln, California for his 250,000 orchids. He is recognized as an expert in the Brazilian Cattleya alliance and a trend setter in miniature compact and Cattleya breeding. Alan has been published in the Orchid Digest, the American Orchid Society magazine, Orchids, as well as many International Publications. He has also been published in several proceedings of the World Orchid Conference. He is an internationally known speaker. He is a past member of the AOS Judging Committee, and the Research Committee, as well as an Emeritus Judge and is Training Coordinator for the California-Sierra Nevada Judging Center. Alan also served two terms on the Orchid Digest Executive Committee and 3 terms on the Board of Directors, as well as two terms as a Trustee for the AOS. He is currently the First Vice President for the International Phalaenopsis Alliance. Alan is also well known for the many AOS auctions he has done.

Art holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State and an MBA from James Madison University. He founded Chadwick & Son Orchids Inc. in 1989 with his father who had been growing orchids since 1943. The Chadwicks' first book, The Classic Cattleyas, from 2006 sold out and an updated second edition was released last year. Martha Stewart favorably reviewed the book and had both Chadwicks on her TV Show. A second book, First Ladies and their Cattleyas: A Century of Namesake Orchids, chronicles the long-standing tradition of naming classic orchid hybrids after America's First Ladies.

Barb has been raising orchids since 2004 and teaching orchid classes throughout the country since 2015. She is a regular instructor for the New York Botanical Gardens, the Smithsonian Associates, Longwood Gardens, and a local community college. In 2016, Barb published her introductory orchid care book, Orchid Care: For the Beginner. She also has had the privilege of writing articles for the American Orchid Society’s (AOS’s) Orchids magazine and in 2021 she created a children’s sticker book for regional conservation events.

Bill Thoms has grown and shown orchids for more than 45 years in the central Florida area. He has more awards for Culture in Bulbophyllums than anyone else in the world (51 so far) – and he and Doris Dukes together have 105 Cultural Awards in 30 different genera. The American Orchid Society has added a new Annual Award for the Bulbophyllums, the Bill Thoms Award. Bill gives talks all over the world on a wide range of topics ranging from his specialty, “Bulbophyllums”, to General Orchid Culture.

Carlos J. Pasiche has been passionate about orchids since he was 14, when a neighbor’s collection introduced him to their incredible diversity and beauty. From that moment, he couldn’t get enough, reading everything he could, growing orchids, and spotting them in the wild back home in Puerto Rico. When college took over, he passed his collection to his grandmother, only keeping a few on a windowsill now and then. After a career pivot during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carlos J. dove back into orchids completely, focusing on recreating native jungle parameters using structured indoor grow setups.

Carol Beule is an EMMY award winning Costume Designer with a Master of Fine Arts in both Costume and Lighting Design from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She was a professional Costume Designer from 1974 until her retirement in July of 2017. She has grown all species of orchids since purchasing a home at the base of the Hollywood Hills 25 years ago, and it has been her quest to discover which orchids will thrive in the unique climate we have in the San Fernando Valley and its surrounding areas, with a specialized master focus on traditional Japanese Fuukiran Neofinetia styles.

Carol Holdren is an accredited AOS judge and long-standing community pillar within the South Florida orchid network. She specializes in instructional frameworks for hobbyists seeking to maximize their collections without greenhouse infrastructure, alongside leading judicial evaluation tours across Central and South America.

Carol Klonowski has been growing orchids since the 1980's when a friend in Berkeley, California, gave her a cattleya and it bloomed out with three big, dark lavender flowers and an intoxicating fragrance. She built an entire greenhouse in her backyard to accommodate the precious plant, which only led her to buy more orchids. Then another friend gave her a gift membership to the Orchid Society of California and it's been a serious hobby and passion ever since. She can recall going to monthly meetings and quickly getting pulled into administration, currently providing lectures across the West Coast circuit.

I have been growing orchids for over 35 years. I am a certified Orchid Judge in the Chicago Judging Center where I serve as Treasurer. I am also Past President of the MidAmerican Orchid Congress, also serving on the Education Committee. I am a member of the Batavia Orchid Society, Batavia, Illinois. I have been its president for three terms. I am currently working with the AOS in presenting their digital educational webinars and serve across Governance, Library, and Education groups.

Christopher Satch is a Professor at the New York Botanical Gardens, as well as the CEO and Founder of NYC Plant Help, a horticultural consultancy for indoor and outdoor growers in the greater New York area. Having been featured on NPR, the Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, and more, Christopher breaks down the science behind growing plants and explains how plants grow in human-understandable terms. Having specialized in plant physiology and pathology, you can ask him any orchid growth or botanical question.

Dr. Daniel L. Geiger has grown orchids since about 2004, soon specializing in the overlooked genus Oberonia. He has served on and chaired the AOS Research Committee and held occasional board appointments with local orchid societies. He has given talks on orchids locally as well as internationally (e.g., Australia, UK, Singapore), and visited herbaria around the globe (AMES, B, BM, CANB, E, F, K, L, MICH, MO, NSW, P, SEL, SOG, SING, US, W, WU, Z, ZU). He served as guest editor for the journal Rheedea.

After receiving his degree in biochemistry from the University of Toronto, Dave opted to step outside his chosen field and operated a tropical fish import business for eight years. Upon returning to school, Dave received a degree in enology and viticulture from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. While attending Brock, Dave began acquiring orchids one 2” pot at a time and before he graduated, Dave had over 100 orchids. Winemaking and a passion for orchids prompted Dave to seek a warm climate path to California, establishing Paph Paradise to breed championship line slipper orchids.

Dayaneth Portilla is an international ambassador for Ecuagenera, specializing in the field documentation of native Ecuadorian species. Her lectures bring massive photographic habitat reviews straight from cloud forests, connecting native ecosystem observations to successful culture protocols inside modern domestic greenhouses.

Deborah’s interest in orchids was sparked by a trip to Hawaii and she has been under their spell for over 30 years. She started with a few plants and her mixed orchid collection expanded exponentially with the construction of a greenhouse in 2014. She joined the Windsor Orchid Society in 2013 to gain more orchid knowledge and found herself in the President's position six months later. She is a very active member of the WOS, involved in fundraising and publicity and has recently taken on the role of Show Chair.

Clark Riley has been an active orchid grower since 1957. At the age of six, he got his first plant, a probably-collected Yellow Ladyslipper (Cypripedium pubescens) from a perennial nursery. The plant died a miserable death in a short time, but not before blooming and cementing a love of orchids that has lasted over half a century. He has labored ever since to make amends by promoting the sound cultivation of Ladyslippers. He grows a wide range of orchids, including several thousand terrestrials across engineered cold-beds.

Dr. Bill Goldner is best known in the orchid world as the owner of Woodstream Orchids with his wife Lynn Evans-Goldner. A life-long outdoorsman, Bill’s current passion is fly fishing for trout, steelhead, and salmon, a passion he shares with Lynn and their son Zane. Many of the hybrid and cultivar names registered and used by Woodstream Orchids are names of the many places they have fished. He is globally celebrated for pioneering stable commercial breeding lines of the rare species Phragmipedium kovachii.

Ed Weber began growing orchids in 1999 after he inherited his grandmother's collection. Not a 'Plant Person', his curiosity got the better of him and he began reading about these marvelous exotic treasures that were now in his care. 12 plants became 20, which became 50, and so forth until his home and garage looked like a tropical rainforest! In 2001 he joined The Southeastern Pennsylvania Orchid Society (SEPOS) and soon learned that he needed to become an expert in winter modifications for indoor collections.

Eric has been growing orchids for over 30 years under the greenhouse name of River Valley Orchids and specializes in South American Species with a focus on Brassia, Maxillaria and Phragmipedium. He has spoken internationally and across the United States. Eric has had culture chapters published by Guido Braem in his book on Paphiopedilum and in his book on Phragmipedium. He also has a feature article on Maxillaria in Orchid Digest and several of his Maxillaria photos published across leading taxonomy books.

Erica Hannickel is a nonfiction author and professor of history at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, as well as a master gardener. An orchid enthusiast for more than 20 years, she currently grows about 150 orchids at home on two baker’s carts and in a miniature orchid cabinet. Her most recent book Orchid Muse: A History of Obsession in Fifteen Flowers (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022) chronicles little-known stories of orchids involving empresses, artists, enslaved people, and naturalists throughout historic records.

Professionally, Eron is a pilot, but he is also a very diverse orchid grower and hobby breeder. He received his first orchid (a cattleya) as a gift from his dad in 2002 and first started growing them hanging outside, on windowsills, and then under lights. His orchid collection really took off in 2008 after he built a greenhouse and now has about 1000 orchids. He specializes in Phragmipediums and blue Cattleyas and has even done his own hybridizing with them. His most recent passion is implementing high-heat defense mechanisms for standard cool-growing cloud forest species.

Francisco Miranda is a world-renowned taxonomist, author, and owner of Miranda Orchids. Since 1981, he has specialized in studying the wild orchid habitats of Brazil, mapping out local species variations across South American interior plateaus and coastal rainforest paths. He provides highly specialized, slide-driven breakdowns detailing exactly how native geography shapes greenhouse cultural adaptations.

Fred Clarke has dedicated over 44 years to developing orchid hybrids and producing select species for the orchid enthusiast. These hybrids are one-of-a-kind plants, like original pieces of art. Fred began growing orchids and built his first greenhouse in 1977. He is committed to the education of orchid hobbyists from around the world in the culture of their plants. He is also a professional grower and manager in the horticultural industry; he applies these skills at his orchid nursery, Sunset Valley Orchids.

I was bitten by the orchid bug about 20 years ago. My first orchid was…you guessed it, a white phalaenopsis. It wasn’t until my mother-in-law sent me home with two boxes full of not-white phalaenopsis that I became obsessed. Sound familiar? Next came joining the Western North Carolina Orchid Society. From there it was Board member, Vice President, President, and Annual Show Chair (for 11 years). I am currently serving on the AOS Membership and Marketing Committee and the Affiliated Societies Commission.

Graham Wood runs Lehua Orchids in Hawaii, a prominent commercial nursery specializing in advanced slipper orchid hybridization lines. He travels rarely but conducts highly technical digital lectures on Paphiopedilum selection criteria and standard judicial metrics.

I am a native of Athens, GA, and graduate of Princeton and Duke University Medical School. I divided my medical career between Duke and Carolinas Healthcare System in Charlotte. I retired from the latter in 2008 and currently work as a medical consultant doing disability determinations for Social Security and overseeing continuing medical education for the NC Medical Society. An acquaintance abandoned some Cattleya plants on my porch about 40 years ago and the disease caught hold. I joined the Triangle Orchid Society and rapidly expanded into specialized Dendrobium alliances.

Harvey has been growing orchids for over 60 years, having received an overgrown Cattleya trianae as a gift from a family friend at about 10 years old, living in what became Silicon Valley. This was placed in a gift greenhouse. As an adult he has grown a wide variety of genera in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Nebraska, Mississippi and now coastal Washington in several greenhouses. He has won a number of AOS awards and belonged to local orchid societies as well as the AOS. Harvey is an accomplished historian who focuses heavily on optimizing root aeration profiles.

Helen Hersh historically operated Mount Prospect Orchids. Her programs are built specifically for indoor growers looking to transition from basic windowsill care to mastering high-humidity setups under lights or inside micro-spaces.

Helen is a proud civil servant and government employee. She did the academic route, never wants to grade another exam in her life. Went to China for two years, came home to work on the Asian Longhorned beetle invasion. Then went to work for the EPA. Got an offer from the USDA during the pandemic and now safeguards American Agriculture as well as Protects Human Health and the Environment. Her degrees are in Zoology, Biology, Statistics, and Entomology - all which fuel her highly detailed presentations on identifying, treating, and eradicating orchid greenhouse pests.

Jean Stefanik is an accredited AOS Judge and long-standing conservationist based in New England. She specializes in global travelogs focusing on terrestrial populations native to Oceania, coupled with historical breakdowns of regional exhibition judging.

Jeremy Losaw has been growing orchids for almost 20 years. He started by buying a previously bloomed Phal from the Lowe's bargain bin and reflowering it on his windowsill. He now grows in a 13' x 20' greenhouse that has internet-connected automation and too many plants. He is an amateur hybridizer, making over 100 crosses. He has two AOS cultural awards, and 2 AOS quality awards. He is a photographer for Carolina's Judging Center, and his photos have featured in Orchids magazine and Orchid Digest.

Operated by Jim and Melana Davison, Jim-N-I Orchids provides quality orchids for the novice to the advanced collector. Specializing in a diverse selection of exotic and showy genera, including Cattleya, Dendrobium, Phalaenopsis, Bulbophyllum and Catasetum. Plants for the novice are selected for ease of culture while plants for the advanced grower focus on the collectable species and contemporary hybrids. Jim and Melana are both accredited American Orchid Society judges, have garnered multiple cultural awards, and focus heavily on greenhouse environmental engineering.

Jim France is a specialized indoor grower focused on the complex temperature modifications needed to grow and bloom premium Andean slipper orchids and large-flowered Lycaste species underneath standard light shelves.

Joe Lankton is an active regional judge and slipper orchid specialist, delivering instructional programs centered around space optimization, clean root media selections, and growing micro-miniature species inside residential spaces.

Kathy Creger is a specialized indoor grower who cracked the code on managing high-humidity cool-growing genera like Dracula and Masdevallia directly within a standard upper Midwest home windowsill environment.

Keith and Dina Emig own and operate Winter Haven Orchid Nursery. They are commercial propagation specialists who deliver highly clear, step-by-step blueprints on sterile flasking procedures, seed pod harvest intervals, and clean community-pot deflasking protocols.

I am a third generation orchidholic; a member of the AOS, and several local Orchid Societies. I worked in my father’s orchid nursery throughout high school, college and beyond, till I left for the US in 1977. After almost 20 years away from the orchid scene, in 1994 I started growing orchids again. By 2010 I was laying the foundation for a hobby business; since 2017 I have been self-employed, and active in orchid shows throughout the Northeastern US. While my primary interest centers on Vanda lines, Fair Orchids specializes in cold-hardy slipper orchids and robust growing guidelines.

Dr. Larry Zettler runs the specialized Orchid Recovery Program at Illinois College. His work focuses extensively on laboratory sterile flask isolation of wild mycorrhizal fungi strains needed to successfully cultivate and restore critically endangered terrestrial orchid lines worldwide.

Manuel Aybar works in the Technology Industry. He is originally from the Dominican Republic (A grower’s paradise, as he describes it). He has been growing orchids for approximately 26 years. The genus that got him started was Dendrobium in which he specializes (phalaenopsis-type). Member of the American Orchid Society since 1997 and the Greater North Texas Orchid Society since 2000. Manuel Aybar is an Accredited Judge of the American Orchid Society Judging program, and serves currently as a Chair.

Marc Burchette is an active regional organizer and resource expert within the Blue Ridge orchid networks, giving highly functional talks on greenhouse conversions and baseline environmental monitoring systems.

Marc Hachadourian is the Director of Glasshouse Horticulture and Senior Curator of Orchids at the New York Botanical Garden. He manages one of the premier botanical institution collections in the country and presents deeply comprehensive lectures tracking advanced orchid evolution and terrestrial adaptations.

I am a retired middle/Junior high school science teacher. Taught over 30 years, 6th thru 9th grade science. Classes I taught ranged from general science to 8th and 9th grade honors physical science, honors biology and honors earth and space. Plus throw in some PE classes as well as basketball, football, softball and wrestling coach. My introduction to orchids came from one of the veteran teachers in my department, Phyllis Lerner, who created the incredible hybrid Clowesetum Raymond Lerner, cementing a lifelong fascination with Catasetinae moisture dynamics.

The author, Martin R. Motes Ph.D., a Research Associate at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, has maintained a lifelong interest in the genus Vanda. He began as a boy in the late 50’s collecting the new hybrids which were coming out of Hawaii and Singapore and growing them in a shade house in Miami. While still in high school, he started to import Vanda species from India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand in substantial quantities in order to select the best flowered forms for hybridization, completely revolutionizing modern cold-tolerant Vanda breeding lines.

Mary has been interested in plants for most of her adult life, and has been growing orchids on and off for the last 40 years, despite several cross country moves as part of her “other life” as a biomedical scientist. Her passion for orchids was rekindled when she moved to the San Francisco Bay area in 1997 and attended an orchid show. Returning home with a few plants, she decided to join a local orchid society to learn more about taking care of them, and from these beginnings, her current passion for documenting micro-species in-situ emerged.

Mary Jo Gilsdorf is an accredited AOS judge who specializes in historical genetic lineage reviews of foundation Cattleya parents, alongside tracking cold-tolerant Australian Dendrobium hybrid behaviors inside home collections.

I have been growing orchids since 1979 and have lectured to orchid societies in the United States and in Canada. I joined the Manhattan Orchid Society in 1980 and I am also a member of the North Jersey Orchid Society and the Ramapo Orchid Society. I started growing Phalaenopsis on windowsills 46 years ago. Several years later I started using baker’s racks with fluorescent lighting for growing Paphiopedilums. I have been growing in Orchidariums for over 27 years and these days I grow almost exclusively within highly regulated glass enclosures.

Operated by Jim and Melana Davison, Jim-N-I Orchids provides quality orchids for the novice to the advanced collector. Specializing in a diverse selection of exotic and showy genera, including Cattleya, Dendrobium, Phalaenopsis, Bulbophyllum and Catasetum. Plants for the novice are selected for ease of culture while plants for the advanced grower focus on the collectable species and contemporary hybrids. Jim and Melana are both accredited American Orchid Society judges, have garnered multiple cultural awards, and present extensive design portfolios for outdoor estate orchid integrations.

Nile Dusdieker is an active Midwestern orchid society fixture who presents extensively on large-specimen Phalaenopsis production alongside digital photo-travelogs covering South American high-altitude tracking paths.

Nina Rach is an accredited AOS judge who coordinates the baseline global web registry for the genus Stanhopea. Her programs detail basket culture configurations, pendant bloom architecture, and ecosystem tracking across coastal Brazilian rainforest belts.

Norman Fang is an internationally renowned hybridizer and owner of Norman's Orchids. He is a primary trendsetter within the global commercial Phalaenopsis community, presenting highly advanced deep-dives into mutant peloric traits and new genetic color discoveries.

Peter T. Lin is an accredited AOS judge specializing in small-stature boutique species. Operating Diamond Orchids, his highly structured lectures focus on maximizing miniature mount profiles, compact growth habits, and mastering Madagascar angraecoid allocations.

Prem Subrahmanyam is a master field naturalist and premier botanical photographer specializing in locating, documenting, and digitally preserving the image profiles of native North American and endangered Florida native orchids.

Dr. Rob Griesbach earned a Ph.D. in genetics from Michigan State University in 1980. The following year, he joined USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and retired in 2020. For his first 25 years, Rob conducted a broad-based research program in ornamental plant genetics. For the last 15 years, he served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Technology Transfer where he provided leadership for the management of the USDA-ARS’s intellectual property. He authored 151 scientific papers tracking anthocyanin color pigments and orchid heritage profiles.

Ron Kaufmann is chair of the American Orchid Society Conservation Committee and a founding director of the Orchid Conservation Alliance. Ron has been growing orchids for more than 25 years and has travelled extensively to view orchids in the wild in Asia and South America, particularly Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia. Ron is a marine biologist by training, and his scientific work includes studies of Antarctic and deep-sea ecosystems as well as marine communities in coastal Southern California. His background directly informs his rigorous habitat analysis lectures.

Ron is currently the organization’s Chief Education and Science Officer. He started growing orchids in Northern California about 60 years ago at the age of eight with a cattleya purchased from a local grower. This single plant quickly became a collection occupying every window facing east or south and his fascination with orchids has never waned. Over the years his private collection has numbered in excess of 2,500 plants; a direct result of no willpower or common sense. Ron’s professional chemistry background yields masterclass treatments of chemical pest controls and greenhouse security.

Ron Parsons has been growing orchids for nearly 49 years, and has been interested in the species for most of that time. He loves to photograph orchids and other flowers whenever he can, and does so as often as possible. Ron has more than 100,000 digital images, most of which are of orchids, and still retains a slide library that exceeds 100,000 botanical images. He has given more than 500 talks on various botanical topics, and has nearly 6500 published photos. Ron has co-authored four definitive books covering historical species distribution.

Steve Arthur runs a robust regional commercial operation in the Carolinas. An expert in greenhouse pathology, his targeted presentations focus on handling viral assays, greenhouse sanitization protocols, and utilizing local rot-resistant Cypress media variants.

Dr. Steve Beckendorf is a molecular biologist and prominent member of the Orchid Conservation Alliance board. His programs break down complex evolutionary chemistry, showcasing the highly advanced pheromonal trickery and physical mimics orchids utilize to manipulate native insect vectors.

Steven A. Frowine first started growing orchids under lights when he was in high school. Since then, his love and sometimes obsession for orchids has continued to grow. He has tended orchids professionally as a horticulturist when he worked in Hawaii at the National Tropical Botanical Garden and at Missouri Botanical Garden, where he was Chairman of Indoor Horticulture and managed one of the largest orchid collections in the United States — more than 10,000 plants. Steve’s greatest pleasure flows from translating complex professional greenhouse methods into easy, direct rules for residential indoor hobbyists.

Steve Gonzalez has been growing orchids for over 40 years. He is originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico. He worked with orchids in a local garden center and then gained more experience working with the specialized collections of native Caribbean botanic repositories, delivering deeply educational insights tracking high-heat tolerances across the Brachypetalum slipper alliance.

Andrea Niessen is an internationally recognized Colombian botanist, conservationist, and co-owner of Orquídeas del Valle. She is a foremost authority on native Colombian cloud forest distribution, delivering masterclasses focused on the massive morphological diversities found within the native Cattleya and micro-species geographic belts of the Andes.

He was born in Bangkok, Thailand. He received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Agriculture from Kasetsart University, Thailand and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Horticulture (Orchid breeding) from University of Hawaii, USA in 1984 under the supervision of Professor Dr. Haruyuki Kamemoto. After graduation, he started working on orchid breeding at the Department of Agriculture, Thailand, then moved to Mahidol University to teach and conduct research on orchid conservation and utilization. He acts as a primary institutional authority regarding Asian orchid seed cryopreservation techniques.

Gary Yong Gee is an Australian-born Chinese, and lives in Brisbane, Australia. He began growing orchids around 40 years ago. These days, he maintains a large hobby greenhouse, cultivating Australian native and exotic species. He has over 100,000 orchid photographs taken on travels to parts of Australia, New Guinea, Asia, Europe, Central and South America, South Africa, and Madagascar, at shows, and in situ. Gary is an orchid judge with the Australian Orchid Council and provides highly comprehensive overviews of unusual native lithophytes.