George (Ed)ward Wilson, PHD

Ed co-founded Outdoor Underwriters Inc. in 2008. As Vice President, he manages the operations for all aspects of their forestry-related insurance products. Outdoor’s product lines include hunting lease liability, timberland liability, standing timber insurance, consulting foresters, prescribed burning and other related forestry products. This venture is backed by Ed’s 20 years of experience with placing business into the Lloyd’s insurance market and his management of underwriting contracts for forestry-related business. During this time, Ed expanded the hunting liability program nationwide from 1 to 30 million acres and developed underwriting contracts for several liability products including prescribed burning, forestry consultants errors and omissions and timberland.

In addition to his 20 years of employment in the insurance industry, Ed has 12 years of additional employment with Virginia Tech, West Virginia University and Weyerhaeuser where he was actively involved in research projects for timber management and operations research, timber harvesting, and workers compensation for logging contractors.

He has been a featured speaker at numerous forestry associations and landowner groups where presentations covered timber harvesting, landowner liability, workers compensation, and forestry operations. He also has authored numerous publications on topics as diverse as cable logging in the Appalachian Mountains, biomass energy, workers compensation for logging contractors, safety management and liability associated with landowners and recreational activities.

Ed is a certified forester and a member of the Society of American Foresters. Ed has earned the following degrees: a B.S. in Forest Management from West Virginia University; a M.S in Forestry Economics from West Virginia University; and a Ph.D. in Industrial Forestry Operations from Virginia Tech.