Khamphay Manivong is a forester who has worked in a wide range of fields at a number of divisions and offices in the forestry sector since 1979. He was the deputy director of the Central Forestry Technician College, responsible for syllabus development and lectured in forest management, silviculture, botany, mensuration, inventory, land survey, land management and conservation. He was head and deputy head of a number of line and functional divisions of the Department of Forestry, the director of Forestry Research Centre and the Agriculture and Forestry Information Centre as well as the deputy director of the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI) before his current position as Deputy Director General of the Department of Forestry. He has been engaged in sustainable forest management in the Lao PDR for many years. He is among the first to be involved in introducing and developing models for community based/participatory forest management since its initiation in Lao PDR in the early 1990's. With the emerging needs to integrate forestry into climate change efforts, he has played an important role in the forestry sector in initiating Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in the Lao PDR.