Board and Staff
Board Members of RLF and RLFF:
Because Resources Legacy Fund (RLF) and its supporting
organization, Resources Legacy Fund Foundation (RLFF) share the
same mission, staff, and operational strategy, they also share
distinguished members on their boards. RLF and RLFF are honored to have the
commitment, excellence, and expertise of these board members.
Don McGrath, Vice Chair
Mr. McGrath is managing partner of Diamond Bear Partners LLC,
a California Investment Company. He retired in January 2010 as
Chairman and CEO of both Bank of the West and the bank’s holding
company, BancWest Corporation. Mr. McGrath joined Bank of the West in 1975, and
became President in 1991 and CEO in 1996. During his tenure at Bank of the West,
he also held the positions of Vice President and Treasurer, Chief Financial
Officer, Director, and Senior Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer.
Mr. McGrath also serves on the boards of directors of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation,
the Deluxe Corporation, The Nature Conservancy of Idaho, Operation HOPE, Inc.,
Commonwealth Club of California, and Dominican University of San Rafael.
During the last decade, he has served on the boards of the Pacific Stock Exchange and
the Financial Services Roundtable.
John Schmidt is the former Executive Director of Resources
Legacy Fund and Resources Legacy Fund Foundation. Beginning in
2001, Mr. Schmidt served as the organization's Executive
Director and as Program Director for RLF's San Francisco Bay
Wetlands Restoration project.
Prior to joining RLF, Mr. Schmidt served for 18 years as the Executive Director of the California Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB), California's leading conservation real estate and restoration agency. During his tenure with WCB, Mr. Schmidt also served on the boards of directors of three different state conservancies as well as the California Trails and Greenways Foundation. He is past president of the Organization of Wildlife Land and Realty Specialists, and has worked on several committees of the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. He also worked in land-related activities with the California Division of Highways and the Alaska Department of Highways.
Mr. Schmidt holds a California Community College Teaching Credential, as well as a California Real Estate Broker’s license (inactive), is a certified real estate appraiser, and is a former member of the City of Lodi Planning Commission.
Jeanne Sedgwick is the former director of the Conservation
Program at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in Los Altos,
California. She oversaw the program's growth from an annual
grants budget of $500,000 in 1989 to $100 million in 2000. Under
her direction, the Conservation Program launched the
5-year, $175 million Conserving California Landscapes
Initiative, which helped protect nearly 500,000 acres of
California's critical habitats.
She has served in a variety of board positions, including chairman of the board of the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, the national affinity group of private foundations working on biodiversity conservation, and vice chairman of the board of trustees at Phillips Brooks School, an independent school in Menlo Park, California. Currently she is a member of the Advisory Board at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, and a trustee of WildAid, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization working on the consumer demand side of wildlife issues. In addition, she serves as a member of the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve's Coordinating Committee, also at Stanford University.
Gordon Smith is the former President and CEO (1997-2006) of the Pacific
Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), one of the nation's largest investor-owned
energy utilities. He joined PG&E in 1970 as a financial analyst and held a
number of financial positions in the company, serving as Treasurer as well as Senior
Vice President and Chief Financial Officer from 1991-1997.
Mr. Smith is a former Director of the California Chamber of Commerce and the Bay Area Council.
He also served as a Trustee of the University of San Francisco, a Director of the California Foundation
on the Environment and the Economy, and a Trustee of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Sandra Spelliscy
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(Ex Officio member as RLF
Executive Director; biography below.)
Barton H. Thompson, Jr., Chair
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Barton H. “Buzz" Thompson, Jr. is the Robert E. Paradise Professor
in Natural Resources Law at Stanford Law School and the Perry L. McCarty
Director and Senior Fellow of Stanford University's Woods Institute for the
Environment. A widely published author and recognized expert on water resources
and other environmental issues, Mr. Thompson was a partner at the law firm of O'Melveny & Meyers,
lecturer at the UCLA School of Law, and law clerk to United States Supreme Court Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist. He is a member of the California State Bar and the American Bar Association.
Mr. Thompson serves on the boards of The Nature Conservancy of California, the American Farmland Trust,
and the Sonoran Institute. He also serves as Special Master for the United States Supreme Court
in Montana v. Wyoming, which deals with the waters of the Yellowstone River.
He has served on the scientific advisory boards of a variety of organizations,
including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Barry Lawson Williams is the founder and retired Managing
General Partner of Williams Pacific Ventures, Inc., a real
estate and private equity investment and consulting firm.
Previously, Mr. Williams served as CEO of the American
Management Association International and President and CEO of C.
N. Flagg Power, Inc. Earlier in his career, he was Managing
Principal of Bechtel Investments and Senior Consultant with
McKinsey and Company.
Since 1987, Williams has served on 12 public company boards.
He currently serves on five: PG&E, CH2M Hill, Northwestern
Mutual Life Insurance, Simpson Manufacturing, and Sallie Mae. In
addition, Mr. Williams is a director for Sutter Health and for
Management Leadership for Tomorrow. He has also taught an
entrepreneurship course at the Haas Graduate School of Business,
UC Berkeley, and has been a senior environmental mediator with
JAMS (formerly, Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services), as
well as an environmental site trustee.
RLF and RLFF Staff:
Rosina Bugarin plans, directs, and coordinates accounting, budgetary, and administrative processes at RLF. She ensures that all accounting and budget activities are performed in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and in compliance with regulatory requirements. She also advises the Executive Director on decisions regarding financial planning and management for RLF as well as individual programs. Rosina brings more than 12 years of public accounting experience to RLF, with a decade of service at Gilbert Associates, Inc., where she most recently served as senior manager. At Gilbert, she focused on the financial audits of nonprofit organizations, trade associations, and privately held businesses. She holds a BA in Business Economics with an Accounting Emphasis from UC Santa Barbara and is a Certified Public Account (license active).
Judy
Colvin, Special Projects Associate
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Judy Colvin provides support on special projects to RLF’s
grants administration, communications, and conservation
programs. She also helps administer land- and ocean-based
programs. Before joining RLF, she provided consulting
services to small businesses and educators; served as an
environmental scientist at the California Department of Water
Resources; worked as a soil conservationist with the USDA
Natural Resources Conservation Service; and served in the Peace
Corps in Guatemala. Judy holds a BS in Agronomy from the
University of Maryland at College Park with a focus in Soil and
Water Conservation.
Martha Flores, Program Specialist
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Martha Flores helps administer land- and ocean-based programs, providing research, grantee oversight, communications, technical assistance in the development of projects, and management of program contractors. Before joining RLF, she worked as an outreach coordinator for the California Immunization Registry and as an information and referral specialist at a Sacramento community programs referral service. Prior to that, Martha was a member of the Sociology faculty at El Paso Community College in El Paso, Texas. She received an MA in Sociology from the University of Texas at El Paso with a research focus
in environmental justice.
Robin Jenkins helps administer ocean, coasts, and fisheries programs, providing research, grantee oversight, and communications to the California Coastal and Marine Initiative, and is the lead administrative liaison to the MLPA Initiative. Prior to joining RLF, she worked for six years as a program analyst for Resources Law Group; eighteen years with the California State Senate providing legislative and committee support for an East Bay senator; and, four years in the CALFED Bay-Delta Program as the assistant to the Executive Director.
Mark Kleinman works closely with outside consultants in designing and implementing philanthropic programs. For all RLF philanthropic initiatives he provides coordination, research, analysis, strategy development, writing, review and editing, and administration, as well as oversight of grantee, consultant, and public communications. He brings more than 25 years of experience in research, writing, and strategic and communications planning. A
UCLA PhD in American cultural history, he taught at UC San Diego and the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, publishing research on American politics, political culture, and foreign policy. After leaving academia, he worked as a marketing communications strategist in Sacramento, developing communications plans, campaigns and projects for corporate, government, and nonprofit clients including California Community Colleges, the Sierra Nevada Alliance, The Nature Conservancy, Sacramento Air Quality Management District, California Highway Patrol, Catholic Healthcare West, and CalPERS.
Aaron O’Callaghan helps administer land-based philanthropic programs, providing mapping and information system coordination, technical assistance in the development of projects, and management of program contractors. Prior to joining RLF, he worked for five years as a Program Analyst with Resources Law Group. Previously, he conducted research on the ecological systems of Lake Tahoe and the Bay-Delta in coordination with University of California, Davis, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. Mr. O’Callaghan has a BS in Environmental Biology and Management from UC Davis.
Marycon Razo helps administer ocean-based philanthropic programs, providing research, grantee oversight, communications, technical assistance in the development of projects, and management of program contractors.
Prior to joining RLF,
she worked for two communications firms in Sacramento where she
assisted with statewide public awareness campaigns, media
relations and community outreach activities for various
California state agencies and private sector clients including
Amtrak California, Caltrans, and California Department of Motor
Vehicles. Ms. Razo has a BA in Communications Studies with an
emphasis in Public Relations from California State University,
Sacramento.
Sandra Spelliscy provides executive leadership and vision to
RLF and RLFF. In this role, she develops and implements the
organizations’ long-term objectives, develops and coordinates
conservation program areas, and oversees external
communications, donor relations, and all organizational
operations.
Prior to joining RLF, she worked as an attorney at Resources
Law Group (RLG), specializing in climate change, land use,
transportation, and renewable energy. Sandra has 30 years of
experience in conservation and the nonprofit world. Before
coming to RLG, she served as executive director of a nonprofit
conservation group, general counsel for a statewide
environmental organization, and staff counsel for a state energy
agency. She also worked on federal policy issues in Washington,
D.C. In addition, Sandra served as a local elected official and
on numerous nonprofit boards.
Lindsey Spice-Zich helps administer land-based philanthropic programs, providing research, grantee oversight, communications, technical assistance in the development of projects, and management of program contractors. Prior to joining RLF, she worked for five years as a Project Coordinator with Resources Law Group. Previously, she conducted research on animal behavior and autonomous robotics to develop infrastructure and common scientific methods to conduct a parallel biology-engineering study of small mammals at UC Davis. Ms. Spice-Zich has a BS in Biopsychology and a minor in Law and Society from UC Davis and is currently enrolled in the UC Davis Graduate School of Management.
Susan Turpin is responsible for all of RLF’s accounting operations and manages the accumulation and consolidation of financial information for accurate and timely accounting and reporting. She also manages payroll and other human resource functions for RLF. Susan came to RLF with 20 years of experience in finance and management in the for-profit sector. Before coming to RLF, she provided pro-bono financial consulting to nonprofits. She has an MBA from UCLA and is a Certified Public Accountant (license inactive).
Photograph by Doug Steakley
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