Rick Theis, Founder and Board Chair

Founding Member, Past Chair, Sonoma County Transportation Land-Use Coalition
Former Planning Commisioner, City of Santa Rosa
Former Board Member and Secretary, Urban Ecology
More About Rick

Greg Young, Secretary

Greg is a graduate of the Leadership Institute, 2003. He is a board member of The Center for Social and Environmental Stewardship (formerly known as Circuit Rider Productions, Inc.), and helped establish the Moira Chatton Memorial Oak Grove in Sebastopol, CA and the Moira Chatton Memorial College Scholarship, given to disadvantaged youth in Sonoma County.

Greg is a retired Technical Leader from Cisco Systems.  An avid reader and hiker, Greg has earned numerous awards throughout his career, including one for his work at NASA on the Apollo project, and "Best Video Game of the Year" (1982). He has been published in Computerworld, Datamation, the Journal of Accountancy, and the Wall Street Journal.

Bob Burke, Director

Bob is a graduate of the class of 2005. He is an attorney, specializing in estate planning. Bob is a director of the Atascadero Creek Green Valley Creek Watershed Council and serves as a volunteer stream water quality monitor for the Community Clean Water Institute. Bob is an aspiring GIS practitioner and an avid KPIG listener.

Dick Dowd, Director

Dick Dowd is Vice President of Pinnacle Homes, a home building company based in Santa Rosa with a division devoted to making existing houses more energy efficient through retrofitting. As a member of the 3rd generation of a family to reside in Sonoma County, he feel that the concept upon which The Leadership Institute is based (that is, the ecology, the environment, and our economy must be in sync) fits perfectly with his own beliefs. 

Graduate, Analy High School, 1960
Graduate, San Jose State College, B.S. in Civil Engineering, 1966
Graduate, San Jose State College, M.S. in Civil Engineering, 1970

Professional Engineer, State of California, Civil Engineer, C# 21142

Director, Alta Pacific Bank, Santa Rosa

Member, City of Santa Rosa Board of Public Utilities - 1994 to Present
    & Chairman – 1996 to Present

Commissioner Officer, US Environmental Science Services Administration, 1966 – 1970

Honors, North Coast Builders Exchange – Hall of Fame – 2002

Noreen Evans, Director

Noreen Evans represents the people of Napa, Solano, and Sonoma counties within the California State Assembly.  Now in her second term of office, Noreen works as part of the Assembly leadership team to identify and implement the Assembly Democratic agenda as Chair of the Assembly Democratic Caucus.  Prior to her election to the legislature, Noreen worked as an attorney focused on civil litigation and appeals.  She was also a Planning Commissioner and two term member of the Santa Rosa City Council.  Noreen lives in Santa Rosa and has three children.  She loves gardening, cooking, reading, and crossword puzzles.

Kathy Fong, Director

Katheryn "Kathy" Fong is Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity of Sonoma County and a 2007 Leadership Institute Fellow. Kathy is a native of Boise, Idaho and attended San Francisco State University where she received her B.A. and M.A. in International Relations. In the 1970s she was the Executive Director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, a nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization located in San Francisco's Chinatown. Kathy served on the San Francisco Human Rights Commission 1992-1996. Kathy's corporate career includes senior leadership positions at Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, PG&E, Wells Fargo Bank and United Airlines. Kathy has served on the Boards of Directors of the Analy High School Education Foundation, the YMCA of San Francisco, Women's Forum West Chapter of the International Women's Forum, the San Francisco Education Fund, and Joint Venture Silicon Valley. Kathy lives in Sebastopol where her husband, Andrew MacInnis, raises grass-fed Angus beef.

Shirley Johnson-Foell, Director

Shirley is a graduate of the Leadership Training for a Sustainable Future, class of 2010. Shirley worked for Hewlett-Packard/Agilent Technologies for nineteen years. Currently, Shirley is a part-time teacher, and special consultant with Sonoma State University. Shirley received a MA in Renewable and Alternative Fuels from Sonoma State University in 2008, and has guest lectured at the Renewable Energy World Conference in 2009.

Shirley lives in Windsor with her husband Jason; together they raise teenagers from his previous marriage. Shirley enjoys volunteer work, grand-kids, therapeutic riding, and interior design.

Peter Kingston, Director

Director of Finance, Ursuline High School             

Graduate of Cambridge University, England
BA & MA (Hon) degrees In Economics & History

Associate Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales

Former owner of Mrs. Wiggles Rocket Juice Co. manufacturer of nutritionally fortified fruit juices in the Roseland area of Santa Rosa for 14 years

Husband, and sometime campaign chief of staff, to Shirlee Zane, 3rd District Supervisor, County of Sonoma.

Helga Lemke, Director

Helga is the former Executive Director of Community Action Partnership of Sonoma County, now appointed by the Governor to Asst. Director for External Affairs with the California Dept. of Community Services and Development.

Stephanie Puentes, Director

Stephanie is 28-year veteran of the high tech industry where she held a variety of positions with Hewlett-Packard Company and was a founding member of HP's first global employee resource group. She is a certified Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) practitioner and a presenter at the APTi bi-annual conference.

Stephanie is a Fellow of the Leadership Institute for Ecology and the Economy and a board member of Community Action Partnership Sonoma County.

Margaret Spaulding, Director

Margaret has a degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.  After a stint on some Bay Area papers she joined the marketing department of a local architectural firm and later worked in-hour for interior design and engineering firms.  She formed her own consulting firm in 1985 and for a decade provided marketing and public relations consulting in the design and engineering fields.

She co-authored Advanced Marketing for Architecture and Engineering Firms (McGraw-Hill, 1988) and lectured on marketing in seminars and workshops around the U.S.  She also taught a graduate seminar on the market for architecture at Cal for ten years.

Margaret joined the board of Greenbelt Alliance in 1994 and remains active in that organization.  She also sits on the board of Sonoma Land Trust.  She lives in Glen Ellen.

Geof Syphers, Director

Geof Syphers serves as Chief Sustainability Officer of Codding Enterprises where he works on the redevelopment of a technology campus and shopping malls with an intention of creating truly sustainable neighborhoods. His background as founder and director of KEMA’s green planning and green building consultancy helped spur a transition away from working on efficiency and toward one-planet living.  

Geof has a background in technology with a B.S. in Applied Physics an M.S. in Energy Engineering, LEED® A.P. and a professional license in Mechanical Engineering. For the past 15 years, Geof has also practiced the arts of dialog and conflict resolution.  He mainly spends his time playing—with friends, in the garden, with business, on public policy, on his bicycle and at the Go board.

Terry Taylor, Director

Terry D. Taylor is an independent consultant who has worked successfully with organizations from small non-profits to international Fortune 500 entities and governments in all areas of the globe.

Terry received a MA in Educational Psychology from Stanford University and has worked with several organizations before forming his own consulting business in 1980. He specializes in strategic planning, training, and consulting in the arenas of negotiations, conflict resolution, high performance teamwork, and strategic change facilitation.