Board of Directors

Her practice focuses on land conservation; representation of environmental groups, tribes, and public agencies in environmental litigation; federal tribal and public land law; and initiative and election law. She is a regular speaker on land conservation topics, including at the California Council of Land Trusts, the Conservation Law Forum, and the Land Trust Alliance.

Between 2011 and 2017, Sara served on the Board of Directors of Bay Area Wilderness Training, including as Board Chair. The organization is a leader in providing equitable access to the outdoors for low-income youth and youth of color. Between 2014 and 2018, she also served on the NextGen Committee at the Peninsula Open Space Trust, which helped the organization evaluate and implement mechanisms for increasing the diversity of its supporters.

Sara graduated from the U.C. Berkeley School of Law, where she earned a certificate in environmental law. During law school, she served as Editor in Chief of the Ecology Law Quarterly and was a member of the Environmental Law Society’s Environmental Justice Symposium steering committee. She spent a year as a legal intern at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Prior to attending law school, she worked in land conservation. She was part of the land acquisition team at POST, and was part of the conservation research program at the Open Space Institute in NYC. Sara graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, where her senior thesis focused on forest restoration efforts and prescribed burning in the urban-wildland interface.

Sara joined the Board in September 2019, having served on the League’s Council since June of 2018. She has been active on the League’s Land Protection Committee, the Governance Committee, and the Strategic Planning Team.

For 20 years she served as East Bay Regional Park District’s Assistant General Manager, Public Affairs, leading intergovernmental, community and corporate relations and integrated marketing communications programs for the largest local park agency in the United States. In addition, she served as Executive Director of the Regional Parks Foundation, a separate nonprofit organization that raises funds from individuals, foundations, and corporations in support of Regional Park District programs. Since 2011, Rosemary has had an active consulting practice focusing primarily on helping her clients place funding measures on the ballot, establish strategic outreach and communications strategies, and fundraising programs.

Rosemary holds a B.A. in Economics and Government from Mills College, and a Master’s in Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Her volunteer involvement includes the California Parks and Recreation Society’s Political Action Committee and as a founding member of San Francisco Parks Alliance’s board of directors and its first chair.

She has chaired the League’s Parks and Public Engagement Committee, and serves on its Governance and Personnel Committees. She was previously active on the League’s Finance and Investment Committee, 2012-2013 Strategic Plan Refresh Work Group and with the League’s Centennial Visioning process.

Abe’s career has focused on commercializing deep technology fields spanning renewable energy, artificial intelligence, and advanced semiconductors including experience living and working in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Across all of these settings, Abe’s passion has been to apply innovative new technologies to advance sustainable development objectives around the world. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and is a First Mover Fellow with the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program. Abe has been a League Councilor since 2016 and has served on the Board of Directors since 2018.

Credits include last year’s Oscar-winning Moonlight, where John served as an associate producer. He is also a member of the board of directors at The Footprint Foundation. John is a graduate of The University of Virginia (B.A. in Theatre) and Northfield Mt Hermon School. John studied comedy at Upright Citizens Brigade in New York City.John wears many hats as a leadership volunteer at the League. He has served on the League’s Council since 2015 and joined the Board in 2017. He spends a great deal of time deep in the forest, collecting data to aid redwood conservation planning by locating residual old-growth redwoods, identifying field sites for the next phase of the League’s Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative research, and measuring sword ferns for the League’s Fern Watch project. John also serves on the Education Committee. Independently, John is currently assisting researchers Chris Atkins and Steve Sillett with the re-measurement of every redwood over 350’ tall. He is also building the first-ever complete inventory of every redwood over 18’ dbh (diameter at breast height). In his spare time, John enjoys performing stand-up comedy at open mics, writing music on his guitar, and running. He resides in Arcata with his wife, Jessica, and their two daughters, Holly and Lucy.

Mike has advised leading technology companies on over 150 M&A transactions, including recently advising Microsoft on its $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn. His specialties include strategic advice and experience in negotiating complex transactions and strategic acquisition advice.Mike has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of his life. He serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees at Phillips Brooks School in Menlo Park, where his children attended elementary school. Mike attended Stanford University for his BS in Industrial Engineering, and then again later for his MBA in Business Administration. Mike currently lives in Atherton with his wife, Gretchen, and their three teenage children. He is an avid hiker and enjoys wine, golf, snow skiing, duck hunting, travel, poker and bridge.

Before Harvard, he was a Research Associate at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia from 1983 to 1985, conducting national security studies for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In addition to a lifelong interest in public policy and conservation, Matt is an avid outdoorsman, endurance athlete, art collector and land steward on his ranch in the Mayacama Mountains. Matt, his wife, Amy, and their four children live in San Francisco.Matt currently serves as Chairman of the Investment Committee, and Trustee, of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation; Chairman of the Investment Committee, and Trustee, of the Contemporary Jewish Museum; and Trustee of the Shalom Hartman Institute; and he is a member of the California Advisory Board of The Trust for Public Land and the Investment Committee for the Shimon ben Joseph Foundation.

During his 14 years (2003-2016) at Osterweis Capital Management Matt served in a number of capacities, starting as an investment analyst and ending up as a lead Portfolio Manager, President and CEO. Prior to joining Osterweis in early 2003, he was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley in the Equity Research Division. He served as the Senior Analyst covering the North American Paper and Forest Products industries and as Team Leader of both the Global Forest Products Research Team and the North American Basic Materials Team at Morgan Stanley. He joined Morgan Stanley in 1994 as a Principal and he was elected Managing Director in 1998. Prior to Morgan Stanley, he worked from 1987 to early 1994 in research at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, where he was a Vice President.

He received his A.B. and A.M. degrees from the University of Chicago, his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and previously taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Manchester (UK). His primary research interests are in syntax (from a crosslinguistic perspective), semantics, and evolutionary models of language change. He has written nine books and over 100 articles and book chapters. He has been invited to present his research in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America, has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institutes of Psycholinguistics and Evolutionary Anthropology and at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and he was recently elected a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. He serves on many editorial boards for academic journals and scholarly presses.Bill was elected to the League’s Council in 1987, contributed to the sequoia grove section of Sequoia National Forest Mediated Settlement Agreement in the 1980s, serves on the League’s Land Protection Committee, chairs its Science Committee, and has served on the League’s Master Plan Task Force.

He and his wife Carol Toffaleti have hiked in most of the redwood parks and sequoia groves, and love hiking in the forests of California and in the deserts of the Southwest where they presently live.

Previously, she led sales and operations for Tesla’s stationary storage business globally. In her career at Tesla she has held leadership roles across Business Development / Strategy, Operations, and Product. Prior to Tesla Colby worked as a consultant for BCG in Chicago. She holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University, and an MBA in Finance from Wharton.

Her career has been motivated by a desire to mitigate climate change and transition the world to a sustainable energy future. Colby was drawn to Save the Redwoods seeking to support an environmentally focused organization with tangible local impact to her Northern California community. Her favorite place to be is outside in the woods, especially the redwoods of the Anderson Valley where she and her husband have a cabin. She is excited to be part of an organization that is working to preserve and grow these woods for generations to come.

Following that, she helped manage her family’s boiler manufacturing business in Southern California before final retirement. She received a BA in Political Science and an MBA with an emphasis on Accounting and Information Systems, both from the University of California at Los Angeles. Peggy is passionate about the natural world and spends as much time as possible in nature – hiking, fishing and travelling. She is a 3rd generation supporter of Save the Redwoods League, and has served on the Audit and Nominating Committees, the 2012-13 Strategic Plan Refresh Work Group, and as chair of the Redwoods 2018 (Centennial) Task Force. She currently serves on the League’s Development Committee (previously as Chair) and Governance Committee.

Dave spent 13 years at Hewlett Packard managing engineering and marketing teams before co-founding a software company, Remedy Corp which he helped grow to over 1,500 people and take public on Nasdaq. Dave then spent time teaching at the middle school level and also working with a local education non-profit raising money to reduce class sizes. He later founded the Newman’s Own award winning non-profit USATogether, which provided assistance to injured military service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Dave just completed his second term as a Councilor where he served on the Parks Committee and also various working groups for the League.

He received a BA in Biogeography at UC, Berkeley, specializing in agricultural history. After graduation, he began to develop vineyards on several ranches in Northern California. He started a “champagne quality” winery in Anderson Valley and later created the first artisanal chocolate company in the U.S., Scharffen Berger Chocolate. Growing up during the revolutionary wine and food world of the past 40 years has allowed him to both experience and implement many concepts that have now become mainstream. Organic farming, soil preservation, local marketing, grass-fed animal products, water conservation, fermented food, humane animal husbandry, controlled burning, alternative wood products, non-animal protein, fair trading, and aquaculture are some of these practices.He serves on the advisory boards of the UC, Berkeley College of Natural Resources and the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley (now emeritus), and on the Council and Science Committee of Save the Redwoods League. He joined the Board in 2018. He is also involved in many community activities near his home in Anderson Valley, California. In developing vineyards on ranch property, John was able to work on the restoration of forestlands adjacent to these lands. Oak woodland, Douglas fir, and his favorite, the redwood forest, have been included in this work. Planting, thinning, pruning and soil restoration on over several hundred acres in the past 40 years has given him great satisfaction. Having experienced this restoration has allowed him to see what practices seem to work in helping the forest return to a more “virgin” state.

John continues to work with small food producers, Hodo Soy, Farmhouse Culture, CoCo Terra, California Caviar Company, and a new venture to provide housing for Anderson Valley farmworkers.

His primary area of expertise is antitrust economics, on which he has published extensively. See https://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/.

Shapiro has consistently fought to protect and promote competition throughout the American economy, in service of the goal of inclusive and sustainable economic growth. He has served twice as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and has often testified as an expert witness for the government in antitrust cases. Shapiro also had the honor of serving as a Senate-confirmed Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, where his portfolio included energy and environmental issues. In that role, he worked on policies to address climate change, to control pollution, and to protect public lands. That work never ends.

She worked as a staffer in the California legislature, served on the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board and the State Coastal Commission, and was appointed as the first woman Director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. She consulted on sustainable forest management in southeast Asia, and for 11 years attended the Conference of the Parties (COPs) of the UNFCCC climate negotiations as an observer.

Now retired, Andrea serves on the boards of the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University, the Pacific Forest Trust, and recently the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities. She participated in early development of the California carbon market, promoting credible standards for forest offsets. She now sits on the Offset Protocol Task Force to review options for California’s cap and trade system.

She and her husband Don (recently passed away) have been active community members in the north coast since moving to Arcata in the early 1970s.