Ward W. Woods, '64 - Chair
Ward Woods served on Stanford’s Board of Trustees from 1996 to 2006, and is a former chair of the Stanford Management Company’s Board of Directors. He served on the Board of Visitors of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford from 1996 to 2002.

He is Chair of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Wildlife Conservation Society, a trustee of the Lucile and David Packard Foundation and a director of a number of privately held companies. He was president and chief executive officer of Bessemer Securities, LLC, a privately held investment company, and managing partner of Bessemer Holdings, a private equity partnership, from 1989 until his retirement in December 1999. He has also held board position at The Nature Conservancy and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Priscilla B. Woods
Priscilla Woods, a clinical social worker, is actively involved in community affairs in Idaho. She serves on the USA Cycling Development Foundation and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She has been a trustee of Radcliffe College and Outward Bound.

Matt Barger, MBA '83
Mr. Barger is the managing member of MRB Capital, LLC and a senior advisor at Hellman & Friedman, LLC, a private equity firm with over $25 billion assets under management. Mr. Barger joined Hellman & Friedman in its first year and over the following twenty years served in a number of roles including managing general partner and chairman of the investment committee while being involved in all aspects of the investment process. Mr. Barger's primary area of focus has been asset management. He was instrumental in the firm’s investments in Artisan Partners, Brinson Partners, Farallon Capital Management, Franklin Resources, and Mondrian Investment Partners.

Mr. Barger serves on the Board of Directors of Hall Capital Partners LLC and Artisan Partners Asset Management. Formerly, he was a director of Brinson Partners, Inc., General Cellular Corporation (the predecessor to Western Wireless Corp. and VoiceStream Wireless), Hoyts Cinemas, John Fairfax Holdings Ltd., Mitchell International, Inc., Mondrian Investment Partners, National Radio Partners, L.P., Neverfail Springwater, Ltd., Oechsle International, L.P. and Thomas Weisel Partners Group.

Prior to joining Hellman & Friedman in 1984, Mr. Barger was an associate in the Corporate Finance Department of Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. He graduated from Yale University magna cum laude with distinction in the major in 1979 and the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1983, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Mr. Barger currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Academy of the Sciences, and as a director of the San Francisco Free Clinic, USA Cycling, Inc. and USA Cycling Development Foundation. He is a past member of the California Public Employees Post Employment Benefits Commission and the Economic and Allocation Advisory Commission advising the California Air Resources Board on implementation of AB 32.

Dan Emmett, '61
Dan A. Emmett is the chairman of the board of directors for Douglas Emmett, Inc. He co-founded DEI’s predecessor companies, Douglas, Emmett and Company, a fully integrated real estate management and leasing company, and Douglas Emmett Realty Advisors, which grew during the 1990’s into a large manager of institutional real estate funds. Douglas Emmett is one of the largest owners and operators of high-quality office and multi-family properties in Los Angeles and Honolulu.

Dan is a long-time advocate of environmental issues and has been an advisor to former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on environmental and energy issues and has been a founding board member of a number of environmental organizations including Sustainable Conservation, Environment Now, Santa Monica BayKeeper; and the Santa Barbara ChannelKeeper. He serves as co-chairman of the Real Estate Roundtable's Environment and Energy Policy Advisory Committee and has served on the Board of the California League of Conservation Voters, the non-partisan political action arm of California's environmental movement.

Dan received his bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1961 and his J.D. degree from Harvard University in 1964.

James B. Fleming, Jr., '84
Jim is a partner at Columbia Capital, a venture capital firm based in Alexandria, Virginia, that focuses on communications, information technology and media and manages over $3 billion in capital. He is a former board member of the National Venture Capital Association and currently serves as a board member for numerous private companies as well as The Nature Conservancy of Virginia and The Potomac School in McLean, Virginia. He received his B.A. from Stanford University in 1984. 

Pete Higgins, '80, MBA '83
Pete Higgins is founding partner of Second Avenue Partners, one of Seattle’s most experienced teams providing management, strategy and capital to early-stage companies. Prior to founding Second Avenue Partners, he spent 16 years at the Microsoft Corporation, where he was a member of the Office of the President, reporting to CEO Bill Gates.

Mr. Higgins is a director of BeLeave Inc. and is the chairman for SEEQ Corporation and Modumetal Corporation. He is the former chairman of Market Leader and Insitu Corporation. 

Mr. Higgins serves on the board of directors for The Brookings Institute and the advisory boards for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. He is a former Trustee of Stanford University. Mr. Higgins holds an MBA and undergraduate degrees in economics and history from Stanford University.

Patsy Ishiyama, '74
Ms. Ishiyama is a vice president of the Ishiyama Corporation. She also serves as vice chair of the board of directors of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, trustee of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, trustee of the NPR Foundation, board member of Resources Legacy Fund, and director of the Ishiyama Foundation. She previously served as a trustee of Trout Unlimited. Ms.Ishiyama also worked with Senator Alan Cranston and California Attorney General John Van de Kamp. 

Paul Tudor Jones II
Mr. Jones is founder, co-chairman, chief investment officer and the controlling principal of Tudor Investment Corporation ("Tudor"). Tudor is part of the Tudor Group, a group of affiliated companies engaged in trading in the fixed income, equity, currency and commodity markets. Mr. Jones formed Tudor in 1980 and serves as its principal risk taker. Tudor is headquartered in Greenwich, Conn., manages approximately $10 billion, and employs approximately 370 individuals in its asset management business in the U.S., U.K., Singapore, Australia and Spain.

Mr. Jones professionally has served as chairman of the New York Cotton Exchange (August 1992 - June 1995) and of the Financial Instrument Exchange. His philanthropic service includes founding and serving as chairman of the Robin Hood Foundation, the Bedford Stuyvesant I Have A Dream program and the Excellence Charter School. He also served as chairman of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and currently serves as chairman of the Everglades Foundation.

Mr. Jones is married to Sonia, with whom he has four children, and resides in Greenwich, Conn. Mr. Jones graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in economics.

Chuck Katz, '69
Chuck Katz is an attorney who manages family investment business. He formerly served as executive vice president of Opsware Inc. in Mountain View, and as an attorney specializing in corporate finance for Perkins Coie in Seattle. He serves on the Board of Directors of REI.

He is married to Roberta Katz '69, associate vice president of strategic planning at Stanford. He holds an MA from New York University and a JD from the University of Texas.

Bill Landreth, '69
Bill Landreth has been with Goldman Sachs since 1971, where he is now a senior director in San Francisco. Previously, he was a general partner in London and Chicago and chairman of the International Executive committee.

He has been a Stanford University lecturer and served on the advisory boards for the School of Education, Institute for International Studies, The Bill Lane Center for the American West and the Cantor Arts Center. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Stanford Management Company from 1990 to 2008. A long-time Stanford volunteer, he was a member of the Board of Trustees form 1996 to 2006, and chaired the visitors committee of the Institute for International Studies. He served on the boards of The Nature Conservancy-California, Harvard School of Public Health and Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula and Monterey Bay Aquarium. He holds an MBA from Harvard and a BA from Stanford.

Joan Lane
Joan Lane is a special assistant to the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, having worked for the President's Office and board since 1992. Before that she was a special assistant to two deans in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. She is a director of McClatchy Newspapers in Sacramento and previously was a director of the Brown Group Inc. in St. Louis.

She chaired the Board of Trustees of Smith College from 1982 to 1985, and was a member of that board from 1978 to 1985. She also was a director of the James Irvine Foundation, in San Francisco, and a trustee of the San Francisco Foundation.

Mel Lane (1922-2007), '45, CRT '78 (In Memoriam)
Mel Lane was a publishing consultant and environmental political activist, with a variety of interests including land use, environmental and historic preservation subjects and organizations. He was former co-publisher of Sunset magazine and books; the first chairman of the California Coastal Commission, 1972-77; and before that, the initial chairman of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. He served on the board of directors of the World Wildlife Fund in Washington, D. C., from 1985 to 2005, when he was named a lifetime director; also on the boards of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and The Nature Conservancy-California. He was a founding director of the Peninsula Open Space Trust. He has served as a Stanford University trustee and as a director of Pacific Gas and Electric Company and Lucky Stores. He died at home in Atherton, Calif., on July 28, 2007. He was 85.

Melvin B. Lane, former trustee and environmental champion

Robert Litterman
Robert Litterman is chairman of the Risk Committee and a founding partner of Kepos Capital, a systematic global macro firm. He retired in 2009 from a 23-year career at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he served in research, risk management, investments and thought leadership roles. While at Goldman Sachs, he spent six years as an external advisor to the Singapore GIC Board Investment and Risk Committees. He co-developed the Black-Litterman Global Asset Allocation Model with the late Fischer Black, and headed the firm-wide risk function and the Quantitative Investment Strategies Group in the Asset Management division. Before moving to Goldman Sachs in 1986, he taught at MIT and worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Litterman was one of the original inductees into Risk Magazine’s Risk Management Hall of Fame and named the 2013 Risk Manager of the Year by the Global Association of Risk Professionals. In 2012, he was the inaugural recipient of the S. Donald Sussman Fellowship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. In 2008, he received the Nicholas Molodovsky Award from the CFA Institute as well as the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE) Financial Engineer of the Year award. Litterman currently serves on the boards of World Wildlife Fund, the Commonfund, where he was elected chair in 2014, Options Clearing Corporation, Resources For the Future, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation. He earned a PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota. He and his wife Mary live in New Jersey. 

Bill Patterson was a managing partner of SPO Partners & Co., a private investment partnership that he joined in 1989. He was also chairman and a director of Calpine Corporation and a director of Rosewood Hotels & Resorts. A graduate of Harvard College, Bill served as board chair of the California Academy of Sciences, chair of the investment committee of the Marin Community Foundation, vice chair of the Stanford Business School Trust and was a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. In his time on the Stanford Woods Institute Advisory Council, Bill offered us the great benefit of his wisdom, his warmth and his commitment to making this a better world. We will miss his sound counsel and his passionate and patient encouragement to do something bold and make a difference. He died at home in Ross, Calif. on Sept. 24, 2010. He was 48.

Bill Patterson, Investor and Philanthropist, In Memoriam

George Phipps, MBA '91

George Phipps is a managing partner and chief operating officer of Jasper Ridge Partners and concentrates his efforts on manager selection and portfolio construction in the private equity and venture capital areas. Prior to joining Jasper Ridge Partners in 2003, George was a general partner and a member of the three-person U.S. Operating Committee at Apax Partners, a leading international private equity firm. Previously, George was an investment officer with the Czech and Slovak American Enterprise Fund and, before that, an analyst at Salomon Brothers Inc. George serves on the board of directors of The Bessemer Group, Incorporated and its principal subsidiary banks and the board of managers of Bessemer Securities LLC and its principal subsidiary. George also serves on the board of directors of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, is a member of the National Council of the Environmental Defense Fund. He earned an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College, and an M.B.A. and Certificate in Public Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Kristina Emanuels Phipps, '91, JD '98
Kristina Emanuels Phipps is a former land-use lawyer and an active part-time volunteer and advocate for environmental issues. Since leaving the San Francisco land-use law firm Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger in 1999, she has co-founded the Better California Campaign, a coalition of diverse organizations that worked to improve land-use policy at the state level; helped edit a book on land-use law; and spearheaded a global warming letter-writing campaign for Environmental Defense. 

At Stanford Law School, she was a member of the Order of the Coif and editor of the Environmental Law Journal.

Jay A. Precourt, '59, MS '60
Jay Precourt has spent his career in the energy industry. He has served as chair and CEO of Hermes Consolidated Inc., a gatherer, transporter and processor of crude oil and refined products, since 1999. He also has held executive positions at Hamilton Oil Co., Tejas Gas Corp., Shell Oil Co. (which acquired Tejas in 1997) and ScissorTail Energy LLC. He also serves as a director of Halliburton and Apache Corp. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in petroleum engineering from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard.

William Price III, '78
William S. "Bill" Price, III is a co-founder and partner emeritus of TPG Capital, LP (formerly Texas Pacific Group), a private equity fund founded in 1992 with over $30 billion in assets under management. TPG deals include Ducati motorcycles, Punch Taverns Group, Del Monte Foods, Petco, J. Crew, Continental Airlines, Gemplus, Grohe and Seagate. TPG has owned various wine industry assets including Beringer, Chateau St. Jean, St. Clement, Meridian, Stags Leap Winery and wineries in China and Turkey.

Bill left TPG in 2007 to focus on pursuing his passion in the wine business. He owns Durell Vineyards with 150 acres of pinot noir, chardonnay and syrah in Sonoma County. He founded Three Sticks Winery in 2002 and bought stakes in Buccella and Kistler Vineyards. He is a founder of The Vincraft Group, a winery acquisition fund which invested in Kosta Browne and Gary Farrell Wineries. Prior to forming Texas Pacific Group, Mr. Price was Vice President of Strategic Planning and Business Development for GE Capital and an attorney at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.  

Mr. Price serves as board chairman for The Gladstone Institute and  Common Sense Media. He also serves on the boards of the California Academy of Sciences, the California Mentor Foundation, the Dignity Fund and Justgive.com

Alison Wrigley Rusack, '80

Alison Wrigley Rusack is co-owner, with her husband, Geoff, of RUSACK Vineyards, a boutique winery with locations in the Santa Ynez Valley near Santa Barbara, California and on Catalina Island off the coast of California near Los Angeles. The two operations produce 7,500 cases under the RUSACK Vineyards label and 600 cases for Santa Catalina Island Vineyards. Alison is also Vice Chairman and Vice President of the Santa Catalina Island Company, which handles commercial real estate, hotel, restaurant and activities and adventure operations on Catalina. 

Prior to entering the wine business, Alison worked for 16 years in the entertainment industry in Southern California, most notably for Disney Consumer Products in Burbank. There, she served in management for film and television licensing, international publishing and international licensing for Latin America, later becoming a writer and editor for Disney Publishing, consumer products – Latin America, and corporate communications.

Alison is Chairman and a life member of the Benefactor Member Board for the nonprofit Santa Catalina Island Conservancy, which she joined in 1994, and Chairman and co-founder of the Catalina Chimes Tower Foundation. She is also on the advisory board for the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California, as well as an alumni member of the National Board of the Smithsonian Institution, and former board chair of Laguna Blanca School in Santa Barbara, California.

Alison and Geoff have three sons.

Steve Sanderson, AM '75, PhD '78

Steve Sanderson is President Emeritus of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, where he served as President and CEO from 2001 to 2012. Prior to his appointment in 2001, he was Vice President for Arts and Sciences and Dean of Emory College at Emory University in Atlanta (1997-2001) and a faculty member at the University of Florida (1979-1997). His academic specialty was Latin America, where he studied rural poverty, biodiversity conservation and international trade. He lived and worked in Mexico and represented the Ford Foundation in Brazil, where he initiated the foundation’s Amazon program.

Since the late 1980s, he has been deeply involved with the organization of scientific cooperation on the environment, through the Social Science Research Council, the NAS Scientific Oversight Committee on the Restoration of the Everglades, and the international Resilience Alliance. He was a charter member of the scientific steering committee of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program Land Use and Cover Change Core Project. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the board of One Hundred Miles, a Georgia-based coastal conservation organization.

Varun Sivaram, ’11
Varun Sivaram is the Douglas Dillon fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a strategic advisor to the office of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Reforming the Energy Vision (REV). He is a member of the advisory boards for both the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy. Before joining the Council, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he counseled Fortune 500 companies on adapting to the modern competitive landscape in energy. Prior to this role, he served as senior advisor for energy and water policy to the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, and oversaw the city’s Department of Water and Power. 

Akiko Yamazaki, '90
Akiko Yamazaki co-founded the Wildlife Conservation Network in 1991 with her friend Charlie Knowles and conservationist John Lukas. Today, the Wildlife Conservation Network supports 12 Partner Projects in 30 countries.

In addition, Akiko is the President of the Board of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and serves on the United States Equestrian Team Foundation Board and is an active supporter of US dressage. Akiko's sponsored horse, Ravel, participated in the 2008 Beijing US Olympics. In the 2010 World Equestrian Games in Kentucky, he became the first horse in 78 years to obtain an individual medal for the U.S. in dressage at a World Championship.

Akiko has a BS in Industrial Engineering from Stanford and is married to Jerry Yang, also class of '90.