Advisory Council
Luis Alvarez
Tom Archibald
Jack Caouette
Bill Doolittle
Steve Dorrance
Rosalind Fisher
Alan Lacy
Bill & Jeanne Landreth
Michael E. Marcus
Jane McCoy
Julie Packard
Judith Sulsona
Rick Werner
Phil Wilhelm
Marsha McMahan Zelus
Science & Land Management Advisory Council
Tim Best
Billy Freeman
Christopher Hauser
Bridget Hoover
John Hunt
Will Spangler
Fred Watson, PhD
Rich Weber
Suzanne Worcester
George Somero, PhD – Chair
Dan Lee – Board Trustee
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Willard “Will” Lewallen, Ph.D., Board Chair
Dr. Lewallen is a native Californian and a product of the California public education system where he graduated from Garey High School in Pomona. He completed a B.S. degree with honors at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona. He was a member of the 1976 national championship baseball team that was inducted into the Cal Poly Pomona Athletics Hall of Fame and he was also honored as a Cal Poly Pomona Distinguished Alumnus. Dr. Lewallen completed two master’s degrees at Purdue University and a Ph.D. at UCLA.
Dr. Lewallen served as the president/superintendent for the Hartnell Community College District for eight years before his retirement in 2019. He served as a professional in higher education for 40 years, that included five years at a four-year institution (Purdue University) and 35 years in the California Community College system. Dr. Lewallen served six years as a Commissioner for the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. He served as president of the Association of California Community College Administrators, a professional organization representing over 1,100 administrators. He served five terms as Chair of the Board of Directors for the Community College Facility Coalition. He currently serves locally on the Board of Directors for the Salinas Valley Tourism and Visitors Bureau, as a member of the Measure T Citizens Bond Oversight Committee for the Hartnell Community College District, as a Vice President for the Hartnell College Foundation Board of Directors, as a member of LULAC Council #2055, as a member of the Board of Directors for the National Steinbeck Center, and as a member of the Salinas Rotary Club. He currently works as a search consultant for Community College Search Services assisting colleges in hiring CEOs. His record of leadership, scholarship, achievement, accomplishment, community involvement, and service is documented in his curriculum vitae which can be accessed at LinkedIn through this link (under the Featured section).
Dr. Lewallen’s hobbies and interests include guitar, fitness, fishing, and traveling. His wife of 42 years, Michele, is a retired community college coach and health and physical education professor. She is also a certified yoga instructor. They are the proud parents of Jennifer, Kasey, and Parker, and the proud grandparents of Mina. He and Michele lead physically active lifestyles that include a commitment to physical fitness and health. They have both completed the Los Angeles Marathon twice and Michele has completed several other marathons and triathlons. They reside in Prunedale.
James Andrasick, Treasurer
Jim has a love of the land, nurtured by living and working in some of the most beautiful places on earth: Hawaii, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, the Monterey Peninsula. He is currently a director and past chairman of Simpson Manufacturing (NYSE:SSD), an international provider of engineered construction products. Jim is the retired chairman, president & CEO of Matson Navigation, a transportation company serving the Pacific Rim, and the past president of C. Brewer & Co. Ltd., a Hawaii-based agribusiness with substantial landholdings, both domestic and international. In the course of his business career, he has been at the interface of competing interests for the farming, conservation and commercial development of real estate. This experience has reinforced his belief that open spaces can and need to be both protected and accessible for public use, with education as a priority. Jim was drawn to BSLT as a result, and became a Board Trustee and treasurer in 2017.
Jim's non-profit experience has been community based for the past thirty years. He has been the past chairman of the University of Hawaii Foundation, the American Red Cross-Hawaii State Chapter, the Hawaii Employer's Council and the Hawaii Agricultural Research Corporation. He served as a trustee of Mills College and the SF National Maritime Park Association, two organizations dedicated to education. He is presently a trustee of the Coast Guard Foundation, a position held since 1996, and is vice chair of The Santa Lucia Conservancy.
Jim holds a BS degree, with honors, from the US Coast Guard Academy, where he was captain of the basketball team his senior year. He earned an MS degree from MIT in 1971. He is a Vietnam veteran, happily married with four natural children and two foster children from Asia. Jim and wife Ginger are avid hikers, gardeners and world travelers and make their home in the Santa Lucia Mountains.
Pinney Allen, Trustee
Pinney began a professional life in Atlanta in 1979 as a leader in law, a passionate member of the education and philanthropic communities and a wife and mother. Arriving at the 80-lawyer firm of Alston, Miller & Gaines (later Alston & Bird, LLP) as its eighth female attorney, Pinney participated in and helped lead its growth to an international law firm of over 800 professionals. Pinney was a member of, and chaired, the firm’s executive committee, served on the firm’s 15-member operations council, managed the firm’s tax services area, and led major client relationships and marketing initiatives.
Drawn by her commitment to the community, Pinney resigned her law partnership to accept the position of Head of School at Atlanta Girls’ School, one of the most racially, culturally and socio-economically diverse independent schools in the country. Pinney began that new career in July 2008 and left four years later with a long string of “firsts” and “bests” around creative programs for use of technology in the classroom, strategic uses of online classwork, and a fully integrated 7-year leadership and service curriculum.
Pinney has been and remains active in the community, focusing on equity, opportunity, and education. In addition to service on the board of the Big Sur Land Trust, she serves on the boards of the Breakthrough Collaborative, a national organization supporting programs to place under-resourced youth on a path to college, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Monterey County, the Carmel Public Library Foundation, and the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library Foundation. In addition, Pinney serves on the Dean’s advisory board at the Trulaske College of Business (University of Missouri).
Pinney grew up in Marshalltown, Iowa and Columbia, Missouri and developed her passion for the land as she explored her grandparents’ farms and the pastureland outside her home. She went on to receive her J.D. degree in 1979 and her A.B. degree in 1976 from Harvard University. After graduate school, she moved to Atlanta where she lived for over forty years, much of that time enjoying not only her law practice and raising her two girls, but also the 70-acre farm where she took regular trail rides and loved taking care of her horses, llamas, goats, pigs, chickens and one donkey. She recently moved from Atlanta to Pebble Beach, California with her Harvard classmate and 40-year husband, Charles (Buddy) Miller. You can see her many days walking from Bird Rock to Asilomar Beach.
Yuri C. Anderson, Trustee
Yuri’s family has lived in Monterey County for nearly 60 years. Yuri graduated from North Monterey County High School before earning a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Southern California and a Master of Arts in Educational Administration from New York University.
Yuri’s career has included programmatic and organizational leadership roles in human service organizations in Monterey County, New York City, and San Francisco. She currently serves as Chief of Staff to Monterey County Fourth District Supervisor Wendy Root Askew; where she focuses on issues related to Land Use, Water, and Regional Transportation & Traffic. Before joining the Fourth District Supervisor’s office, Yuri served as Chief of Staff to Fifth District Supervisor Mary Adams, where she primarily worked on health and human service and criminal justice issues. She developed strategic planning, program development, fundraising, and community engagement expertise during her tenure as Vice President, Community Investments for United Way Monterey County.
Yuri enjoys being of service in her community through a variety of volunteer roles. She currently serves a Chair of the publicly elected Monterey Peninsula Community College District Board of Trustees; Vice President of the Democratic Women of Monterey County; and as an at-large member of the Child Abuse Prevention Council Board of Directors. Yuri is also a founding member of the Bright Futures for Monterey County Educational Partnership.
Yuri is a wife and mother of two school-aged young children.
Mark Boitano, Vice-Chair
Mark is a native Californian growing up in Santa Clara. In 1971 he received a BSCE from Santa Clara University, and in 1977 an MBA from California State University, Fresno. After a 32 year career at Granite Construction Inc., one of the nation’s largest heavy civil construction companies, Mark retired in 2009 as its Chief Operating Officer. He resides in the Carmel Valley.
Mark, his wife, Patti, and two sons moved to the Carmel area in 1988. Mark served for six years as the President of Carmel Youth Baseball. He is currently Chairman of the Board for the Santa Lucia Community Services District. He spent eight years on the Board of the Hospice Giving Foundation acting in various roles as Treasurer, Grants Committee Chair, Vice Chair and a member of the Executive Committee.
A lifelong hiker, Mark, along with his sons, trekked to Everest Base Camp. He has hiked in a number of the western National Parks, summited Mt Whitney, Mt Shasta, Europe’s Mont Blanc and hiked to volcanoes of the Kamchatka Peninsula. He has skied in Antarctica and in Norway’s Lyngen Alps, located north of the Arctic Circle. These adventures have helped define his appreciation for the preservation of open space that allows for public access. As a youth he spent many a winter and summer exploring the Sierra Nevada and Coast ranges. In 1971 he became a professional ski instructor, a certification he has since maintained. Mark and his family have a home in Lake Tahoe where he hopes to impart his love of the mountains to his four grandchildren.
Hans Buder, Trustee
Hans Buder is the founder of the Moving to Opportunity Fund, a social impact-focused real estate investment firm with a double bottom line mission: to put low-income kids born into concentrated poverty on the path to college by providing their families with access to affordable housing in communities with high performing public schools, while delivering market rate returns for investors.
Prior to dedicating himself to the Moving to Opportunity Fund full time, Hans was a project manager in the San Francisco office of McCormack Baron Salazar, a social impact real estate development firm that specializes in mixed income housing and the revitalization of distressed urban neighborhoods. Previously, Hans served as Associate Director of Acquisitions at Long Wharf Capital, a Boston-based real estate private equity firm (and the former private real estate arm of Fidelity Investments), where he closed on real estate acquisitions with a total capitalization in excess of $350 million. Prior to joining Long Wharf, Hans taught middle school science in an inner-city public school in post-Katrina New Orleans as a member of Teach for America, where he developed a passion for providing underprivileged students with exposure to the beauty of the natural world.
Hans holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (where he graduated in the top 5% of his class as an Arjay Miller Scholar), a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University (where he graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa).
Hans currently serves as a Commissioner of the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey, and as Director and Vice Chair of the housing authority’s nonprofit development arm, HDC.
Hans and his wife Meghan live in Carmel with their twin girls.
Carmen Gil, MPA, Trustee
Carmen Gil grew up in Monterey County and has always found her grounding place to be outdoors in the middle of nature. That is why she is excited to join the Big Sur Land Trust as a Trustee. She currently works as the City of Gonzales’ Community Engagement and Strategic Partnerships Director and has a long trajectory of working with community and organizations in various capacities and has a keen ability to develop relationships that go beyond transactional to transformational. Before going to the City of Gonzales, she served as the Health in All Policies Manager for the County Health Department where she raised over $3.5 million for programs that advanced equity and supported resident leadership and capacity building.
She holds a BA in Social Work from San Jose State University and a Masters in Public Administration/Health Services Administration from the University of San Francisco. In 2014, she was elected to join the Board of Directors for Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital, which she served for four years. She lives in Gonzales with her husband and three daughters and currently serves on the Board of Alliance on Aging.
Krista Hanni, Ph.D., Trustee
Krista Hanni was the Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Manager of Monterey County Health Department for eleven years. She led this unit's work to facilitate the department's work in health equity. The department's work in health equity around Health in All Policies and community engagement led to its selection for the Arnold X. Perkins Award for Outstanding Health Equity Practice in 2017.
Krista transitioned in 2024 to being the co-owner and Co-CEO of Cheesemans’ Ecology Safari, a company dedicated to immersive, conservation-focused wildlife experiences worldwide. Since stepping into this leadership role, Krista has been committed to upholding the Cheesemans' legacy of fostering appreciation for wildlife and supporting global conservation efforts through responsible ecotourism.
Krista has a Master's in Zoology from the University of Western Ontario and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Epidemiology from the University of California at Davis. She worked in wildlife biology on various projects, including disease ecology of sea otters, seals, and sea lions and evolutionary ecology of raccoons and red squirrels, before transitioning to public health.
Krista is the past Board President for the Bicycle and Equestrian Trail Association (supporting joint use of public lands), the California Conference for Local Health Data Managers (supporting county data use policies), and has been a National Public Health Leadership fellow. She has served as the Board President for the YWCA Monterey County, past Chair of the Big Sur Land Trust Board, and is currently Co-Chair of its Committee on Trustees.
Joel Hernandez Laguna, Trustee
A longtime advocate for underserved populations on the Central Coast of California, Joel Hernandez Laguna has served as Community Impact Officer for the Community Foundation for Monterey County since 2021. In that role, he supports the management of a diverse set of portfolios with a grant-making total of more than $2.5 million.
Prior to that Joel spent a decade at the Center for Community Advocacy (CCA) where he organized, trained, and led community-based groups to advocate for better health and housing conditions in Pajaro and the Salinas Valley. In 2016, Joel became CCA’s lead organizer, managing daily operations aligned with the organization’s grants and contracts.
Joel serves on the Board of Directors of Salinas Valley Health, since 2020. In 2018, he was appointed to the Salinas Planning Commission where he served for nearly two years. In 2010, he was instrumental in helping design an early framework of the East Salinas Building Healthy Communities Initiative sponsored by The California Endowment. He began his volunteer efforts with the national radio network, Radio Bilingue 90.9 FM in Salinas.
Joel was born in Michoacán, Mexico and migrated to the United States in the 1990s. He holds two Associate of Science degrees Business Administration and Economics from Hartnell Community College and is currently pursuing an bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University. Joel and his wife Bibiana are proud parents of two wonderful daughters. He enjoys hiking, reading, and traveling with his family.
Adrienne Laurent, Trustee
Adrienne Laurent is Chief Strategic Communications Officer at Salinas Valley Health, leading teams responsible for all internal and external communication initiatives, including marketing, media relations and employee communications, as well as community outreach teams in Volunteer Services, Health Promotion, Blue Zones Project, and the Salinas Valley Health Mobile Clinic. As part of her responsibility for the development and implementation of strategic communications, Adrienne is responsible for government relations for Salinas Valley Health and she serves as executive liaison to the Board of Directors.
Prior to joining the organization in 2002, Adrienne spent 22 years in the journalism field as a television news anchor, reporter, and news director. She served on the faculty of the University of Missouri School of Journalism teaching writing and on-air skills.
Volunteer history includes the national advisory board for Associated Press Broadcast; the board of directors for the YMCA of the Central Coast; Hartnell College Foundation; and the Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce. Adrienne graduated with a degree in Speech Communication from Humboldt State University, which she chose based solely on its proximity to old growth redwood forests. It was there she met her husband of 43 years. They have three grown sons.
Dan Lee, Trustee
Dan began his service with BSLT in 2018. Dan is a winegrower and owner of Morgan Winery and a part owner of Hog Island Oyster.
Dan grew up in the small farming community of Turlock, California and attended UC Davis, initially in medical studies. After taking a course in winemaking, he realized that this was the path that excited him because it was a blend of agriculture, science, and art. He received his BS in Microbiology and continued his masters work in the Food Science program specializing in viticulture and enology. Dan’s first job at Jekel Vineyards in the Salinas Valley brought him to the Monterey area. Later, moving to Durney Vineyard in Carmel Valley, Dan aspired to craft wine his own label, using his middle name, Morgan, as the brand name. It was at a meeting of the Monterey County Vintners and Growers that he shared his vision with a banker, Donna George, of American Farm Credit. In addition to becoming his business partner, that banker would also become Dan’s wife.
In 1982, Dan and Donna Lee opened the doors of Morgan Winery. Winning numerous awards at wine competitions put the label on the map quickly. Morgan has become one the Central Coast’s most recognized labels, earning “Winery of the Year” from Wine and Spirits Magazine, and “Winemaker of the Year” from the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003. With the formation of the Santa Lucia Highlands appellation in 1991, Dan became the first president of the group, Wine Artisans of the Santa Lucia Highlands, to promote the new area.
Dan and Donna invested in their belief in the SLH with the purchase of 65 acres that was destined to become the Double L Vineyard. Naming it after their twin daughters, the “Double Luck” twins, it has become one of best-known vineyards in the Santa Lucia Highlands. In order to honor and cherish it, Dan farms it organically, making it the only organic vineyard in the SLH. One of the “Double Luck” twins has returned to work alongside her parents and the Morgan team.
Dan’s non-profit work has been various and includes board positions with The United Way, Wine Institute of California, SLH Wine Artisans, and The Sports Car Association of Monterey County.
Dan and Donna live in the Corral de Tierra area with their dog, cat, and five chickens. Besides family and work, Dan enjoys everything food and wine, his garage with loud music/cars/motorcycles, hiking, skiing, kayaking, paddle boarding, landscaping, stock investing, their mountain cabin, and cruising Lake Tahoe in his Chris-Craft.
Andrea Manzo, Secretary
Andrea Manzo is the Executive Director for Action Council of Monterey County, Inc. and Building Healthy Communities Monterey County. Formerly Ms. Manzo served as the Regional Equity Director for Building Healthy Communities (BHC), a program of Action Council. In her former role and in her current capacity as executive director she supports Toward a Racially Equitable Monterey County, an ecosystem approach that centers resident voice and power while building capacity across multiple sectors to understand and advance racial equity through an inside-outside strategy. This is currently being done through the COLIBRI (Collaboratively, Organizing Liberation, Inclusion and Breaking Racial Inequities) Racial Equity Cohort. This cohort supports the forging of relationships between community and government to have shared learning around racial inequities to co-develop sustainable long-term solutions.
Ms. Manzo also convenes residents and community organizations via the Community Alliance for Racial Equity which focuses on implementing racial equity policies and practices within local government to increase the level of resident voice and power in decision-making processes. She is an advocate for authentic community engagement and is passionate about supporting youth to be agents of change in their community to reframe the narrative of young people.
As the daughter of immigrant parents, she is deeply rooted in her culture and loves dancing Mexican traditional dances, folklorico. Ms. Manzo is a graduate of Everett Alvarez High School and received her undergraduate degree in Chicano/a Studies and French Studies at UC Santa Barbara.
In 2015, she was honored as one of the Women of the Year by the Monterey County Commission on the Status of Women commending her work with youth on the only nationally youth-led open streets event, Ciclovía Salinas. She also currently serves as the Secretary for the Big Sur Land Trust Board and is on the City of Salinas’ Planning Commission.
Kate McKenna, AICP, Trustee
Kate has served since 2004 as Executive Officer of the Local Agency Formation Commission of Monterey County, a regulatory agency that makes determinations about the boundaries and services of local cities and special districts. An experienced urban planner and public agency administrator, her work is focused on complex public policy issues and collaborative approaches to help local governments address major challenges relating to land use, the environment, finances, governance, equity, and sustainability. In her current leadership position, Kate strives to balance the need for orderly growth and development with the preservation of agricultural lands and open space. Previously, she served as a professional planner in city, county, and regional planning agencies in the Monterey Bay Area and San Francisco Bay Area. Some of Kate’s formative experiences were as a Supervising Planner for the County of Monterey, where she assisted the Board of Supervisors in establishing the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, in implementing the County’s bold Big Sur Coastal Land Use Plan, and in securing viewshed conservation easements in Big Sur with voter-approved state funding.
Originally from rural Ontario, Canada, Kate has lived in beautiful Monterey County since 1989. She raised her family here and together they find inspiration in wild places. She enjoys triathlons, trail and running races, hiking and backpacking adventures, and participating in arts, history and cultural events. Her volunteer service on the board of the Big Sur Land Trust began in 2024.
Kate is a San José State University graduate with a Bachelor of Arts, Magna Cum Laude, in Social Science/Geography, and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning. She is a Lifetime Member of the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). She is the recipient of Distinguished Service and Outstanding LAFCO Professional awards from the California Association of Local Agency Formation Commissions.
Sue Storm, Trustee
Sue Storm, Market President at Pacific Valley Bank, has been a Commercial Lender in the market for over 25 years providing loans to small business owners. Sue has been with the bank for 14 years and it is worth noting it is the only truly local Monterey County bank. Sue is a 5th generation Salinas native. She moved back to the area after working in San Francisco for many years and earning her BA form the University of California at Berkeley. Additionally, she obtained an MBA while working full time in the banking industry.
Sue’s longstanding commitment to this Community is evident in her numerous boards she has served on over the years. She believes and is passionate about advocating for children and families. Sue serves on the Key for a Cure Foundation board, the Impower board, Salinas Valley Chamber of Commerce Foundation board along with other volunteer work in the community.
Sue is extremely passionate about travel and ventures to a new place every year. Without exposure to the different cultures, she doubts she would be the person she is today. She finds time for hiking, skiing, and exploring new recipes when she is not traveling with family and friends. Most recently, golf has become a new favorite weekend activity. Sue resides in Corral de Tierra with her husband Craig and their husky. They have two grown children that live out of the area.
Lorraine Yglesias, Trustee
Lorraine Yglesias is a dynamic marketing executive with a knack for amplifying brands, especially in the Latine [lah-tee-ney] space. As the Director of Multicultural and Inclusive Marketing at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, she boosted Hispanic visitation from 8% to 25% positioning the Aquarium as a welcoming space. During her tenure, she led campaigns in the San Francisco Bay Area that were instrumental in reinforcing the Aquarium’s reputation as a regional and global leader in ocean conservation. One such campaign included the installation of the Big Blue Whale at Golden Gate Park. The size of a real blue whale, this public art piece was made entirely from recycled plastic and ultimately made its way into the Guinness Book of World Records before it swam over to the Meow Wolf Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After two decades at the Aquarium, Lorraine is rewiring, not retiring.
Before the Aquarium, Lorraine honed her skills at top communications and film companies in San Jose and Los Angeles, including Comcast (now EffecTV), Lorimar-Telepictures (acquired by Warner Bros. TV), and The Hollywood Reporter. She played a key role in expanding US Hispanic and Latin American markets for her employers.
A first-generation college graduate and the daughter of immigrants, Lorraine is a passionate advocate and mentor. She champions diversity, equity, and inclusion, focusing on the environment, social and economic justice, and communications. Lorraine’s commitment to community runs deep. She serves on the board of Ventures, the Siembra Latino Fund (field of interest fund of the Community Foundation of Monterey County), and the Monterey Peninsula Foundation’s Grants Committee. Recently, she was appointed to the Monterey County Commission on the Status of Women and Community Action Partnership representing District 5. She also holds a board position at the Santa Lucia Conservancy. Lorraine lives in Carmel Valley with her husband, James Rice and their fur child Jasper.