Board of Directors

Robert Carlson

Robert is a Managing Director at JP Morgan, where he leads corporate banking coverage of technology companies on the West Coast. Robert has twenty years of corporate and investment banking experience, including capital raising, strategic advisory and relationship management responsibilities. Prior to joining JP Morgan in 2019, Robert held senior positions at Deutsche Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS Investment Bank. Before starting his career in banking, Robert co-founded and directed the San Francisco Urban Service Project, a non-profit national service organization in San Francisco that became a model AmeriCorps program. Robert holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MBA from UCLA. He lives in San Rafael with his wife, Katie, and sons, Danny and Eli.

Veronica Geczi

Veronica has an immense love and respect for animals and the environment, and has spent the past few years volunteering at various non profits. She is a current volunteer at WildCare, is the supervisor of her weekly clinic shift, and just completed the internship program. She is also active in foster care, taking in rodent and opossum orphans until they are ready to be released back to their homes. Additionally, she spends her time at Rancho Compasion, a farmed animal rescue, and previously at a couple horse rescues. Professionally, she graduated summa cum laude from UT-Austin with a BS in electrical engineering. Her focus is on microprocessors, having worked at IBM on gaming systems first in the lab as a validation and verification engineer, moving on to project management, and finally as a data scientist, evaluating next generation processors. Her passions, besides animals and wildlife, include sailing, scuba diving, knitting and crafting, cooking, and anything outdoors.

Robert D. Kline

Rob is the CEO and Co-Founder of the Chartres Lodging Group, LLC, a private equity investment firm focused on the lodging sector; and Co-Chairman of Sightline Hospitality, LLC, which was formed in 2005 as a lodging property management firm specializing in boutique lifestyle hotels and resorts. He began his career in 1984 upon graduating from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and has since led over $10 billion in transactional activity. Rob previously served as the initial Head of Acquisitions for Strategic Hotel Capital. In 1998 he began investing directly as a principal and has successfully invested over $6 billion of capital on his own behalf and a select group of private investors and institutional funds. Rob sits on the Advisory Boards of Directors for Cornell University’s Center for Real Estate Finance as well as the Cornell School of Hotel Administration’s Dean’s Advisory Board. He also is a Board Member of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, and established No Reservations Giving Foundation – a non-profit charitable program for Chartres Lodging.

Beth Ridout

Beth has been in financial planning in both the for-profit and non-profit worlds for 25 years and has been with The Nature Conservancy for 18 of them. She has a law degree from the University of Pittsburgh and was previously with Merrill Lynch as a trust officer in their Newport Beach, California office, where she served as a relationship manager for accounts of $10M and above. She has also been with the National Wildlife Federation, traveling the country and meeting donors as a Planned Giving Officer.

At The Nature Conservancy, she heads up the Estate Administration Team, which centrally administers over 1,700 files and $160M per year in received funds for the organization. WildCare has been an integral part of her life for eight years, over the course of which she’s found a home and a family. She’s been a volunteer in the Clinic, the Birdroom, and with the Wildlife Ambassador animals, and she fosters skunk kits, all of which provide peace in a complicated world.

Linda Stiles

Linda has been an independent event production and management professional for nearly two decades with added experience in marketing, communications, video editing and graphic design.

Linda began her career with Miller Freeman Media in marketing, event management and development roles, and subsequently was Regional Communications Director at MTV Asia, based in Singapore. She was a partner/owner of HICAP (Hotel Investment Conference Asia-Pacific) and its Asian conferences for 18 years till the company and its events was acquired by a leading B2B travel and meetings information company.

Linda has been an active UC Marin Master Gardener since 2020. She is also involved with Bridge the Gap’s advisory council, a non-profit serving disadvantaged children in Marin City. Her passions include reading, gardening, knitting, fishing, martial arts and a lifelong love for animals.

Kate Van Gytenbeek

Kate is the Regional Operating Officer for Northern Trust in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. She came to Northern Trust after founding and publishing a niche magazine with a small group of professionals. Prior to that Kate worked on the trading floor at the Chicago BOT and has worked with various public sector entities. Kate earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California and her Master’s of Business Administration with an emphasis in International Business from Loyola of Chicago.