Board of Directors

PRESIDENT

Rick Marshall lives in Incline Village, Nevada. Rick has had lifetime interests in environmental and political issues. He graduated from UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) with Environmental Science and History degrees. He is proud that while he was at UCSB, he helped save the Wilcox property in Santa Barbara from development. The 70 acres of ocean front property is now the Douglas Family Preserve. Rick enjoys kayaking, skiing and mountain biking in the Tahoe area and beyond. He was a Director of Analytic Sales at FICO.

VICE PRESIDENT

Kristianne Hannemann grew up in Southern California and now calls Tahoe home. She received her doctorate in pharmacy from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and a bachelor of science in pharmacology from University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). After graduating, she served many communities as a pharmacist. She and her family have attended different planting and watering events with SPF and enjoy sharing this great work with others. Kristianne joined the SPF Board in 2022 to support the SPF’s mission of improving forest health and reforestation in the face of climate change.

TREASURER

Hillary Huff grew up in the mountains of Colorado, has been all over the world as an international courier, and now calls South Lake Tahoe, CA home. Hillary has been a friend of the SPF for many years, and has volunteered at numerous plantings with her family. She has led the Board of the Tahoe Arts Project (TAP), but she joined the SPF Board as a way to serve and connect with her community while also promoting environmental stewardship and sustainability. Hillary runs two online businesses – Intrepid Jewelry and Conscious Cutlery – and is a morning show host at Lake Tahoe Television, where she plugs SPF whenever she can!

SECRETARY

Fabian Hannemann grew up in the scenic German Black Forest. He holds a B.S. in Business Informatics from Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart, a B.A. in Business Administration from Open University London, and an MIB from Hult International Business School San Francisco. His career journey began at IBM with consulting and software engineering roles in Germany, South Africa, and the US. Currently, he serves as a Senior Director of Product for a global payments technology company. Fabian lives in South Lake Tahoe, where he enjoys exploring outdoors with his family, backcountry skiing, swimming, and helping with search-and-rescue. His passion for fighting climate change and mitigating impacts led him to join the Sugar Pine Foundation to improve forest resiliency and restore nature in the Sierra Nevada.

Caitlin Firestone, a self proclaimed tree hugger, originally hails from the Midwest and is now based in Reno, NV. She has a MA in Special Education from San Francisco State University and a background in rehabilitation education for adults with vision loss. She and her family have participated in a number of plantings with SPF, plus she helped organize a fundraising and awareness event about SPF through a screening of “The Call of the Forest” at Patagonia’s downtown Reno outlet store. Caitlin is an avid hiker and forest frolicker, grateful for the opportunity to help support SPF’s work with forest restoration.

Ron Landau grew up in New Jersey, spent most of his adult life in Los Angeles and now calls Tahoe home. He has a B.A. from Rutgers University, a law degree from Duke Law School and a Master of Laws in Taxation from NYU. Ron spent most of his career representing multi-national corporations -many of which cared nothing for the environment. Now retired, Ron has abandoned city life, recognized the joy of living among beautiful mountains, forests and streams and is eager to aid the SPF’s mission. Ron enjoys skiing, wakeboarding, hiking, mountain biking and pickleball.

Stephen Loane grew up in rural New Jersey exploring the natural world of forests, fields, streams and rivers that surrounded him. In elementary school he planted a white pine seedling that was given to his class for Arbor Day and has been an environmental and social-justice activist ever since. Early causes included fundraising to save the bald eagle and marching in Washington to end nuclear arms proliferation. After attending the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), Stephen became a Maine Guide, and spent several years guiding white-water rafting trips in Maine, Montana and Northern California, where he eventually settled. His second career was in sports massage therapy, which he practiced for more than a decade. Since then, he has worked in IT and in film, television, and music production—both on camera and backstage. He relocated to South Lake Tahoe seven years ago and returned to his tree-planting roots, collecting sugar pine cones, planting seedlings, and watering trees with the Sugar Pine Foundation. These days he enjoys telemark skiing and kayaking the bays and lakes of Northern California.

Rob Oglesby’s life-long passion for California’s natural landscapes stems from growing up at the foot of the Sierra Nevada not far from Lake Tahoe. He attended UC Davis and obtained a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, which he then parlayed into over 40 years of public and private sector service in defense of California’s environment. Serving four Governors as Legislative Director to the California Air Resources Board, Rob enabled landmark legislation to reduce climate change emissions. As California Energy Commission Executive Director, Rob is proud to have helped the state transition to a renewable energy grid and zero emission vehicles.

Rob loves spending time outdoors with family and friends. He has witnessed the decline of Sierra forest health due to disease, wildfires, climate change, bark beetles and other stressors. He joined the SPF Board to help advance its mission.

ADVISOR, FORESTER, AND LEADING DISCOVERER OF CHAMPION TREES

Michael Taylor’s passion and expertise is to find and document the largest and tallest trees in the Western United States. An Environmental Resources Engineer by training with degrees from San Diego State and Humboldt State Universities, Michael uses a high tech approach to first remotely scan forested areas for enormous trees. He then hunts down the biggest trees on expeditions throughout California, Oregon and Washington. Michael currently works as the LiDAR Specialist for the Columbia Land Trust, and is based in Montgomery Creek, CA. Michael became a friend of the Sugar Pine Foundation when he was working on cloning one of the tallest known sugar pines with the Archangel Tree Archive. He has shared his tall tree discoveries and hosted SPF staff on expeditions ever since!

SCIENCE ADVISOR

Joan Dudney grew up roaming the mountains and foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada and inspired her lifelong passion for these wild and beautiful places. She earned her PhD in May 2019 from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focused on white pine blister rust, bark beetles, and drought impacts on white pines in the Sierra Nevada. She has been instrumental in defining trends in the spread of blister rust – it is moving higher into western white pine as opposed to sugar pine – and in studying how best to conserve the Sierra Nevada’s white pines. Joan was awarded the Smith Conservation Postdoctoral Fellowship to lead research efforts on the future drought impacts on whitebark pine and other white pine species. Joan lives in Davis, California and conducts frequent forays into the Sierra for work and pleasure.