Heritage Park Museum Board

Laura is currently the Chair of the Planning Commission for the City of Sunnyvale, She is a 1986 graduate of Leadership Sunnyvale, and serves on the Leadership Sunnyvale Board of Directors and the Historical Society Board of Directors. Laura brings extensive experience in leadership, project development and project management to this team. Laura is a 25 year resident of Sunnyvale, California.

Pat Castillo, Fund Raising Co-chair
Pat has contributed to the community in many capacities serving as Mayor of Sunnyvale, California (1991-1993), two terms on the Sunnyvale City Council (1985-1993), President of the League of California Cities (1992-1993), and appointed by Governor Pete Wilson to the State Constitution Revision Committee in 1994. In addition, she is co-owner/ Financial Manager of a Landscaping Firm, and is the Principal of Castillo & Castillo Consulting.

As a Board Member of the Chamber of Commerce for many years, Pat also served as Chairperson of the Chamber of Commerce. As a Community Volunteer for over 35 years, Pat has been involved with the School Districts, Church and youth sport activities, and many Civic Groups. She brings expertise in the area of land development, legislative issues and fund raising to the team.

Ed Grady, Fund Raising Co-chair & Strategic Planner
Ed is President and Chief Operating Officer of Brooks Automation, Prior to joining Brooks in Feb. 2003, he successfully ran several divisions at KLA-Tencor, including the largest revenue and profit-producing group, helping to grow the business to a level in excess of $1 billion in revenues. Prior to KLA-Tencor, he served as president and CEO of Hoya Micro Mask for three years, driving the restructuring and cost reduction initiatives to transform the business from a loss to a profit in two years.

Ed started his career as an engineer for Monsanto/MEMC and during his fourteen years with the company, rose to the position of vice president of worldwide sales for EPI, the most profitable division. During his 30 years in the industry, Ed has held a number of responsibilities that included engineering, sales, product marketing, strategic marketing and management of profit and loss operations. He holds a BS degree in engineering and a MBA from the University of Houston.

Ed serves the project team in business marketing, strategic planning and management.

Kent Robertson, CFO
Kent is a retired corporate financial executive. His career of over 30 years focused primarily on financial management in high technology companies. For approximately half of his career, he was senior vice president and chief financial officer for five high tech public companies including Telco Systems and Pyramid Technology. In all five companies, Kent was responsible for the finance, legal, management information systems and human resources functions in addition to serving as Corporate Secretary. He was CFO during the initial public offering of (IPO) of Telco Systems and was primary liaison to Wall Street in all five companies. Kent also directed multiple acquisitions and mergers and was the financial point for Pyramid Technology leading to its successful merger with Siemens AG.

Following the decision to retire, he has used the time to allow him travel to many exotic places around the world. In addition, he has been able to volunteer to the benefit of the community. He was part of the advisory committee for the Orchard Heritage Park Interpretive Exhibit and was responsible for all the financial maters including cash management, financial analysis, and cost control.

Kent is a California native and has lived in Sunnyvale, California for over 25 years.

Michael Malone, Author, Business Advisor
Mike is a recognized authority on entrepreneurship and one of high tech's most respected journalists. A graduate of Santa Clara University, where he is currently an instructor in professional writing and serves as member of the advisory board of the business school. Malone joined Hewlett-Packard Co. in 1975 as a public relations specialist and feature writer. In 1979 he joined the San Jose Mercury News as it's first high tech reporter.

In 1984, Mike published The Big Score, an acknowledged classic history of the Silicon Valley and the basis for the award winning PBS miniseries "Silicon Valley", for which he was host. That series served as the launch pad for "Malone", a nationally syndicated PBS interview series, which ran for eight seasons. He has also hosted two other series "A Parliament of Minds" and "Betting It All" with America's leading high tech entrepreneurs.

During his 17 year free lance career, Mike authored or coauthored ten books, including "The Virtual Corporation", one of the most influential business books of the 1990's as well as "The Microprocessor" and "The Intellectual Capital", both of which are still used in college curricula throughout the world. As an entrepreneur himself, Malone was a founding shareholder of two of the most successful companies of recent years, eBay and Siebel Systems.

Mike serves the project team in many capacities, including business advisor, fund raising and historian.

Mary Sievert, Museum Designer
Mary is an illustrator-designer specializing in illustration and interpretive communications. She is graduated from the Science Communication illustration program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Mary also holds a MA degree in Museum Studies from San Francisco State University and a BS degree in Graphic Design & Illustration from the School of Art & Design at San Jose State University.

Her design studio, Sievert Illustration & Design is located in Santa Cruz, California. SI&D collaborates with creative teams developing illustrations, exhibitions and publications exploring topics and issues in the arts and sciences, nature and the environment, and historic interpretations and preservation. Some recent exhibitions include: Deep Roots, Rich Soil: the Orchard Era in Santa Clara Valley, City of Sunnyvale, Moving Mountains: Mt. Fuji 2000, Applied Materials, Inc., Adventures into Books: Gumby's World', Bay Area Discovery Museum. Mary was the exhibit designer of the traveling exhibition 'Animal Eyes' (funded by the National Science Foundation) which was awarded the American Association of Museums highest honor for museum excellence in 1999. Mary will be serving the project team as consultant and museum display illustrator and designer.

Linda Taaffe, Editor
Linda is the associate editor of the Los Altos Town Crier newspaper, which serves the communities of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Cupertino, Palo Alto and Mountain View. A fifth generation Californian and a Martin Murphy family descendant, Linda has volunteered much of her time to preserving the area's historical heritage by writing history pieces for the newspaper, developing exhibits for local historical museums, making presentations to local groups about her family's role in early California, and volunteering as a docent at the San Jose Historical Museum. She is currently gathering information for a book about the Taaffe family during their ranch era, 1860-1900.

As a member of the Heritage Park Museum Project Team, Linda is responsible for all the public relations. This includes developing community and media contacts, producing press releases, writing speeches and educating the public and fact-checking historical information. Linda has walked door to door in Sunnyvale to speak to neighbors about the project.

Jane Vaughan, Construction/Development Coordinator
Jane is Development Partner with Menlo Equities, a private real estate investment and development company, which owns over 4,000,000 square feet of office/ R&D buildings in Silicon Valley. Jane is responsible for all development projects for the company. She is currently developing a mixed-use outdoor mall with 1,000,000 sf of retail space, 300 housing units and 275,000 sf of office space in downtown Sunnyvale, as well as 107 condominium units in Cupertino and an 80,000 sf retail center in Burbank, California. Previously, she has developed fourteen office/ R&D buildings totaling over 1.35 million sf for high technology companies such as Juniper Networks and Yahoo in Sunnyvale and has planned a 80 acre campus for Juniper Networks Headquarters, the largest in Silicon Valley.

Prior to joining Menlo Equities, Jane was a Development Partner with the Koll Company and Vice President with Wells Fargo Bank commercial real estate group.

Jane, with degrees in Civil Engineering, Structural Engineering and a MBA in Finance and Accounting, brings extensive knowledge and experience in land development and construction to the project team. She will serve as our construction and development coordinator.

An advisory board will be established upon commencement of the operations.