POST appoints two new directors

The Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) has appointed two new members, Brad O’Brien and Steve Blank, both of Menlo Park, to its Board of Directors.

Brad O’Brien is senior partner in the real estate and environmental practice at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto. He teaches commercial leasing and recent developments in real estate for California Continuing Education of the Bar. He also serves as a director of the Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto and has done pro bono legal work for POST and other organizations, including Ronald McDonald House, Sempervirens Fund, Environmental Volunteers, Menlo School, Woodside High School Foundation, the Palo Alto History Museum and the Community School of Music and Art.
 
Steve Blank is a retired Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has co-founded several companies including E.piphany, MIPS Computers, Ardent and Rocket Science Games. He currently teaches entrepreneurship at the Stanford School of Engineering; Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley; and the Columbia Business School. He serves on the California Coastal Commission, is on the National Audubon Society’s board of directors, and is chair of the board of Audubon California. He sits on the boards of two Silicon Valley technology companies, CaféPress and IMVU.

O’Brien’s association with POST began in 1991, when he became a donor to the nonprofit land trust. Over the years, his involvement has grown steadily, including hundreds of hours of pro bono legal work given to POST. He has helped craft numerous legal agreements for land acquisition projects at POST, including Rancho Corral de Tierra, north of Half Moon Bay, and Whaler’s Cove and Lobitos Ridge, both south of Half Moon Bay. He has also tackled property sale and management agreements and was instrumental in negotiating the recent purchase of POST’s headquarters at 222 High Street in Palo Alto.
 
"My interest in being on POST’s Board is to help expand POST’s network, to reach out to the next generation, to serve as an example for others in the community," said O’Brien. "I believe in protecting local natural lands, especially in areas like ours where the development pressures on open space are so great."

In addition to their home in Menlo Park, Blank and his wife, Alison Elliott, own a ranch on the coast near Pescadero adjacent to Año Nuevo State Reserve. In 2004, the couple made a generous $1 million gift to POST’s "Saving the Endangered Coast" campaign through the Elliott-Blank Family Foundation.
 
"It’s fitting that POST was founded in the heart of Silicon Valley," said Blank. "Conservation has many faces, but POST is the quintessential definition of ‘entrepreneurial conservation.’ It’s creative, agile and effective. As the conservation ethic has spread, POST has become a model for 21st-century land conservation, saving threatened properties that define our experience of California and the American West."
 
"With Steve’s entrepreneurial background and Brad’s knowledge of the legal intricacies of land protection, POST is now, more than ever, equipped to broaden its conservation work," said POST President Audrey Rust. "Their business acumen, passion for the environment and commitment to POST will serve us well as we work to safeguard our most vulnerable open space lands."
 
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POST is a leading private, nonprofit land trust dedicated to preserving the beauty, character and diversity of the San Francisco Peninsula landscape. Since its founding in 1977, the organization has been responsible for saving nearly 60,000 acres as permanent open space and parkland in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties.