board of directors

Russell Caldwell is the President of The Russell Caldwell Company, a municipal financial advisory company formed in the last quarter of 2012 after thirty-one continuous years in the municipal bond business. His career spanned six firms all of which were based in Denver, Colorado. Additionally, Mr. Caldwell served as Director of the Division of Commerce and Development for the State of Colorado from 1976 to 1981. Mr. Caldwell has been a guest lecturer at the University of Colorado School of Business, the Mesa Sate College MPA program and has taught a technical series on assessment district finance at the Denver Regional Council of Governments.

Martin Herz grew up exploring the woods of Southern New England. After living in California and Chicago, he has now called Colorado home for more than fifteen years. Martin spent several decades in the commercial real estate industry, primarily focused on arranging debt transactions for apartment and healthcare facility owners. He is now focused on managing investments for a small family office and being an active father to his two children. Martin earned a B.A. in Biology from Pomona College and a M.B.A. with a concentration in Finance from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Martin holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. In his free time, you can find Martin hiking or cycling all over the Front Range. He is an avid telemark skier, and an aspiring alpine touring racer.

Paul Phillips has practiced environmental and land use law, policy and litigation for more than 30 years. His experience includes Environmental Protection Agency enforcement actions under the Clean Air Act, RCRA, and the Clean Water Act. From 2000 to 2008, Paul served on Holland & Hart’s Management Committee, ultimately as Chairman, overseeing substantial growth in the firm. He has also served as Chair of the firm’s Natural Resources Department and Leader of its Environmental Group. Mr. Phillips has served on the board of the Colorado Legal Aid Foundation, the Colorado Plateau Archeological Alliance, the Trust for Land Restoration, and other civic and pro bono organizations. Mr. Phillip’s loves hiking and backpacking in the Colorado Rockies, bagging the easy 14ers, rafting the desert canyons of Colorado and Utah, and bringing back a long-neglected hay field and orchard in Taos, New Mexico.

Dan Pike has worked in the conservation real estate field for over forty years in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. He has completed many complex conservation transactions involving a wide-range of legislative, administration and private-sector real estate tools and incentives. He has served on several non-profit boards and public commissions, has managed several organizations, and is a frequent public speaker.

After working in the Illinois and Washington D.C. offices of The Nature Conservancy, Dan came to Colorado in 1975 as Director of the organization’s Rocky Mountain Field Office, managing programs in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming. A founder and principal in the Western Land Group, he specialized in completing land exchanges with government agencies from 1981 to 1996. Dan was hired as President of Colorado Open Lands in 1997. He was a founding Board member of both the Gunnison Ranchland Conservation Legacy, a non-profit agricultural land preservation group in Gunnison County, and the Mountain Area Land Trust in Evergreen, Colorado. He is past Vice-Chairman of the Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts, and has served on several committees for the Land Trust Alliance. He has also served on three Governor’s Open Space Commissions, and was the first chair of the Conservation Easement Oversight Commission, established by the legislature to provide oversight to the State’s conservation easement program.

Dan received his BA from Northwestern University, and is a graduate of the University of Colorado Real Estate Institute.

Rod Slifer is a Colorado native and has been in Vail since its beginning in 1962. He served as Mayor 11 of the 16 years he served on the Town Council. He is a partner in Slifer Smith & Frampton, a Real Estate Brokerage firm. Rod resides in Vail with his wife Beth and daughter Alexandra.