Contacts

BSBA Accounting, California State University, Long Beach; MA Counseling and Psychology, Graduate Institute; MA Theological Studies, Graduate Theological Union/Pacific School of Religion

Roger Wittenberg

Roger Wittenberg’s background as a scientist, entrepreneur, and inventor has led him to found several companies that focus on recycling materials into reusable products. His most successful venture, the Trex Company, has turned billions of pounds of recycled and reclaimed plastic, including 1.3 billion grocery retail bags and waste wood each year, into alternative wood products. After retiring from Trex, Wittenberg founded International Supply Consortium LLC, which takes on projects that use innovative building technologies and real estate projects that utilize these same sustainable materials. Wittenberg’s passions for recycling, green technology, and innovation are now being applied to projects in his own backyard, North Lake Tahoe. As a Foundation board member of Sierra Nevada College, Wittenberg helped move the campus’s Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences to a Platinum LEED status through the use of Trex products and other innovative green strategies. And, his passion for sustainability now drives the mission of a local Crystal Bay project: Boulder Bay Resort, through which he aims to create a new model for the resort/community experience that embraces innovative green technologies and provides a sense of place for visitors and locals. Roger lives with his wife Beatrice in Incline Village, with his extended family nearby.
 

BS, University of California, Davis; MBA, Arizona State

Stuart Yount

Stuart Yount is the owner and CEO of Fortifiber Corporation, the family business he joined in 1969 that manufacturers building materials, founded in 1939 by his father and now headed day to day by his son. This leaves Stuart more time to devote to family, non-profit boards and travels with his wife of 41 years, Geri. His education includes seven colleges and universities, ending with the Harvard Graduate School of Business. He and Geri moved from Southern California to reside full time in Crystal Bay in early 1996. They have two children and three grandchildren. He has served on numerous non-profit and company boards through the years as well as being President Bush’s representative on the Tahoe Regional Planning Governing Board for over 6 years. He joined the SNC Board of Trustee’s in 1999 and has served in several positions through the years, including Vice Chairman. Stuart now heads SNC’s Development board committee.

• M.F.A., Cornell University

Alexi Zentner is the author of the novels The Lobster Kings (forthcoming, 2013) and Touch. He is published in the United States by W. W. Norton & Company, and in Canada by Knopf Canada. Touch has been published or is forthcoming in a dozen countries and ten languages. The CBC has named Alexi as one of 12 Writers to Watch – “the future of this country’s literature” – and one of six “fresh voices” for 2011. Touch was named one of the “best books” of 2011 from The National Post, Kobo, and Amazon.ca, and singled out for year-end praise by The Globe & Mail. Touch was shortlisted for The 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award, The Center for Fiction’s 2011 Flahery-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the 2011 Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Alexi’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Glimmer Train, The Walrus, The Southern Review, and many other publications. He is the winner of both the O. Henry Prize (jury favorite) and the Narrative Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize. Alexi is a faculty member in the Sierra Nevada College low residency MFA program. Alexi has taught creative writing at Cornell University, where he received his MFA, and has taught at the Brooklyn College MFA program, the Rutgers-Camden Writers’ Conference, and the Lighthouse Writing Workshop, and has been a teaching fellow at the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan University writing conferences. Alexi Zentner was born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario, and currently lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and two daughters. He holds both Canadian and American citizenship.