Avenidas Board of Directors

Barbara Krimsky Binder

Chair

Barbara Krimsky Binder is a Certified Financial Planner practitioner and the founder of BKB Financial Advisors, a fee-only investment advisory firm. Barbara’s firm provides customized and objective financial planning services, and her clientele includes many older adults. Barbara has presented at both Avenidas’ Financial and Housing Conferences and has been a preferred provider of the Avenidas Village since its inception in 2007. An active and thoughtful long-distance provider of support and frequent visitor to both her mother and her father-in-law, Barbara is very engaged with the mission of Avenidas.

Hank Massey

Vice Chair

Larry Klein

Treasurer

From 1967 to 2018, Larry Klein practiced law in the Palo Alto area. He was a named shareholder in the Palo Alto firm of Ritchey Fisher Whitman and Klein from 1967 to 2005 when the firm was acquired by the national law firm of Dorsey and Whitney. He was of counsel to Dorsey until 2009 when he joined the Thoits law firm, where he remained as an of counsel until his retirement in 2018.

A graduate of Cornell University (B.A. in Economics) and Harvard Law School ( J.D., Magna Cum Laude), Larry’s early legal career focused on taxation and then expanded to handling corporate, estate planning and trust administration matters. He has been actively involved in the local community, having served on the Palo Alto City Council from 1981 to 1990 and then again from 2006 to 2015, including three stints as Mayor (1984-85, 1989 and 2008). He is also a former Board Chair of Avenidas.

Rick Stern

Secretary

Rick Stern founded Palo Alto-based Stern Mortgage Company in 1982 and retired from it in 2010. His educational background includes a B.S. in Marketing from Bradley University and a degree in Hotel, Motel, and Restaurant Management from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. In 2010, Rick and Stern Mortgage received the “Outstanding Business” Tall Tree Award by the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce in honor of the company’s commitment to a “community-minded business ethic that serves to enhance the richness of Palo Alto.” Rick has contributed many hours of volunteer work to local organizations including serving as president of the Kiwanis Club of Palo Alto, chair of the YMCA board of managers and chair of the board of the Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce. Rick has served as a driver for Avenidas’ Door to Door program since 2013.

Loren Brown

Loren Brown is a 42-year construction industry veteran and President of Vance Brown, Inc. Loren is serving his fourth term on the Avenidas Board and is on the Investment and Finance Committees. He has served on the board of several non-profit organizations including the East Palo Alto Senior Center, Palo Alto Community Fund, Castilleja School, Community Skating, Inc., and Addison Elementary School PTA. Loren currently serves on the boards of Reaching and Inspiring Success through Education (RISE) and a non-profit family foundation, as well as on the Stanford Construction Institute’s Advisory Committee.

Jeremy Burns

Jeremy Burns is the co-founder of Burns Loew, a professional law corporation in Mountain View. Prior to the launch of the firm in 2011, he worked for several well-known local law firms including Carr, McClellan, Quinn Emanuel, and KPMG. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law. Since starting his firm, Jeremy has successfully handled many diverse legal cases, including estate and trust litigation, personal injury, contract disputes involving technology companies, and employment law matters. Outside of work, he is the primary family caregiver for his 85-year-old father, who resides at PA Commons and is an active member of Avenidas. Jeremy also assists his aunt (a Palo Alto resident) in caring for his 93-year-old maternal grandmother in Los Altos. All of this on top of being a devoted husband to his wife and the father to two young active children at home.

Barbara Carlitz

Hui (Debra) Cen

Hui (Debra) Cen is a co-founder and President of WizChinese, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization devoted to helping Chinese immigrants to integrate into local communities. She is also the founder and President of Impact GoGo, a startup providing a philanthropic marketplace called inKynd.com to connect donor, buyer, causes and nonprofits. She came to the US from China more than 30 years ago to pursue her doctorate study and devoted her first 12 years in US to biomedical research. In 1998, Debra became an entrepreneur and since co-founded several biomedical research reagent companies. Among them, SABiosciences became successful and was acquired by Qiagen.

Debra retired from her biotech career in 2012 and reinvented herself to become a social entrepreneur. In 2013, she co-founded Palo Alto Chinese Parents’ Club and later a non-profit organization, WizChinese. Since then, she has been tirelessly working on connecting Chinese immigrants with the greater communities and facilitates integration of Chinese immigrants into US society. 

Michael Couch

Mike Couch is active in the Channing House Board of Trustees, Community School of Music and Arts, and Advisory Council for the University of Oregon’s College of Arts and Science. He was honored as Los Altos Hill Volunteer or the Year 1995.

Dexter Dawes

In his professional life, whether as investment banker, managing general partner of a growth fund, or co-founder of a software firm, Dexter Dawes earned the reputation as an astute and successful businessman, CEO and negotiator. Dexter took his talents and experience serving on 16 corporate boards and applied them on behalf of many non-profits, helping them make sound decisions pertaining to financial strength. A few examples are his active involvement in the investment issues and the development of financial guidelines at Channing House, serving on the Bond Oversight Committee while a trustee of Foothill/De Anza College, and helping the Utilities Commission, where he served for 11 years. Other non-profit boards Dexter served on included Palo Alto-Los Altos AYSO, president of Paly Sports Boosters and board president of the Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra and Chorale. Dexter lives with his wife in Palo Alto.

Bill Friedman

Bill Friedman was trained as a lawyer, spent some time with the SEC, then as General Counsel to ROLM Corporation before going into management running Western U.S. operations for five years. Bill has served on the board of Castilleja School for 15 years, chairing the Development Committee for 12 years and the Trustee and Governance Committee for two years. He is also on the board of the International School of the Peninsula and on the board of Stanbridge Academy. He served two terms on the Avenidas board from 2011 to 2017, and after one year off the board, he is now returning to serve a third term.

Julie Yu Lau

Julie Yu Lau has been marketing real estate in California associated with Coldwell Banker since 1989. She is committed as a full-time professional to her career in real estate and loves what she does. Julie serves her clients with honesty, integrity, knowledge and enthusiasm. It is her goal to make each transaction as enjoyable as possible and to approach all problems solving with competence and creativity so to ultimately provide her clients with the best possible service to their fullest satisfaction. Julie has a BS degree in Accounting from Indiana State University and an MBA with a concentration in Finance from Notre Dame de Namur University.

Kathy Layendecker

Kathy Layendecker serves Castilleja as Chief Financial and Operating Officer and member of the Leadership Team. She previously served as the Head of School at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School, an independent boarding/day school in Minnesota, where she has been instrumental in leading the development of a new master campus plan, launching the Engineering Center of Excellence Program, and overseeing the growth of innovative pedagogies such as blended learning and design thinking. Prior to Shattuck, she worked at Oregon Episcopal School in Portland, OR, for seven years as the CFO and Interim Head of School. Before focusing on schools, she spent a number of years in the private sector as a CFO. She received her BA from Stanford University and MBA from Yale.

Margo Ogus

Margo Rich Ogus is an economic consultant and expert witness, through her company, Economic Solutions, Inc.  She is a graduate of Cornell and Stanford Universities and a long-time resident of Palo Alto.  She has served on the board, and as chair, of Palo Alto Community Child Care and other local organizations.

Mike Rantz

Mike Rantz was responsible for Global Government Bond Trading at Goldman Sachs & Co. in London from 1995 to his retirement in 1999. During this time, Mr. Rantz was the Founding Chairman of Brokertec Global LLC, an electronic inter-dealer broker in the government bond markets. Prior to that, Mr. Rantz was responsible for the Goldman Sachs & Co. United States Government Primary Dealership based out of New York. Mr. Rantz joined Goldman Sachs in 1983 and became a Partner in 1992. In addition, he was responsible for Municipal Bond Sales, Trading and Underwriting from 1991 to 1993.

Mr. Rantz currently serves on the Investment Committee of Castilleja School. He previously served on the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences Advisory Council from 2000 to 2008 and the Cornell University Council from 2002 to 2008. Mr. Rantz was a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Center for the Disabled in New York City where he was a member of the Finance and Audit Committees from 2003 to 2008, the Board of Trustees of the Phillips Brooks School in Menlo Park, where he was Chairman of the Finance and Investment Committees and a member of the Executive, Audit, and Development Committees from 2007 to 2012. Mr. Rantz holds a B.A. from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.

Linda Dairiki Shortliffe

Linda Dairiki Shortliffe is the Stanley McCormick Professor Emerita at Stanford University.   She is past Chair of the Department of Urology at Stanford and served as the President and Trustee of the American Board of Urology, as a Hewlett Foundation Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and a Stanford Clayman Faculty Fellow.  She was on multiple National Institutes of Health (NIH) committees and chaired the NIH Strategic Plan for Research on Bladder Disease that guided bladder national research and funding for over a decade.

Dr. Shortliffe has been on the board and advisory councils of for-profit and nonprofit national organizations, including Vivus, Bayer, Dornier, MedShare.org, American Board of Urology, and California Council on Science & Technology (CCST). 

As a baby boomer and long-term resident of Palo Alto, she cares for aging parents at Channing House and 2 granddaughters.  She has an AB from Harvard University, MD from Stanford University, and received her urological training at Stanford University. 

Jerome B. Spector

Jerome B. Spector has fifty years of experience of working with individuals, estates, and trusts, and closely held businesses. Jerry has taught and worked with individuals and families to assist them in reaching their financial goals by long range planning for tax transactions, estate and financial planning.

He states that when a tax return is completed, the only question should be: how close did we come to the projection? Mr. Spector retired from full time practice in 2017. Today, he provides consulting on tax and cash flow planning and in the area of estate and trust planning. He has authored and taught classes for CPA firms, the California CPA Society, and the California Bar Association. In October 2012 Jerry was appointed as a Commissioner for The California Board of Legal Specialization Estate Planning, Trust, & Probate Law. In 2019 he will service as the vice-chair of the Board.

Steve Wade