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Our Board

Rita Connor

Rita Connor is the founder and president of Elite Resorts & Spas specializing in group and individual representation for independent, upscale hotels, resorts and spas. The company is based in Los Angeles.

With more than 20 years in the industry, Rita has focused on planning group and personal travel around various forms of themed, experiential travel. Her passion and knowledge about the transformative powers of spa hotels and resorts has led Rita to represent destinations that are upscale and environmentally-friendly and have programming that rejuvenate, uplift and enhance people’s lives.

Rita has developed “Elite Retreats” that put executives and groups in touch with personal goals, life enhancements and experiential, informative topics.

Prior to forming Elite Resorts & Spas, Rita served as regional director of sales for Meridien Hotels and Preferred Hotels and Resorts.

Tony Kingsbury

Tony Kingsbury is Founder and President of TKingsbury LLC where he leads a consulting practice assisting companies and organization improve the sustainability of their plastics and chemicals. Kingsbury honed his sustainability expertise during a nearly three decade long career at Dow Chemical in a variety of roles including Global Plastics Sustainability Leader. He is a recognized expert in green chemistry, environmentally preferred purchasing, value chain sustainability challenges, public policy, life cycle thinking, environmental and societal issues associated with corporate and product sustainability. He has worked with Fortune 500 companies around the globe in supply chains ranging from consumer electronics to packaging, apparel to toys. He is known for using his wide ranging knowledge of the whole supply chain to find workable solutions to complex challenges and for distilling complex messages into understandable language.

Kingsbury spent the period between 2007 and 2012 as an Executive in Residence at UC Berkeley. In this role, Kingsbury led the multidisciplinary sustainability center and taught a variety of graduate level courses on sustainability. In 2012 and 2013 he led Cardno ChemRisk’s sustainability consulting practice.

Ray Grant

Ray Grant has enjoyed a multi-faceted and celebrated career in the arts, education, business and cultural tourism. He is Southern Utah University’s Distinguished Fellow for Creative Engagement and Acting Director of the Utah Center for Arts Administration, a professional service of SUU’s College of Performing and Visual Arts, by providing consulting and training services to a wide range of commercial and not-for-profit organizations.

His mission is to work to advance, animate, and stimulate leadership in the creative economy among university faculty, staff, community partners and constituents.

Ray is credited with heading the successful 2002 Olympic Arts Festival from 1998-2002, managing the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee for the 2002 Winter Games and also held the post of Artistic Director of the Cultural Olympiad.

As the former Executive Director-Programming for Robert Redford’s Sundance Resort, he headed creative development, programming, conferencing, and retreats reporting directly to Redford. He also spearheaded an extensive Artist-in-Residence program and the Weekend of Discovery initiative for the thought-inspiring resort. During his tenure at Sundance, Ray focused programming on the balance of art and nature with a specific call to fostering independent voice.

During his professional career, Ray served in New York City as General Manager of the American Symphony Orchestra and as Director of the Tisch Center for the Arts. He has produced major events in Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and New York’s Central Park.

Ray headed the Performing Arts and Film programs of the Disney Institute, a division of the Walt Disney Company and a project of Walt Disney Imagineering. There, he directed a 365-day per year performance schedule featuring artists in the fields of music, theater, dance, film and television, science and architecture. He facilitated the development of three multi-million dollar performance facilities and consulted for Walt Disney Attractions, Inc.

Brad Nuccio

Brad Nuccio is Director of Strategic Partnerships at Ungerboeck Software International. In his current role he helps create alignment between USI and other companies, as well as non-profit organizations, in order to advance the goals of the company. He also serves the Girl Scouts of Missouri on the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Advisory Board, and on the Saint Louis University High School Academic Advisory Committee.

Nuccio also served as Senior Vice President and on the Executive Leadership Team at the Saint Louis Science Center, the fourth busiest science museum in the United States. While there, Nuccio oversaw all revenue-generating aspects of the institution including the Planetarium, the Exploradome and the IMAX Theater. Nuccio’s leadership guided the Science Center to build a new LEED-Certified 20,000 sq. ft. exhibition space. He directed a staff of 110, two national agencies, and a political lobbying firm.

Nuccio was previously VP Business Development at Arts & Exhibitions International, helping produce and promote several blockbuster natural history and science exhibitions including Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs, Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt, Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition and others.

Nuccio was also a senior leader at PRR, an environmental consulting business with offices in Seattle, Portland and Washington DC. There he helped create programs to drive demand for sustainable products and created initiatives promoting mass-transit, clean energy, air and water.
Nuccio holds an MBA from Washington University and a BSBA from the University of N. Colorado. He currently lives in Glendale, Missouri.

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bjh Brad Holden

Brad Holden is a Founder and Managing Partner of North Line Partners – a boutique executive search firm he founded in 2010. He has nearly 20 years of recruiting experience.

Prior to North Line Partners, Brad was a Partner with Heidrick & Struggles, where he served as Practice Leader, Global Automotive and as a Partner in the Global Industrial Practice from 2004 to 2010. For two years, he also served as the Managing Partner of the firm’s five Midwest offices. Before joining Heidrick & Struggles, Brad was the Office Managing Partner of TMP Worldwide, while also serving as Co-Leader of the Global Industrial Practice. Prior to TMP, Brad’s search experience included nearly 10 years with Korn/Ferry International, where he served as President of the Global Industrial and Energy Practices his last few years with the firm.

Prior to entering executive search in 1992, Brad served in both Illinois government and industry. He began his career in government. After serving as an Illinois Staff Assistant to Senator Charles H. Percy (R-IL), he first served the Director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and later the Illinois Attorney General, as Chief of Staff. He later joined Container Corporation of America (CCA) as a Senior State Issues Manager, and FMC Corporation as a public affairs advisor to FMC’s Chairman and CEO.

Brad lives in Chicago, IL.

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bjh Jeff Burnside

Jeff is the Senior Investigative Reporter with KOMO television, Seattle’s ABC station. He’s the recipient of more than 25 journalism awards including several national honors from the Investigative Reporters and Editors, Clarion, and National Press Club, as well as more than a dozen regional Emmy’s.

Jeff’s interest in environmental reporting has taken him to Berlin, Bali, Norway’s Arctic Circle, Panamanian jungles, throughout the Caribbean, Hawaii, the Everglades and Washington’s San Juan Islands. He’s covered issues like climate change, coral reef decline, overfishing, killer whales, and human pollutants in wildlife. He was the first journalist to comprehensively report on the link between powerful Navy sonar and cetaceans. Jeff was the first reporter to broadcast live from inside Aquarius, the undersea research lab near Key Largo. In a research sub, Jeff also plunged to the bottom of the Miami Terrace for a groundbreaking story on biomedical research.

Jeff serves as President for the Society of Environmental Journalists, the leading such group of professional reporters in the world. He’s served on the SEJ board for nearly a decade, and as chairman of SEJ’s 2011 national conference that broke attendance records.

The Seattle native is a graduate of Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communications.

He’s been awarded working journalism fellowships with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ TransAtlantic Reporters Network (Norway, Berlin, Barcelona), the Western Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at USC Annenberg, Carnegie Mellon’s Steinbrenner Institute, Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, and the Metcalf Institute. He was a panelist for many years for the Aldo Leopold Leadership Seminars for leading scientists, and other science and media confabs. He was a panelist at several Pew Marine Fellows conferences. He served on the Pew Institute of Ocean Science Advisory Board and as an advisor for the Scripps Institute for Environmental Reporting at Florida Atlantic University

Find Jeff on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Or email him at jeffburnside@komotv.com

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bjh Peter Smith

Peter Smith is Vice President of Legal Affairs for Enterprise Holdings, which owns and operates the Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent-A-Car brands. In that position, he has legal responsibility for airport operations, intellectual property, franchising and global business development. He is also a member of Enterprise Holdings’ Chairman’s Task Force on Sustainability.

Smith joined Enterprise in 2004 as corporate counsel. In 2007, when the Taylor family acquired the Alamo Rent-A-Car and National Car Rental brands, he was appointed Vice President of Legal Affairs for Alamo and National. Smith was named to his current position in 2009 at the company’s St. Louis headquarters.

Before joining Enterprise in 2004, Smith practiced corporate and international law at the firm of Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale in St. Louis. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Duke University and a J.D. from the University of Richmond.

Smith is a trustee of the Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital of St. Louis, a member of the Board of Directors of the World Affairs Council of St. Louis and an advisory board member of the Boeing Institute of International Business at St. Louis University. He and his wife, Stacey, live in St. Louis with their three children.

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Virgil VanTrease

Virgil is the President of Eagle Wealth Management, LLC. After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a BSBA in Biological Sciences, he spent four decades in the Financial Services industry. He has served with Prudential Insurance Company, Mass Mutual, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Stifel Nicolaus.

Virgil founded Eagle Wealth Management, LLC, where he operates as a family office. During these years, he maintained his passion for wildlife conservation through Board positions with the St. Louis Zoo, the Endangered Wolf Center, and the World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. In these Board positions, he worked to promote the issues which pertain to field conservation.

Virgil has traveled on six continents, experiencing the local cultures, while striving to expand their knowledge of the issues facing wildlife conservation in a world of expanding human population and conflict. Virgil lives in St. Louis, Missouri, his native city.

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Maya Doolub

Having started her London based consulting firm, elms consulting, eight years ago, Maya has enjoyed working with a number of large organisations across public, non profit and private sectors to drive change from policy through to implementation, with a key focus on sustainable development, and in particular, climate change.

Maya has a wealth of experience working with global clients to accelerate the deployment of market based solutions for sustainable social and economic growth in communities, with a key focus on working with islands to increase their resilience, demonstrating solutions which are both replicable and scalable.

Maya’s approach is to demonstrate that there can be no more business as usual, and that the private sector can and should play a key role in the implementation of development programmes, leading to the scaling of sustainable solutions. Through this approach, Maya and elms have worked with key figures in sustainability and a number of high profile industry leaders. Maya’s passion for entrepreneurism is underpinned by development of projects and solutions for islands, working with local start ups committed to demonstrating the full breadth and depth of natural resources.

Working with governments to demonstrate will and commitment through policy, Maya aligns partners and work programmes to connect vision with execution of low carbon development pathways, identifying the commercial opportunities these present to stimulate the market and catalyse the flow of private capital to support implementation of projects which drive local capacity building and job creation- and bringing together the stakeholders that can make this happen.

7745 Carondelet Ave. Suite 300 St. Louis, MO 63105