Bill and Jeanne Landreth and their dog.

A member of the California Board of Trustees since 1998, Bill Landreth is committed to protecting the Golden State's incredible natural beauty.

In 2002 William C. “Bill” Landreth and his children climbed Mount Shasta to scatter his father’s ashes at the summit. Landreth’s father had grown up working in lumber camps in the Shasta area and had taken his son Bill fly fishing and hiking all over northern California and the Sierra Nevada. Bill’s mother, an Oakland native, was an avid hiker. “My love of nature comes from my parents, and my support for conservation is largely a tribute to them,” Landreth says.

"I'm determined to help preserve California's great natural landscapes." -Bill Landreth, trustee

A fifth-generation Californian whose ancestors arrived via the Oregon Trail, Bill Landreth has served on the Conservancy’s California Board of Trustees since 1998. He chairs its Philanthropy Committee and has contributed generously to the Conservancy’s work in California and Idaho. In California he has given to the Lassen Foothills, Northern Sierra, and Monterey County Projects and to a new effort in the Klamath-Shasta area.

Spurred on by his early introduction to the outdoors, Landreth spent youthful summers as a wilderness guide in Yosemite, Sequoia, and elsewhere in the Sierra, “getting paid for fishing and hiking,” as he recalls. For years, at summer’s end he took a small group of friends on hikes of 200 to 250 miles in the Sierra or around Lassen and Shasta. He climbed Mount Whitney several times with his father, then with his children when they were old enough.

Landreth has been an investment banker with Goldman, Sachs for 35 years and still serves as an advisory director. “I lived in Europe and elsewhere in the U.S., and I missed California’s beauty and became determined to help preserve its great natural landscapes,” he says. “I was attracted to The Nature Conservancy because of its pragmatic approach and its ability to get things done.”

Landreth and his wife Jeanne live in Carmel and Sun Valley, Idaho and have two adult children. All four are Stanford graduates, and Landreth is a Stanford trustee. The Landreths also give to their alma mater, to the arts, and to other conservation nonprofits such as Cal Trout and the Idaho Parks Foundation.