The Sierra Forward Leadership

Corley Phillips is the founder of American River Ventures, a $100M venture capital fund investing in early-stage information technology companies. He founded the firm in 2000 and retired as Managing Director in 2008. From 1993 to the founding of ARV, Corley was an active private stage investor in Northern California start-up companies.

Prior to his activities as an investor, Mr. Phillips had a distinguished entrepreneurial career. From 1990 until its successful merger with a public company at the end of 1994, he served as President and CEO of Manzanita Software Systems, an accounting software company based in Roseville, CA. 

As with many residents of the Sierra foothills, Corley has business roots in Silicon Valley. From 1984 to 1990, he was President and co-founder of Grafpoint, a communications software company based in San Jose, California. He previously held various sales and marketing positions with Envision Technology and Hewlett-Packard.

Corley retired so he could fish and sing more. He fishes all over the world, and sings with a local barbershop chorus, the Stay Tuned a Capella Chorus, and several quartets. He and his wife Patricia have lived in Granite Bay since 1996. Corley is registered with the Common Sense Party the founders of which, including former Rep. Tom Campbell (R-San Jose), are pushing for centrist policies and more civil discourse. 

A resident of Camino, CA (El Dorado County), Les Francis brings a wealth of political and policy experience to the leadership of Sierra Forward, of which he was a co-founder (with Jim Hermann) in 2017. 

A native Californian and product of the state’s public education system, Francis cut his political teeth in Santa Clara County. A protégé of the late former San Jose Mayor, Congressman and Cabinet Secretary, Norman Y. Mineta, in the late 1960s and early 70s, Francis was one of the national organizers of the 18-year-old-vote campaign, and the eventual successful passage and ratification of the 26^th Amendment to the Constitution.

During his career and at various times, Francis has been a Congressional chief of staff, a Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy White House Chief of Staff (Jimmy Carter), and Executive Director of both the DNC and DCCC. He has managed and/or consulted on campaigns for every office from City Hall to the White House, and literally dozens of ballot measure campaigns in every region of the country. Among other activities, Les is a national leader in the current bi-partisan drive to expand and enhance civic learning in our public schools. He is registered now as a No Party Preference voter.

Richard Cray is the ultimate “can do” guy. He first showed up on Sierra Forward’s radar screen when the organization was looking to host—or co-host—a forum featuring candidates in the First Congressional District and Third Assembly District during the 2022 election cycle. Richard took on the task with zeal—found and secured the site, invited the candidates, circulated notices, arranged for a moderator, obtained a sound and video streaming system, and kicked off the event. He was a one-person advance team!

As his reward—or punishment—he was asked to join the Sierra Forward Leadership Team. 

Richard is a Northern California transplant. Born in Seattle, he grew up on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. After two years in college and three years in the Air Force at Beale AFB, his love of music (but his admitted lack of musical talent) gave rise to a career in audio engineering. In the 1970s he built large disco sound systems for nightclubs in Vancouver, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In 1985 he joined a Bay Area concert sound company as an engineer and Production Manager for such events as the Monterey Bay Blues Festival. A back injury in 1999 brought an end to his concert work and he moved to Yuba City in 2000.

 A lifelong interest in politics led him to join the Sutter County Democratic Central Committee where he has served as Treasurer and, currently, as Vice-Chair. In this role, he has worked with numerous campaigns for local candidates as well as regional races. Five of the last six Democratic nominees for State Assembly in his district have made him their male appointee to the State Democratic Central Committee and CADEM Delegate. In 2015 he was named Volunteer of the Year for Region 1 of the California Democratic Party. In 2023 he was elected as an ADEM Delegate to the State Democratic Central Committee.

After showing great resolve and resilience—and success—in Sierra Forward’s voter registration efforts in 2018, Mary Elliott-Klemm was persuaded to become the organization’s El Dorado County Coordinator, where she worked with various local groups to Get Out the Vote. That, in turn, led to her becoming a member of the Sierra Forward Leadership Team.

Mary is a native Northern Californian, whose father grew up in San Francisco, married and bought a home in Marin County. She grew up in the Bay Area at a time when citizens felt empowered to create Open Spaces and preserve the historical nature of their small towns. The purchase of land on the Point Reyes Peninsula for its transition to National Seashore status again demonstrated what a few people with a vision can achieve.

All of that left a mark on Mary, as she realized what grassroots activism might accomplish.

Mary moved to El Dorado County in 1975, taught at a local elementary school for 38 years, raised a family, and engaged in local politics. Involved in everything from Recreation Advisory committees to Area Plans, her proudest achievement has been the organization of Trails Now, a citizen group that worked with El Dorado County and the City of Placerville to create The El Dorado Trail, a hiking, biking and equestrian path that stretches thirty-five miles, from the old gold rush and timber town of Camino westward to the Sacramento County line.  

When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Mary was drawn back into the political world, knowing that, if our democracy is to survive, it will take all of us working together to be a force for good. Mary decided that Sierra Forward, with its unique approach and strong Team, was a natural place for her energies.  

An activist by nature, Nevada County’s Pete Minett declares, “Politics is not my first passion. I am involved because it is necessary.  I was stunned by the rise of the tea-party movement in spring of 2009. Their tactics echoed the Brown Shirts in the early thirty’s – hauling weapons into public meetings, shouting down folks they did not agree with…. using the same bullying tactics. That was enough to get me involved in politics!” 

While he had always been interested in civic engagement, Pete’s truly serious involvement began in his local teachers’ association. That early school-level involvement eventually saw him moving into leadership, then regional and state positions. Then followed organizing and deeper involvement with the Nevada County Democratic Central Committee, where he has been on the executive board for a dozen years. 

Pete Minett is and has been a mainstay in numerous campaigns, partisan and non-partisan alike, from city council, county board of supervisors, state legislature and Congress. Whenever candidates and/or campaign organizers want to know what is going on in the Northern Sierra, or how to create a base, Pete Minett is on their call list—and eventually on speed dial. His first advice is always the same: “Go meet and listen to people. Then learn to speak their language.”

Although an active and partisan Democrat, Pete describes his political philosophy as “center-right on foreign policy to ‘progressive’ on social issues”. He grew up overseas (in Germany), which helps account for his interest in foreign policy, and his centrist views on the topic. As he puts it, “I have seen first-hand the skullduggery that goes on – the worst of it comes from non-American sources, and as a nation we are becoming less naive than when I grew up.” 

Pete worries that “The greatest threat to the United States is no longer being united, and the rise of distinctly anti-democratic forces with no respect for the rule-of-law. I lived in a country run by a dictator. I do not want that here. And, so, I am still involved. Sierra Forward is doing the non-partisan, practical work of trying to win elections for viable, reasonable candidates who will preserve our democratic processes and institutions while working to improve the lives of all their constituents.”  

As a young social worker, with a Masters degree from St Louis University, Kathleen first learned the power of elections when the then- Illinois Republican governor, Jim Thompson, after campaigning on children’s services, redlined the budget for the successful children’s treatment program where she worked. That’s when Kathleen first became a community organizer and advocate. Politics was personal for those parents who had no place else to turn for help for their children. 

Kathleen is a clinical social worker whose career spanned four decades of direct services to families and children in Missouri, Illinois and California; she worked in and oversaw mental health and developmental disability programs, women’s health, the NICU, and public health policy and statewide program development for underserved groups while working in senior positions in California state government, under both Democratic and Republican governors.

A resident of El Dorado County since she and her husband built their home in 1985; she joined Sierra Forward to work on local issues and help candidates succeed. When not campaigning, Kathleen can often be found on a sailboat, snowshoeing in the Sierras, gardening, cooking, or attending theatric productions in San Francisco. 

A native of Chicago, IL, moved to Three Rivers, MI, at the advanced age of six months! The family settled there, and Steve graduated from Three Rivers High School in 1961. He enrolled at Michigan’s Alma College, from which he graduated with Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry in 1965.

He went from there to graduate school at UC-Irvine, which was brand new when he enrolled. There he received his PhD in Chemistry with an emphasis in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). The next stop, first as a post-doctoral student and then as a Senior Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech). From there he moved to Palo Alto, where he worked for thirty-three years for a major manufacturer of scientific instruments.    

In late 2006, after decades in Silicon Valley, Steve and his wife, Rosemarie, retired and made the move to the Sierra foothills—first to their vacation home in Pollock Pines and then to their dream “green” home in Mariposa, not far from Yosemite National Park. There they have become active in several community organizations.  

Steve got his first taste of politics in the Sierra Nevada when Rosemarie ran for Mariposa County Supervisor in 2014 and Steve served as her campaign manager.  Rosemarie is now serving her 3rd 4-year term in that position after being reelected in 2022.

Steve currently serves as the President of the the Sierra Nevada Alliance, the Chair of the Upper Merced River Watershed Council, and the Chief Technical Officer of the Mariposa Biomass Project. He is also the Chair of the Mariposa County Democratic Central Committee.

 He has supported Sierra Forward for many years as he appreciates Sierra Forward’s sensible policies and support for candidates for political and non-political offices who avoid extreme or divisive political positions. We all work together to support our communities in the Sierra.