Bob is a Board Member of Chi Rho and serves as the Chief Financial Officer. In 2004, as a recent retiree, he was serving as a volunteer on the finance committee of Saratoga Federated Church. At the time, the financial officer for Chi Rho was retiring and Bob agreed to take over those duties for Chi Rho as well. Six months later on his first visit to Romania he was profoundly moved by a memorable incident he described later:

“Hud, Cindy and I went to a hospital to visit one of our orphans who was staying there several days for an illness. She was little girl, about 10 years old; skinny, blonde with big blue eyes, very much like one of my own daughters when she was that age. She seemed very quiet and somber. When we were leaving, walking across the parking lot toward our car, one of our group noticed Ancutsa, standing alone, watching us from a third floor window. We waved and smiled, she waved back sadly.

I felt devastated at the moment. My own grandchildren immediately came to mind that had parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who loved them and cared for them and comforted them when they were sick or sad. This little girl had no family members  to visit her in the hospital and welcome her home with hugs and kisses. Thinking back, that was the first time I really internalized an understanding and appreciation of what at it means to do God’s work.”

The Chi Rho ministry needs volunteers with a wide variety of skills and strengths to do its work. Bob’s work skills and experiences made him a good fit for a specific need that came up for Chi Rho just as he became free to begin doing some service work for the church. He graduated from college with a major in economics and a math minor. After college he went to work for one of the big four CPA firms and got his license as a CPA in Illinois. Then, back to school for an MBA to get a broader understanding of overall management of a business.  Next was four years working for a local CPA firm in Mountain View California before leaving to cofound a local CPA firm in Sunnyvale California that developed a clientele of small businesses and their owners. As small businesses, the firm’s clients needed a lot of financial planning and management help in addition to the typical accounting and tax work. Eventually, Bob and his partner sold their CPA firm and began a career of buying or starting small companies with turnaround or development potential and investing in and also working for some high tech startups. Bob was just retiring from this type of work when Hud asked him to join Chi Rho, so his prior work experience with small organizations made for a good fit for Chi Rho’s need at that time. 

Bob lives on a stream in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains with Lois, his wife of 57 years. Bob loves spending time with the families of their two daughters and seven grandchildren.  Hobbies are some hacker level tennis and working on wildlife habitat restoration.