Bob Kirkwood (June 17, 1939 - December 10, 2017) was an American environmentalist and businessman. Kirkwood was born in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

on June 17, 1939, the eldest son of California politician Robert C. Kirkwood. Kirkwood was a graduate of Pomona College and

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. After two years in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

working for a law firm, he returned to San Francisco, where he practiced law at

Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP was a large law firm based in San Francisco, California. In 2003, the firm was liquidated under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, after it had lost a substantial amount of money in the dot-com bubble and merger ...

. Kirkwood then worked at

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

for 25 years, retiring as Director of Government and Education Affairs. Working with David Packard, Kirkwood designed and initiated the creation of the Santa Clara Manufacturing Group, a collaboration of industry and local governments that has evolved into the

Silicon Valley Leadership Group The Silicon Valley Leadership Group (abbreviated SVLG) is a non-profit advocacy group in Silicon Valley, California, in the United States. Its members are businesses that operate in the valley and its purpose is to influence public policy rela ...

. Kirkwood served as a board contributor to many civic and environmental organizations including

Peninsula Open Space Trust The Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) is a nonprofit land trust headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Mission and Work POST mission is to protect open space on the Peninsula and in the South Bay for the benefit of all. The organization has bee ...

, the California Advisory Board of the

Trust for Public Land The Trust for Public Land is a U.S. nonprofit organization with a mission to "create parks and protect land for people, ensuring healthy, livable communities for generations to come". Since its founding in 1972, the Trust for Public Land has compl ...

, SPUR, POST, Sempervirens, Planning and Conservation League Foundation, and the Northern Sierra Partnership. In the 1990s, he was a member and chairman of the

California Coastal Conservancy The California State Coastal Conservancy (CSCC, SCC) is a non-regulatory state agency in California established in 1976 to enhance coastal resources and public access to the coast. The CSCC is a department of the California Natural Resources Agenc ...

and in 2005 he was the governor's appointee to the newly-created

Sierra Nevada Conservancy The Sierra Nevada Conservancy is the largest conservancy in the U.S. state of California, and the largest state conservation effort of its kind in the nation. The California state agency is one of ten state conservancies within the California N ...

. Kirkwood also pursued funding both environmental and childhood development issues working through his family foundation. Kirkwood died on December 10, 2017 in

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kirkwood, Bob 2017 deaths 1939 births American businesspeople Pomona College alumni Harvard Law School alumni American environmentalists