Robert N. Klein
President, Klein Financial Corporation
Chairman, Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee: California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)

Bob Klein is president of Klein Financial Corporation, a real estate investment banking consulting company focused on affordable housing finance and development.  The company has raised and/or consulted on approximately $3 billion in financing and development of public and private projects and organizations.

Bob is also committed to advancing medical research. This commitment originated when his younger son Jordan was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes in 2001.  Two years earlier, Bob’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s; his father died from heart disease a decade earlier.  In 2002, Bob was one of the principal negotiators on a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation team that worked successfully to pass a $1.5 billion mandatory federal funding bill for an additional five years of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes supplemental National Institutes of Health research funding. Bob served as author of Proposition 71 and as Chairman of the California Proposition 71 committee, the champion sponsor of the “California Stem Cell Research and Cures” ballot initiative, passed in November of 2004 by 59% of the California voters. This initiative approved $6 billion ($3 billion for principal and $3 billion for interest) for stem cell research with a focus on pluripotent and progenitor stem cell research and other related “Vital Research Opportunities.” Proposition 71 bans funding for human reproductive cloning.

Time Magazine honored Bob as one of the world’s “100 Most Influential People of the Year” for 2005. Soon after, Scientific American named Bob one of “The Scientific American 50” as a leader shaping the future of science.

In other civic activities, Bob served for six years as a board member for the State of California Housing Finance Agency (from inception, this agency has issued over $20 billion in mortgage revenue bonds for housing), which has approximately $8 billion in financing outstanding, an AA S&P Bond rating, and a history of receiving national awards in almost every category of affordable housing. This public corporation of the State of California was created by legislation in 1976, which Bob wrote as the principal consultant to the California State Assembly and State Senate Joint Committee on Housing and Urban Renewal. Please note Klein Financial Cooperation has never obtained any financing from the California Housing Finance Agency.

Bob serves on the Board of Directors of the International Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Board of Genome Canada, a Canadian-backed and based genomic and proteomic research agency with $1.4 billion in authorized research. He also serves on the Board of the Global Security Institute, dedicated to reducing the global risks from nuclear weapons.  His accomplishments include, in addition to writing the California Housing Finance Agency Act, the development of California’s first tax credit National Historic Site Restoration Project and development of California’s first local government, tax-exempt, bond-financed, affordable apartment project.

Bob has a Bachelor of Arts in History with Honors from Stanford University and a Juris Doctorate from Stanford Law School. Additional education includes: Executive Summer Finance Program at Stanford University Business School and an internship with the United Nations Economic and Social Council in Switzerland on Economic Development Policy.

Bob is a member of both the California Bar Association and the American Bar Association. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Danielle Guttman-Klein, and he has four children: Lauren, Robert, Jordan and Alyssa.