Director, Purissima Hills Water District Board (Los Altos Hills, CA)

Brian Holtz received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern Mississippi Honors College (1987), and an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Michigan (1990). Since 1990 he has been a developer of Internet software, first at Sun Microsystems and currently at Yahoo. He has been principle inventor on three software patents with two more pending. His analyses of environmental challenges and possible catastrophes led to his appointment to the scientific advisory board of the Lifeboat Foundation, which is dedicated to helping humanity survive existential risks. As secretary of the 2008 Libertarian Party Platform Committee he successfully championed the adoption of a platform rewrite that included its first mentions of ecosystems and climate change. He believes that water pricing should reflect its costs and scarcity, and is the best way to achieve water conservation. He believes that PHWD customers should be free to do whatever they want with the water they buy, as long as that use imposes no nuisance on their neighbors and no problems on PHWD infrastructure.

Brian’s wife Melisse has an MBA from Stanford and works in portfolio planning at Genentech. They moved to Los Altos Hills in 2006 with their three daughters.