Robert Klein, J.D.

Robert N. Klein is the President of Klein Financial Corporation, a real estate investment banking consulting company focused on affordable housing finance and development with a record of approximately $3 billion in financing and developing public and private projects.

Bob’s commitment to advancing medical research originated in his youngest son Jordan’s diagnosis with juvenile diabetes in 2001. In addition, his mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a year later; his father having died from heart disease over a decade earlier. In 2002, Bob was a principal negotiator, as a part of a JDRF 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. More recently Bob served as Chairman of the California Proposition 71 committee, the “California Stem Cell Research and Cures” ballot initiative, passed in November of 2004 by 59% of the California electorate, that supports research with a focus on pluripotent and progenitor stem cell research or other related “Vital Research Opportunities.” Prop 71 bans funding for human reproductive cloning. Bob was recently honored as one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of the Year” for 2005.

In other civic activities, Bob served for 6 years as a Board Member for the State of California Housing Finance Agency which has approximately $8 billion in finance 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 Corporation has never obtained any financing from the California Housing Finance Agency.

Bob continues to serve 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 governmental, 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.

While attending law school, Bob taught an undergraduate seminar entitled “Three Case Studies in Political Reform: Judicial Interpretation of Civil Liberties; Environmental Regulations; and, Housing Programs Under the 1968 Omnibus Housing Bill.” He also served as an instructional leader and coordinator of a law school seminar entitled “Legal Systems, Civil Disobedience and the Ghetto.” Bob held an internship with the United Nations Economic and Social Council in Switzerland where he focused on Economic Development Policy. Bob is a member of both the California Bar Association and the American Bar Association. He lives in Portola Valley, CA, and has three children.