HOWARD WRIGHT
Founder Howard Wright is an entrepreneur and executive with extensive experience in the transportation, tourism, and hospitality industries. He founded SHG in 2002 to help unlock the full potential of the Pacific Northwest’s most iconic brands in those sectors. Howard is also a managing partner of the Sheraton Grand Seattle, and serves on the boards of several closely held restaurant and hotel ownership groups.
Early in his business career, Howard owned Renton Aviation, the leading global volume retailer of Cessna aircraft, and was a co-owner of Mutual Travel LLC, a business travel management advisory service with $300 million in annual gross revenue.
Howard’s extensive community involvement has centered on two other passions — his hometown of Seattle and Latin America. He is deeply involved in Seattle’s business, arts and education issues. As a board member of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce of Seattle, he represented employers by co-chairing the City of Seattle's Income Inequality Advisory Committee, which crafted the city’s phased-in $15-per-hour minimum wage law in 2013.
As a member of the Washington State University Board of Governors, Howard helped lead the University’s first $1 billion capital campaign. Mr. Wright also sits on campaigns for PATH and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. He previously served on the boards of the Amigos de las Américas Foundation, the Seattle Symphony Foundation, Intiman Theatre, the U.S. Foundation for Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Vermont Academy, the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, and The Children’s Discovery Foundation, which operates The Funhouse Commons on Orcas Island.
Howard Wright is a graduate of Washington State University and the Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management Program. He lives in Seattle with his wife and son. In his leisure time, he pursues his passion for flight, piloting vintage airplanes to fly-ins up and down the West Coast.
Learn more about Howard Wright’s business and civic work here.
CEO AND FOUNDER
MIKE MANSFIELD
Mike Mansfield has over 40 years of tax and business consulting experience. He spent 16 years with Deloitte LLP before joining Moss Adams in 1995. He was a partner with Moss Adams for more than 10 years.
During his time with Moss Adams Mike served as the lead of the Business Owner Succession Services Practice in the Seattle office and he served as a member of the firm’s Tax Committee. He provided merger and acquisitions consulting, tax planning, business planning and financial accounting services to a variety of clients in the financial services, construction/real estate, manufacturing/distribution, and service industries. He provided significant ownership transition and estate planning advice for the clients he served.
Mike left Moss Adams in early 2008 to form his own business: FamilyFortunes, LLC. He provides many of the same services he previously provided, but he works more closely with selective families and business owners to help develop and execute strategic plans, with the goals of enhancing the value proposition and creating a legacy vision for the owners. He focuses on transactional planning, including providing due diligence support, in addition to succession, tax, business, personal, and estate planning. In addition, Mike is the CFO for Pacific Pile & Marine, L.P., and R. Miller, Inc. and he serves as a board member for 1st Security Bank and he has an ownership interest in several privately-owned companies. In 2023, Mike was awarded the Puget Sound Business Journal’s prestigious “Director of the Year” award in recognition of his leadership and guidance across 11 different Boards and Committees.
Mike’s experience also includes significant consulting with closely held and family-owned businesses, including form of entity issues, structural tax planning, techniques to maximize ownership value, personal financial planning, compensation planning, and issues associated with business expansion beyond Washington, including multi-state tax planning.
DIANKHA LINEAR
Diankha Linear is a senior executive and operator with more than 20 years of experience leading across highly regulated technology, marketing, logistics, and retail industries. Her career reflects proven success in developing, driving, and executing on strategies for Fortune 500 companies, private companies, public organizations, and technology startups.
She has served as President & Chief Executive Officer of the technology startup Community, Inc., one of the world’s most trusted customer engagement and communications channels, which uses AI technology to connect Leaders -- enterprise brands, small businesses, government agencies, political and public figures, and global culture icons -- directly to their customers. Before her time at Community, Diankha was a corporate officer at Convoy, Inc., serving as General Counsel & Corporate Secretary. Diankha also spent nearly a decade in leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies, Nordstrom ($15B) and Expeditors International of Washington ($11B). The early years of her career were spent as a top tier law firm (Perkins Coie) antitrust, complex commercial, and employment law counsel. Diankha is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and the University of Washington.
Ms. Linear’s strategy and leadership expertise is built on 16 years of military education and training, where she served as an Army (Airborne/Paratrooper) Logistics & Transportation,
Civil Affairs, Aide-de-Camp/Chief of Staff - Special Operations Forces Unit, and Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer. She is a licensed U.S. Customs Broker (import/export).
Diankha currently serves on the Board of Directors for Lumen Technologies ($13B), a publicly-traded technology and telecommunications company, operating one of the largest and most connected fiber optic cable networks in the world, and is the Board Chairperson for Swedish Health Services ($2B), Seattle’s hallmark for excellence in hospitals and health care and one of the largest health networks in the Puget Sound area.
Throughout her career, Diankha has been an advocate for youth, health equity, and education. She served 12 years on the Board of Trustees for Rainier Scholars, a nationally recognized organization that has created transformational educational opportunities for underserved highly motivated aspiring college students, along with numerous other not-for-profits, including Habitat for Humanity Seattle-South King County (Chair), Lake Washington Girls Middle School (Chair), and the Loren Miller Bar Association (President and Chair).
Diankha is a third generation Seattleite, mother of two daughters, Nadia and Simone, and partner to her husband, Bruce, who was also born and raised in Seattle.
TERRI LUDWIG
As CEO of Ballmer Group, Terri Ludwig leads one of the nation’s top philanthropies with a bold mission to increase economic mobility for children and families and dismantle systemic inequities in the U.S. Since 2019, she has shaped an investment strategy that strengthens communities today while transforming public systems for long-term change.
Terri brings a powerful combination of executive leadership, business acumen, and social purpose to philanthropy. Under her leadership, Ballmer Group has emerged as a platform for investing in bold leaders, innovation and ideas that shift outcomes at scale. Her insight is sought by national philanthropies, government, and the business community to help tackle some of the country’s most complex and intractable challenges.
Previously, Terri served as CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, where she created innovative, high impact public-private partnerships and facilitated over $35 Billion in capital for affordable housing and community development. She also held global executive leadership roles at Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse and was CEO of ACCION New York.
Terri is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Bipartisan Policy Center and has served on numerous boards and advisory councils, including a presidential appointment to the U.S. Treasury’s CDFI Advisory Board. Terri was named to the Forbes Impact 30 List of top social entrepreneurs worldwide and as a David Rockefeller Fellow. She holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
