Management Team

Chet Billingsley

Chairman, CEO, & Principal Financial Officer

Chet Billingsley is the Chairman, CEO, Principal Financial Officer, and founder of Mentor Capital, Inc. He is a native of Minnesota who received a congressional appointment and did his undergraduate work at West Point. Later, he went to graduate school at Harvard University where he received a Master's Degree in Applied Physics with concurrent study at Harvard Business School, and at MIT studying proton radiology as applied to difficult to treat cancers in conjunction with Mass General Hospital.

Mr. Billingsley spent the major portion of his early career at General Electric. In 1985, he formed Tech Start, the predecessor to Mentor Capital, in the heart of Silicon Valley. He has held the general manager or president position since that time.

In 1996, he took the firm public and has had lead responsibility in the Tech III Partners, Cambridge Equity Partners, and Mentor Investors I, LP financial partnerships. He has directed the successful acquisition or investment in over thirty-eight operating portfolio businesses or entities.

Lori Stansfield

Treasurer

Lori Stansfield is the Treasurer at Mentor Capital, Inc. Ms. Stansfield has taught, written about, managed, audited, and prepared financial statements during the past thirty years.

Prior to becoming Treasurer, Ms. Stansfield worked as the Director of Audit Services at Robert R. Rediwitz & Co. in La Jolla, California and as the Senior Audit Manager at Spicer Jeffries, LLP in Denver, Colorado where she specialized in servicing securities broker-dealers, hedge funds, commodity pools, and private equity funds. She graduated Magna cum Laude in accounting from the University of Colorado in Denver and where she also received a Master's Degree in marketing. She is certified as a public accountant in both Colorado and California.

Sara Billingsley

Director of Business Operations

Sara Billingsley is the Director of Business Operations and the Assistant Corporate Secretary at Mentor Capital, Inc. She focuses on managing the company's day-to-day operations while reporting the same to our Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Billingsley supports the company's investor relations, shareholder services, corporate compliance, financial reporting, and business development functions. She works with potential acquisition targets and implements the investment-related projects that Mentor pursues.  

Ms. Billingsley is an ABA-approved paralegal with an emphasis in business law who has worked at prominent Fortune 500 firms in San Diego. She has extensive experience managing and developing legal support teams and processes to ensure quality due diligence, compliance, accuracy, and the timely delivery of legal filings and documents.