Management Team

Chet Billingsley

Chairman, CEO, & Principal Financial Officer

Chet Billingsley is the Chairman, CEO, 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’s Nuclear Engineering Department.

Mr. Billingsley spent his early career in the energy sector in a broad range of technologies including coal, LNG, nuclear, and solar, plus the administration of all technology contracts for the Department of Energy in Washington, DC.  After leaving General Electric’s California-based Nuclear Division, he formed the predecessor of Mentor Capital in the heart of Silicon Valley, in 1985. He has held the general manager or president position since that time.

In 1996, he took the firm public and led Mentor Capital's early public gas trading company mini-tender offers, the acquisition and later sale of a dozen oil and gas partnerships, and in 2023, the creation and funding of the Mentor Capital, Inc. Classic Energy Index, a tracking investment in Oil and Gas, Uranium, Coal, and related industries. Mr. Billingsley has directed the successful acquisition or investment in over thirty-eight operating portfolio businesses or entities.

Lori Stansfield

Treasurer & Audit Committee Chair

Lori Stansfield is the Treasurer and Audit Committee Chair 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 and Audit Committee Chair, 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. Ms. Stansfield has no affiliated or conflicting outside business interests.

Sara Billingsley

Director of Legal Operations

Sara Billingsley is the Director of Legal Operations and the Assistant Corporate Secretary at Mentor Capital, Inc. She focuses on managing the company's day-to-day legal, transactional, and compliance operations while reporting the same to our Chief Executive Officer. Ms. Billingsley supports the company's transactional law, corporate compliance, SEC financial reporting, accounting-related risk management and quality assurance, investor relations, shareholder services, and business development functions. Additionally, 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. Before joining Mentor Capital, Inc., Ms. Billingsley led I.T. compliance and provided accounting services and support to an Am 100 law firm. She also has experience providing audit and accounting support to companies in San Diego. She completed three years of correspondence law school and passed a one-day California bar exam on her first attempt. She has extensive experience managing and developing legal support teams and processes to ensure quality due diligence, compliance, accuracy, and timely delivery of legal filings and documents.