Investment Committee
The Festival Investment Committee is a five-member group of volunteers that provide guidance, advice and historical context for Festival events and activities.
Laura Musbach Drake
After serving many non-profit organizations throughout the St. Louis community and larger region for sixteen years, Laura relocated to Sun Valley in 2011 on a new adventure and to continue serving non-profit organizations and charities with her leadership, fundraising, development and event planning skills. Area groups she has worked with include the San Francisco Ballet in Sun Valley project and the Sawtooth Botanical Garden, as well as currently supporting Ballet Sun Valley as the Director of Operations. Laura holds a Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia and was a member and held a board seat for the St. Louis Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP). She joined the Festival Team in 2015 and has served as Executive Director since 2016.
Don Liebich
Don is a native of New York and a graduate of the University of Rochester and the Harvard Business School PMD program. He spent his work career with the US Navy Nuclear Submarine service and Sysco Corporation. After retiring from Sysco, he engaged in numerous consulting projects in various countries including Russia, Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Indonesia and Venezuela. He has traveled to the Middle East multiple times in the past fifteen years, and has been involved with economic development, citizen diplomacy and human rights projects in Jordan, Israel, Palestine, UAE and Iran. Don has conducted seminars and taught courses on Islam, US Middle East foreign policy and Iran. He has written two books on US Middle East policy. Don & his wife, Marcia, live in Hailey, Idaho.
Jody B. Olson
Jody served for 30 years as Chairman of the Board for the Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho (PERSI), a currently $23 billion pension fund and the largest financial asset in the state. Formerly, Jody was Vice President of Corporate Development at Trus Joist, a $1 billion Boise, Idaho-based specialty building products company. He was Secretary of the Board of Trus Joist MacMillan, a limited partnership with the Canadian forest products leader MacMillan Bloedel, Ltd., and Chairman of the Board of Norco Windows, Inc., and of Outlook Window Partnership, the sixth largest wood window manufacturer in the United States and the largest in Canada. Jody is an elected member of the Greater Boise Auditorium District Board of Directors. His past board of directors’ experience has included public companies as the audit committee chair and/or designated financial expert. Additionally, Jody previously worked as a CPA with Deloitte & Touche LLP and as an attorney for Hawley, Troxell, Ennis & Hawley in Boise.
John Peavey
John is a third-generation sheep rancher, former state senator, co-founder of the Trailing of the Sheep Festival and former owner of Flat Top Sheep Company. John ran the sheep ranch for nearly 60 years, but has now passed it on to his son Tom who is the current owner and operator and who has brought his son Cory into the family business. Started in the 1920s by John’s grandfather, the ranch is located along the Little Wood River about forty miles from Ketchum. John’s wife, Diane Josephy Peavey, is a co-founder of the Festival, member of the Advisory Council and an author who provides an insider’s view of the joys, struggles and adventures of life in rural Idaho.
Over 25 years ago, when the local recreation district wanted to put in a bike path connecting the townships of the Wood River Valley, they approached the local ranchers – including John and the Faulkner family amongst others – to get their permission since the bike path would follow the natural driveway of the sheep, a protected right of way for them to migrate north in the summer and south in the fall. The ranchers all agreed – as long as it was understood that the sheep would still be trailing twice a year. However, after the bike path went in, users started calling the Peaveys complaining about the sheep “droppings” on “their” bike path.
John saw an opportunity. He invited people to a local coffee shop to learn about the history of sheep in this region, and then to trail with the sheep. The next year, he invited the community again and the coffee chats grew and grew until John, Diane and others from the community determined, “We have a Festival here.” And, so, 24 years ago, the Festival was born out of a need…the need to educate and celebrate the history and culture of sheep herding and ranching in Idaho and the West. The Festival continues with this mission today.
Jerry Seiffert, Chair
Originally hailing from Minnesota, Jerry worked summers on the Great Northern Railroad in western Montana and, “just never got the West out of his system.” Permanently moving to Idaho in 1971, he has never looked back. His professional career is flooded with interesting positions. He spent eight years in banking with Bank of America as a Corporate Credit Officer in their L.A. Branch’s International Division, as well as in the Caribbean in Anguilla, West Indies, as Branch Manager. He then served as Mayor of the City of Ketchum from 1975-1988, owned a western retail store and was a member of the Adjunct Faculty of the National Fire Academy in Emmetsburg, Maryland, teaching community fire planning in the 1990s. Jerry now is in sales at the Idaho Mountain Express newspaper produced out of Ketchum.
Along with the City Council, he helped restart Wagon Days in 1976, opened the Ore Wagon Museum in the early 1980s and established the city budget for the Ketchum Chamber of Commerce. For fun, Jerry has “trained horses while they trained him,” and enjoyed both the alpine and Nordic skiing showcased in our Valley. A board member since 2007 with the Trailing of the Sheep Festival, Jerry knows the importance of the nationally acclaimed Festival and how critical the participation of the community has been to its growth. He believes that events can’t happen without the staff and volunteers and they are key to our local economy and to our town thriving in the hospitality industry.