A pedestrian walks by the Montgomery Barracks in the Presidio in San Francisco in 2025. The Trump administration has appointed all new Presidio Trust Board members.
Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle
A month after dismissing the six Biden-appointed members of the Presidio Trust Board of Directors, President Donald Trump has named six new members, including several prominent supporters and Time Magazine co-chair Lynne Benioff, who served on the body during Trump’s first term.
Other appointees include Trevor Traina, a tech entrepreneur who was ambassador to Austria during Trump’s first term; James Burnham, general counsel to Elon Musk’s X and xAI companies and who served as the top attorney for Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE; real estate investor John Bickford of Local Capital Group; Silicon Valley tech and philanthropy heavyweight Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, whose husband Marc Andreessen is a prominent advisor and ally of Trump; and Kyle Corcoran, a Marine veteran who is CFO at Redpanda Marine.
“I’m honored to once again serve one of the greatest national park sites in America and so appreciative for the opportunity,” Benioff said in a statement. She previously served on the Trust board from 2015 to 2025, including as chair from June 2021 to March 2023. “The Presidio Trust is an incredibly well-run organization that brings in support from the private sector to support its public mission.”
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Benioff was also the co-chair of the Presidio Tunnel Tops campaign, which raised $98 million in donations to create a new public space in the park. Her husband, Salesforce Chairman Marc Benioff, had been a prominent supporter of Democratic candidates and causes before switching allegiances to Trump in the last election cycle.
While six of the seven members of the board serve at the pleasure of the president – and presidents regularly appoint supporters to the roles – the drama swirling around the current slate of appointees was heightened by the fact that Trump had threatened to “dramatically” downsize the operations of San Francisco’s Presidio, before terminating the park’s board of trustees.
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The board serves at the will of the president and one who is appointed by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. That board seat has been vacant for several years.
The members of the Presidio Trust board that Trump previously terminated were Chairman Mark Buell, Vice Chair Chuck Collins, Lenore “Leni” Eccles, Patsy Ishiyama, Bonnie LePard and Nicola Minor. The terms of three of the trustees expired last May and three were set to expire in May of 2027.
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“I’m delighted to have been asked to serve on the board of this unique and special place,” Traina said in a statement. “As a 4th-generation San Franciscan with a deep connection to the park, I look forward to carrying on the Presidio’s important mission begun by so many passionate champions.”
Created by Congress in 1996, the Trust is a federal corporation with a directive to manage and lease property within the Presidio, a 1,500-acre swath of federal land, designated a national historic landmark in 1962.
The Presidio Trust is a unique federal government corporation which earns its own revenue to maintain and operate the national park site, without ongoing federal appropriations, through its hospitality and real estate businesses. The park hosts 9.5 million visits per year.
The appointments come several weeks after the Chronicle reported that self-described “dirty trickster” and long-time Trump ally Roger Stone had been hired to lobby for the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area, a controversial group that last year petitioned the White House to take over management of the Presidio.
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In a lobbying disclosure form filed in April, Stone’s firm, Drake Ventures, reported that the tribe had paid it $30,000 for services in the first quarter of this year and another $20,000 in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to public records.
The filing, which doesn’t have any specific information about what the lobbying efforts consist of or whether it’s related to the Presidio, comes nearly two weeks after President Trump terminated the national park’s Board of Trustees.