Company Info: Corporate Officers

Corporate Officers

Castle Skip Newell III

In 1998 Castle Skip Newell III was appointed President of Performance Coatings Inc. Since 1992 Skip worked first as an advisor and then as an employee at Penofin®. His friendship, courtship and subsequent marriage to Dr. Barbara Newell has made Skip a "lifer" at Performance Coatings.

Skip is known for his high energy management style and his ability to view any problem from a variety of vantage points to bring about a solution. He brings a diverse and valuable business background to Penofin's Executive Team. It is sometimes difficult to know which Skip you are talking to.

It could be Skip Newell the former Surfing Correspondent for ABC's Wide World of Sports. (Yes he's a surfer!) Or it could be the former Public Relations Director for Japan's Kawasaki Corporation. You may be talking to the Skip Newell who puts on a uniform and a gun belt as a Mendocino County Reserve Sheriff's Deputy. Or the man who took a "corporate sabbatical" 20 years ago to come to Mendocino County to build medical clinics for the county's rural population.

You may find yourself talking to the recipient of the 237th Point of Light Volunteer Action award. He brings his commitment to social change to the table every chance that he gets. Newell believes that volunteering should be incorporated into everyone's life. Says Newell, "There is no longer a need to go off somewhere to find hurt and sadness. It is close to you. Find it and make it part of your human existence as a fortunate individual who can do something beyond the actions of a successful traverse of daily life."

Dr. Barbara Newell

For the past 10 years Dr. Barbara Newell has been Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Penofin-Performance Coatings Inc. Manufactured in Ukiah California, Penofin wood stains are found across North America and are distributed through 21 national distribution centers to hardware, lumber and paint stores and home centers.

Barbara founded a wholesale lumber company years ago and started her entrepreneurial career after receiving her undergraduate degree from the second oldest women's college in the U.S., Lindenwood College in St. Charles, Missouri. Barbara took her graduate degree from Portland State University in Medieval Literature and worked as an accountant with the "Big Eight" accounting firm of Ernst and Ernst after studying art history in Italy. She received her Doctorate this past year with a dissertation entitled: The Denigration and Exultation of Women through the First and Second Millennium - An Existentialist Woman's View.

Listed in Who's Who of American Women for 1999-2000, Dr. Newell also serves as Executive Director of the Mendocino county based non-profit Rural Visions, dedicated to giving scholarships to deserving college-bound students. She serves on the Board of the Mendocino Community Health Center and supports numerous community oriented arts and music events, including the 7th Annual Penofin Jazz Festival. Her hobbies are gardening, cooking , canning, and restoring three turn-of-the-century redwood barns for breeding of Arabian horses on her Hukam Maj Horse Farm in Potter Valley, California. She is also an aviator, piloting planes for enjoyment in her free time.