About Us

Board Members

Meet our 5 board members

Sean Schaeffer

Sean Schaeffer has spent the last 30 years in the Sales and Customer Service industries. His entrepreneurial spirit has led him to create several of his own companies and ground-breaking technologies. Over the years he has run large call center operations and his companies have accounted for hundreds of thousands of transactions annually in the Hospitality and Gaming sectors. Most recently, he has been the CEO of a publicly traded technology company and has continued to create interpersonal relationships and friendships with both customers and vendors. Sean is our founder and has a very personal connection to Huntington’s Disease. His lovely wife of 30+ years was recently diagnosed with this horrible disease. Sean and his family are new to the HD community but will throw every bit of effort they have into help raise awareness, help find a cure, and assist others with this disease.

Mike Milligan

A native of Santa Rosa, CA, Mike has been a part of the golf industry within the Reno/Lake Tahoe area since 2004. After building the tournament golf sales department for Tahoe Mountain Club in Truckee, CA, he turned his attention to the greater hospitality side of golf, packaging golf, lodging, and any ancillary element related there to, as a staff member at Silver Voyages and Nuggest Casino, in Reno, NV, until 2014. He was also the President of Golf the High Sierra from 2005 to 2014, helping to build its regional significance with the Reno/Lake Tahoe golf packaging marketplace. After a successful stint in industrial bridge bearing sales and manufacturing, Mike returned to the Golf the High Sierra team as Director of Sales in 2020, helping to increase the visibility and importance of Golf the High Sierra in the region once more. Mike is an avid golfer and a very able soccer goalkeeper, playing regularly at 54 years of age. He is first and foremost, however, a family man and amateur farmer, raising his 7-year-old son, Jones, as well as 2 donkeys, 2 cows, 4 goats, 2 sheep, 2 horses, 4 dogs, and a cat. His wife, Marilyn, of nearly 10 years, helps to keep the pens clean and their rambunctious boy on the straight and narrow.

Michael R. Eskuchen

Mike was raised on hockey skates in Glenview, IL and attended Glenbrook South HS and Western Illinois University prior to moving to Palm Springs, CA to begin his career in the Golf Industry. After 8 years in the California desert teaching golf, playing competitive golf, and working as a Golf Professional at various clubs, a new opportunity arose in Sparks, NV to coordinate/manage golf sales for Red Hawk, the Golf Club at Wingfield Springs. While working at Red Hawk, a family was built to include twin boys that came in 2009. After managing sales at Red Hawk for over 10 years, another opportunity came to be a part of developing a local golf course management company named Duncan Golf Management, as their Director of Sales. The development came quickly and successfully as the organization grew from 2 golf courses to 9 golf courses in under 5 years. Post 7 years at DGM, the invitation came to be the Director of Sales for Hidden Valley CC in Reno, NV and after successfully developing the club’s membership to 90% capacity, the offer to be the club’s General Manager and Chief Operating Officer. Soon after developing the membership to its fullest at HVCC, the opportunity to join Golf the High Sierra became available as their Account manager and is currently in this role today. Mike has a love for animals and enjoys pretty much all outdoor activities to include coaching football and baseball for his twin boys.

John McGinnes

 

John is the Executive Director of Sales for the #1 Reno-Tahoe resort ranked by TripAdvisor in Northern Nevada.  An active member of hotel sales for 30 years, McGinnes knows how to lead a team to success. He started his career in Reno, Nevada, where in a span of four years worked his way up from parking cars to leading the charge in hotel sales for 16 years at the Eldorado Hotel Casino. A hotel sales leadership role in the Midwest with one of the largest hotel chains in the world, Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) took McGinnes away from Reno for four years where he lead a sales Team to drive revenues for two corporate & convention hotels. In 2016 the Silver State beckoned him back to lead the sales Team at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa.

 

Career Accomplishments

McGinnes is a graduate of Monmouth College (Monmouth, Illinois) with a BA in Communications, as well as, earning his commission as a Field Artillery officer in the U.S. Army. He has spent his career in the hospitality industry building great teams—a skill he says was honed in the military. He spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve & Army National Guard. McGinnes finds that applying military strategy to all aspects of hospitality works well: Define the objective; make sure your team has the resources to complete the mission; clear their path of obstacles; and, most importantly, understand the level of each team member’s strengths. McGinnes is also the Secretary & board member of the Regional Air Service Corporation (RASC) which operates independently from the Reno-Tahoe International Airport, providing incentives to maintain and grow air-service and to promote the Reno-Tahoe area as a year-round leisure travel destination as well as a hub for the expanding business community and convention & meeting destination. In addition, he served as a three-term President for the Reno-Tahoe Chapter of SKÄL International, the world’s largest hospitality organization from 2019 thru 2021.