Join us for a talent Symposium in San Francisco
Building the Future of California Talent Symposium
- at -
- at
San Francisco, CA
The Bay Area Council and Pearson were honored to host employers and educators throughout the state of California for a Symposium, Building the Future of California Talent. The day was filled with inspiring, collaborative thinking resulting in actionable ideas that will prepare today and tomorrow's learners for jobs.
The Bay Area Council and Pearson were honored to host employers and educators throughout the state of California for a Symposium, Building the Future of California Talent. The day was filled with inspiring, collaborative thinking resulting in actionable ideas that will prepare today and tomorrow's learners for jobs.
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Overview
As you learn about the changes in job skills for your talent and ways of collaboration between employers and educators, you will be the leaders to bridge the gap for hiring local talent.
Hear from California high school students and job seekers on how they see employers and educators playing a vital role in preparing them for careers.
Thank you to our sponsors
Agenda At-A-Glance*
9:15–9:30 a.m. |
Opening remarks Mary Huss, Bay Area Council Chair & President and Publisher of the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley Business Journal |
9:30–10:30 a.m. |
Exploring the landscape of the future of work Moderator: Linda Bidrossian, Senior Vice President, Bay Area Council Featured Contributors:
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10:45 a.m.–12:00 p.m. |
The New Workforce: Redefine the Way You Recruit, Train and Retain Diverse Talent presented by Accenture Moderator: Julie Su, Secretary of Labor & Workforce Development Featured Contributors:
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1:00–2:15 p.m. |
Breakout session: Start Facilitator: Aneesh Raman, Senior Advisor on Economic Strategy and External Affairs to Governor Gavin Newsom presented by Cognizant Facilitators: Rob Brown, VP Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant; Kshitij Nerurkar, Global Head, Education Practice, Cognizant; Bruce Bergwall, Bruce Bergwall, Vice President of Learning Strategy, Pearson AcceleratED Pathways Facilitators: Rachael Bourque, VP, Pearson Accelerated Pathways & Jaime Fall, Director, UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute |
2:30–3:00 p.m. |
Closing remarks & next steps Van Ton-Quinlivan, Chief Executive Officer, Futuro Health Introduction by Jim Wunderman, President & CEO, Bay Area Council Employer experts:
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*Agenda subject to change
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Speakers
Please check back often for speaker updates.
Guy Berger
Principal Economist, LinkedIn
Guy Berger is LinkedIn’s Principal Economist, where he leverages LinkedIn’s Economic Graph to understand the rapidly-changing dynamics of the labor market. In his role, Guy shares the trends and patterns found in LinkedIn’s data that often can’t be found or measured elsewhere. Guy’s expertise spans: skills gaps, AI and emerging technologies, talent migration patterns, and broader macroeconomic trends.
Guy previously worked as an economist at Bank of America and the Royal Bank of Scotland. His economic commentary has been featured frequently in the media, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Yahoo! Finance, and Axios. Guy holds a PhD in economics from Yale University.
Bruce Bergwall
Vice President, Accelerated Pathways, Pearson
Bruce Bergwall is a Global Learning Executive with 30+ years of experience helping employers improve and increase their access to talent. His passion is helping people improve their lives through learning while also supporting business leaders to align their growth plans and strategy with their talent needs. Today he serves as the Sr. Vice President of Learning Strategy & Development with Pearson's AcceleratED Pathways team, where he brings together the considerable assets of Pearson to craft learning solutions that meet the specific needs of an employer. He is a frequent speaker and writer on the topics of Work Force Development, Frontline Talent Development, The Learning Life Cycle, Agile Learning, jobs, employment, and improving talent access in the 21st century. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and has a Graduate Certificate from the New School of Social Reform.
Mike Berman
Principal Program Manager
AWS Educate
As Principal Program Manager for AWS Educate, Mike Berman helps institutions and school systems around the world build academic and workforce programs in cloud computing. Mike began his career as a middle school teacher with Aspire Public Schools in California. He later co-founded a high school serving low-income, first-generation college students, working as the school’s first dean of students, instructional coach, and college counselor – 100% of the school’s students earned admission to four-year universities. Mike also built and led the high school’s dual enrollment program, which provided his students with the opportunity to take college-level courses at the local community college. Mike has worked as a professional services director for Agile Mind, supporting teachers and leaders in implementing programs developed by the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Before joining AWS, Mike led the curriculum development team at TenMarks, an Amazon subsidiary focused on K12 math and writing programs. Mike has a BA and MA from Stanford University.
Rachael Bourque
VP Accelerated Pathways
Pearson
Rachael Bourque is part of Pearson’s Accelerated Pathways team, helping organizations reinvent education as a benefit into a corporate strategy that results in return on investment. As part of the Accelerated Pathways team, she is working to increase equity and access to education for over 70 million working adults who have been left off the path to education attainment. Rachael has over 20 years’ experience working with Fortune 1000 companies to design, develop, deliver and administer meaningful employee engagement experiences that affect knowledge and skill. Outcomes include improved retention, engagement, safety, and performance. Rachael has a bachelor’s degree from Pace University in New York City and MBA from University of Dallas.
Robert Brown
Vice President
Cognizant Center for the Future of Work
Robert Hoyle Brown is a Vice President in Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work. A Bay Area native, he joined Cognizant in 2014, and has specialized on the topics of robotics, automation and augmented reality and their impact on business processes. He has worked extensively with the Cognizant Digital Operations Practice as head of market strategy, and also with Cognizant’s Accelerator leadership to drive the development of its intelligent automation strategy, messaging and go-to-market outreach.
He was the lead author on the Center for the Future of Work whitepapers “The Robot and I: How New Digital Technologies Are Making Smart People and Businesses Smarter by Automating Rote Work” (2015), “The REAL Reality of Augmented Reality” (2019), “Every Move You Make: The Future of Privacy in the Age of the Algorithm” (2018), and “The 2nd Half of the Chessboard: The Work Ahead in Media & Entertainment” (2018). He was also a co-author of “21 Jobs of the Future and 21 More Jobs of the Future: A Guide to Getting – and Staying – Employed Over the Next 10 Years”, as well as Cognizant’s Jobs of the Future Index (2019). He is also a frequent blogger at www.futureofwork.com.
Prior to joining Cognizant, Robert served as a Managing Vice President at Gartner, Inc. both in the US and London. In addition to his career as a strategist and research analyst, his work experience has included positions at Hewlett-Packard as well as the British House of Commons.
Robert is a fellow at the Fisher Center for Business Analytics at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He also currently belongs to the Leadership Council of DisruptHR SF, and sits on the board of directors for Big Skills, Tiny Homes, a nonprofit tiny homes vocational initiative in local high schools. In 2018, Robert was an Action Forum participant at the Aspen Institute.
He holds a BA in History from the University of California at Berkeley and, prior to his graduation, attended the London School of Economics as a Hansard Scholar. He resides in Marin County, California.
Asha Choksi
Head of Global Research and Insights
Pearson
Asha Choksi is the Head of Global Research and Insights for Pearson, where she sets the agenda for research projects to help the company, as well as larger ecosystem, better understand the future of learning. Asha and her team regularly talk to consumers, students, employers, educators and governments around the world, and recently published Pearson's 2019 Global Learner Survey.
Before joining Pearson, she spent two decades working for global clients ranging from Microsoft to MasterCard, launching numerous international public-facing studies on how technology is transforming brands to be consumer-led, and driving greater autonomy, personalization, economic growth and access to goods and services. Widely quoted in the US media and in Asia, Asha holds a Journalism degree from George Washington University and an MBA from George Mason University. She currently lives in the Washington DC Metro area.
Michael Chui
Partner
McKinsey Global Institute
Dr. Michael Chui is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), McKinsey's business and economics research arm. He leads research on the impact of disruptive technologies and innovation on business, the economy, and society. Michael has led McKinsey research in such areas as data & analytics, social & collaboration technologies, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, robotics & automation.
Michael is a frequent speaker at major global conferences, and his research has been cited in leading publications around the world. As a McKinsey consultant, Michael served clients in the high-tech, media, and telecom industries on strategy, innovation and product development, IT, sales and marketing, M&A, and organization. He is also a member of the board of Asia Society Northern California and the Churchill Club.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Michael served as the first chief information officer of the city of Bloomington, Indiana, where he re-architected the enterprise architecture using open source technologies and led a project that resulted in Bloomington becoming the first community in the world to offer both live and archived video streaming of public meetings on the Web.
Before that, Michael was founder and executive director of HoosierNet, Inc., a nonprofit cooperative Internet service provider that offered dial-up and broadband access to the Internet to consumers, nonprofits, governments, and businesses.
Michael holds a B.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science, and a M.S. in Computer Science, from Indiana University. His Ph.D. dissertation, entitled “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For: Web Searching as Query Refinement,” examined Web user search behaviors and the usability of Web search engines.
Michael is based in McKinsey's San Francisco Office.
Jaime S. Fall
Director of UpSkill America
The Aspen Institute
Jaime S. Fall is Director of UpSkill America at the Aspen Institute, an employer-led movement to expand opportunity for America’s workers and to help our economy and communities thrive by promoting training and advancement practices to help workers progress in their careers and move into better-paying jobs.
Jaime has worked in the field of workforce development for 25 years. For seven of those years, he served as Deputy Secretary, Employment and Workforce Development, for the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency. As a Senate-confirmed leader in the Schwarzenegger Administration, Jaime provided policy and guidance to California’s $11 billion workforce system and the nearly 9,000 employees that made up the entities within the agency.
Following his time in state service, Jaime served as Vice President for Talent Sustainability for the HR Policy Association and its nonprofit foundation where he worked with chief human resource officers of Fortune 500 companies on their talent strategies before accepting the role of Director of UpSkill America.
Previously, Jaime spent more than a decade in Washington, DC, working at the US Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration; the National Association of State Workforce Agencies; Fall Communications, a workforce development-focused marketing and website development company founded by him and his wife; and on Capitol Hill.
Jaime makes his home in Sacramento, California.
Laura Guio
General Manager, Global Cisco Alliance & IBM Senior State Executive for California
IBM
Laura Guio is currently the General Manager, Global Cisco Alliance, IBM World Wide Global Markets and IBM Senior State Executive for California. Her responsibility covers all business unit interactions between IBM and Cisco.
In her previous role, Laura was the Vice President, GTS IS WW Sales, IBM GTS. She was responsible for driving services offerings through the Center of Competency to the field so customers and IBM sellers understood the high value integrated standard solutions used to evolve their enterprises IT value.
Laura has held several other positions including VP, IBM Storage Business Line Executive, driving the corporate wide Storage investment. Her role as the Growth Markets Unit VP of Storage Sales from 2009 through 2012 was one of the best learning roles in her career. In that position she led the Storage sales responsibilities of 149 countries, driving over 1 billion in sales annually.
In her 29 years at IBM, a significant portion was spent developing and leading SW engineering, operational infrastructure, customer support and services which have prepared her to be a strong sales leader across IBM’s products and services. She maintains strong client relationships as an executive in IBM which she believes is key to providing value to our customers.
Ms. Guio is a recognized leader in the San Jose community. She serves as the Senior State Executive for California. This position provides leadership for IBM in the community, linking our corporate citizenship activities with strategic IBM initiatives, and leveraging the resources of IBM to achieve strategic business goals. She is a member of the Board of Directors for Silicon Valley Leadership Group which is comprised of 70 CEOs & CIOs from leading companies in Silicon Valley. She helped establish and serves on the Board of Directors for San Jose’s “Talent Task Force” lead by the Mayor of San Jose.
In 2004, Ms. Guio received the YWCA Tribute to Women in Industry Award. She serves on the Board of Directors for Silicon Valley Leadership Group which drives program and campaigns that affect the economic health and quality of life in Silicon Valley. She has served on the Board of Directors for the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, Silicon Valley CIO forum,UPWARD and PBWC.
Ms. Guio graduated from San Jose State University in 1986.
Mary Huss
President and Publisher
San Francisco Business Times & Silicon Valley Business Journal
Mary Huss has served as president and publisher of the San Francisco Business Times since 1991. Huss has worked on business journals in Philadelphia and St. Louis, as well as on the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the Riverfront Times, a St. Louis alternative weekly that she helped launch shortly after earning her degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1976.
She is credited with turning around the San Francisco Business Times. Under her leadership, the paper has launched many annual awards programs, including the "100 Most Influential Women in Business," the "Top 100 Women-Owned Businesses," the "Corporate Philanthropy Awards" and the "Fastest-Growing Private Companies."
In addition to her duties at the helm of the San Francisco Business Times, Huss donates to numerous causes and charities, volunteers her time and serves on SF State's College of Business Advisory Board.
Kevin Kissell
Technical Director for HPC and Quantum Computing
Office of the CTO, Google
Before joining Google Cloud's office of the CTO, Kevin Kissell was by turns both a senior staff hardware engineer and software engineer at Google, developing interconnect architectures and accelerator virtualization schemes. Prior to Google, his work ranged from supercomputers to smart cards: Systems and software architecture, for decoupled access/execute supercomputers at ACRI, massively parallel distributed memory computers at nCUBE, large-scale shared-memory supercomputers at Evans & Sutherland, and, at the opposite extreme, embedded architectures for chip card security/cryptography and multi-threaded I/O processing cores, at MIPS Technologies. He holds several dozen patents in computer architecture and a degree in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Lenny Mendonca
Chief Economic and Business Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom & Director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development
Lenny Mendonca is the Chief Economic and Business Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom and Director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz). He is a Senior Partner Emeritus of McKinsey & Company and a Lecturer on Inequality at the Stanford Business School.
He founded McKinsey’s U.S. state and local public sector consulting practice. He also oversaw their knowledge development, Chairing the McKinsey Global Institute and the Firm's communications, including the McKinsey Quarterly. He served for a decade on the McKinsey Shareholder Council (its Board of Directors). He retired in from McKinsey in 2014.
He was formerly the Chair of New America and Children Now, co-Chair of California Forward, and co-founder and Chair of Fusecorps. He was the Vice-Chair of Common Cause. He is the Chair Emeritus of the Bay Area Council and their Economic Institute, and was vice-chair of the Stanford GSB Advisory Council. He was a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development.
He served on the boards of Fidelity Charitable, Western Governors University, UC Merced, The Educational Results Partnership, The College Futures Foundation, California Competes, The Opportunity Institute, Commonwealth Club, National Association of NonPartisan Reformers, and The Guardian.org. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Trustees for Junior Statesmen of America, and the Advisory Boards of Y Analytics, QB3, the Haas Center at Stanford, Third Sector Capital, The CA Community College Chancellor's Office, and the Public Policy Institute of California.
He received his MBA and certificate in public management from Stanford. He holds an AB, magna cum laude, in economics from Harvard.
He lives on the Half Moon Bay coast with his wife, Christine. They raised their two daughters, Allie and Rebecca, there and are the founders and owners of the Half Moon Bay Brewing Company, The Inn at Mavericks and the Pacific Standard Taproom. He is also Chair and primary owner of the Coastside News Group (Half Moon Bay Review).
Kshitij Nerurkar
Global Head, Education Practice, Cognizant
Kshitij (Tij) Nerurkar is the North America leader for Education Solutions at Cognizant, a global leader in Digital Consulting Solutions. For over 20 years, Tij has advised and implemented digital learning solutions across private and public sector clients on a global basis. At Cognizant, Tij help Education Institutions and Learning Companies develop digital strategies to transform learner experience and skill enablement. He is also providing leadership in bringing Cognizant’s Learning Academy, Corporate Operations and Education Partners together to help bridge the re-skilling gap through innovative synergistic business models as the space between corporate learning and credentialing is rapidly shrinking,
Prior to joining Cognizant, Tij served as President at Tata Interactive Systems, a digital firm that specialized in developing innovative learning experiences for enterprises and academic institutions.
Tij has a degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Management Studies from University of Bombay, India and he has completed a sales and leadership program at Harvard University. Tij is also on the Executive learning council for North NJ ATD.
Mark Noriega
Managing Director
Accenture
Mark Noriega is a Managing Director in Accenture’s Health & Public Service and is the Sacramento Office Managing Director. He leads the Public Service team in California including State, Local and Higher Education markets and is also the Inclusion and Diversity executive sponsor for the account. This includes engagement with underserved communities through pro bono efforts and community service to support our recruitment, retention, and promotion of diverse candidates within Accenture. He also supports efforts to create new non-traditional paths for underserved community candidates to Accenture through our apprenticeship program.
Prior to joining Accenture in 2013, he held various leadership and business development roles serving State of California public sector clients. These roles included work at Cisco Systems, Deloitte Consulting and Cambria Solutions, pursuing large-scale systems integration and infrastructure projects that enhanced the delivery of government services to the constituents of California.
Mark serves on the board as past president of the Sacramento Children's Home, which provides services to children and families to help prevent and break the cycle of child abuse. He holds a B.S. in Organizational Behavior and Leadership from the University of San Francisco and lives in El Dorado Hills with his wife, Karen, and their two daughters, Janelle and Ariel.
Van Ton-Quinlivan
Chief Executive Officer
Futuro Health
Van Ton-Quinlivan is a nationally recognized thought leader in workforce development with experience driving large organizational change. Her distinguished career spans the public, private, and non-profit sectors.
In 2013, Ton-Quinlivan was named White House Champion of Change in recognition of her contributions to education and industry. She received the California Steward Leader Award in 2017 for her dedication to collaboration and her work to align public, private, and civic sector leaders in support of economic and social mobility for state residents. Ton-Quinlivan was included in Sacramento Magazine’s 2018 “Powered by Women” list of leaders inspiring positive change. In 2019, she was named mediaX distinguished visiting scholar by Stanford University.
Ton-Quinlivan served as the executive vice chancellor of workforce and digital futures of the California Community Colleges -- the largest higher education system in the nation with 115 institutions. As an appointee of Governor Brown, she grew public investments from $100 million to more than $1 billion during her tenure by establishing workforce as a state policy priority, and provided stewardship over an unprecedented level of innovation, collaboration, and experimentation across the system's career education programs. Her leadership also emphasized the importance of data science and drove forward the successful adoption of new technologies aimed at supporting institutional accountability, data use, and ultimately, student workforce outcomes.
Ton-Quinlivan’s other professional roles also included serving as director of workforce development at Pacific Gas and Electric, executive-in-residence in Silicon Valley’s Institute for the Future (IFTF), and chief learning officer of SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West.
Ton-Quinlivan is a frequent speaker on workforce development, having spoken to the Education and Training Subcommittee of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board; at the first Clinton Global Initiative America conference; in panels of the Brookings Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Stanford’s Hoover Institution, RAND Corporation, National Governor’s Association, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and numerous other forums. She testified before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee and a variety of legislative hearings in California. Ton-Quinlivan has been quoted in The New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Insider Higher Education, Stanford Social Innovation Review, U.S. News & World Report, and other publications.
Ton-Quinlivan earned her master’s degrees from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received her bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University. She serves on the boards of the National Skills Coalition, Western Governors University, and California Forward, and advises education-focused venture funds Achieve Partners and New U. Ton-Quinlivan resides in northern California with her family.
Aneesh Raman
Senior Advisor on Strategy and External Affairs
Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development
Aneesh Raman is senior advisor on strategy and external affairs at the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development. Raman has spent the last five years in the tech industry, most recently as head of economic and social impact at Facebook. From 2009-2013, he held multiple positions in the Obama Administration, including as a domestic policy speechwriter to President Barack Obama and as speechwriter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner during a historic financial crisis. Raman started his career as a CNN correspondent, first in Southeast Asia and then in the Middle East, where he spent over a year as a war correspondent in Iraq. A graduate of Harvard, Raman is a former Fulbright scholar, term member at the Council on Foreign Relations and is a member of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library’s New Frontier Award Committee.
Julie A. Su
Secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency
Julie A. Su is the Secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency. Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Su in January of 2019 to serve as his cabinet advisor on labor issues and employment programs for workers and businesses throughout California.
Secretary Su oversees the state departments and boards that enforce labor laws, including minimum wage and occupational safety standards, provide state disability and unemployment insurance benefits, fund workforce training and apprenticeship programs, combat wage theft, protect injured workers, and arbitrate public sector contract disputes.
Su is a nationally recognized expert on workers’ rights and civil rights who has dedicated her distinguished legal career to advancing justice on behalf of poor and disenfranchised communities, and is a past recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant.
As California Labor Commissioner from 2011 through 2018, Su enforced the state’s labor laws to ensure a fair and just workplace for both employees and employers. A report on her tenure released in May 2013 found that her leadership has resulted in a renaissance in enforcement activity and record-setting results. In 2014, she launched the first “Wage Theft is a Crime” multi-media, multilingual statewide campaign to reach out to low-wage workers and their employers to help them understand their rights and feel safe speaking up about labor law abuses.
Prior to her appointment as California Labor Commissioner, Su was the Litigation Director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, the nation’s largest non-profit civil rights organization devoted to issues affecting the Asian American community. In her 17 years as a civil rights lawyer, Su brought landmark lawsuits resulting in millions of dollars for low-wage workers and policy changes in California and the United States protecting immigrant victims of crime and human trafficking. In 1995, she was the lead attorney for Thai garment workers who were trafficked into the United States and forced to sew behind barbed wire and under armed guard in an apartment complex in El Monte, California. Su is known for pioneering a multi-strategy approach that combines successful impact litigation with multiracial organizing, community education, policy reform, coalition building, and media work.
Her numerous awards include the Reebok International Human Rights Award (1996); one of four “Pioneers in Women’s History” in an official proclamation by President William Jefferson Clinton (1997); Gruber Foundation International Women’s Rights Prize (2006); a California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation “Champion of Workers Rights” and UC Berkeley Labor Center “Labor Hero” (2013). Frequently named to top-lawyer lists such as the Daily Journal’s “Top 75 Women Litigators” in California and California Lawyer’s “Super Lawyers,” she was the first Labor Commissioner to be included among the Daily Journal’s “Top 75 Labor and Employment Lawyers.” She has also been named one of the 50 most noteworthy women alumni of Harvard Law School and one of the 100 most “influential” people in Los Angeles in Los Angeles Magazine.
Su has taught at UCLA Law School and Northeastern Law School. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School and began her career with a Skadden Fellowship. Su speaks Mandarin and Spanish.
Jim Wunderman
President & CEO, Bay Area Council
Jim Wunderman is President and CEO of the Bay Area Council, a CEO-led public policy and advocacy organization formed in 1945 that works to shape the future of the Bay Area and keep it as the most innovative, globally competitive, and sustainable region in the world. Since becoming CEO in 2004, Jim has dramatically expanded and deepened the Council’s reach and influence throughout the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, California, the nation and the world.
As the leading steward of the Bay Area, the Council has grown under Jim’s tenure to include more than 325 member companies across a wide range of industries. He has positioned the Council as a leading voice for business and the economy on a wide range of issues, including housing, transportation, homelessness, workforce development, early education and more. Jim opened the Council’s office in Sacramento, where he regularly appears on the list of the state’s Top 100 political movers and shakers. Governors, mayors, legislators, foreign leaders and top business executives regularly seek Jim’s input and guidance on key issues and he makes regular appearances and provides commentary across a wide range of news media.
Behind Jim’s leadership, the Council has spearheaded and partnered in numerous ballot measure campaigns that have secured tens of billions of dollars for transportation, affordable housing, early education, climate resilience, and healthcare. And he is at the helm of early efforts to create a unified vision for the growth of the Northern California megaregion, bringing the assets and economies of the Bay Area, Sacramento and the Central Valley into a common market.
Recognizing the Bay Area’s emergence on the world stage as an economic force through its leadership in technology and innovation, Jim steered the Council to play a greater role on the international stage. In particular, he launched a bold initiative in China that has grown to four Bay Area Council offices, which in turn led to the creation of a public-private partnership with the state of California to reopen its trade and investment office in China, operated by the Bay Area Council.
Jim has served on numerous boards and commissions. He currently serves as a gubernatorial appointee as Vice Chair of the Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA, which develops and operates the region’s ferry system), the University of California Business Executive Council, the State of California’s International Trade and Investment Advisory Council, the Too Small to Fail Advisory Council, California-China Trade and Investment Advisory Board, Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics, Sierra Energy, TMG Partners, and Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame. Other recent board engagements included the California Pacific Medical Center, the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network, and the Oakland Zoo. Since 2008, Jim has served as a Visiting Professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, teaching a course in executive leadership.
Prior to his work at the Bay Area Council, Jim’s career from 1984 to 2004 was split between both the private and public sectors. He served as Chief of Staff to San Francisco Mayor Frank M. Jordan from 1992-95, following five years of work for Mayor Dianne Feinstein. From 1997 to 2004 he served as Senior Vice President for external affairs at Providian Financial Corporation. He also served as Vice President and General Manager of two major waste collection, disposal and recycling firms in the Bay Area under its parent, Recology, Inc.
Jim is a graduate of San Francisco State University, majoring in political science. He also holds an Associate’s Degree in business administration from Kingsborough College, City University of New York. Jim is married to Kristina Wunderman, has four children and resides in Contra Costa County.
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