I was born and raised over the hill in Albany, a small city not so different from Lafayette. I grew up walking to school, riding my bike from one end of town to the other, and playing a lot of baseball, in a community that was engaged, safe, and proud of its schools.
After attending San Francisco University High School, I graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University with a degree in Latin American Studies. A few years later I met my wife, Jen, and convinced her to move north. In 2008 we settled in Lafayette, and our introduction to the community came through Lafayette Nursery School — most of our closest friends here date back to those days. Two of our children have graduated from Acalanes and we have one left before officially becoming Empty Nesters.
In my early 20s, I was elected to the City Council in Albany, where I saw the good a council can do when it earns the community's trust and stays focused on the common good. I then spent 26 years as an analyst and portfolio manager at Dodge & Cox, one of the largest independently owned asset managers in the country, helping millions of people grow their retirement savings. That work taught me budgets, financial statements, and the industries that shape our daily lives — banks, insurers, construction, and building materials.
Today I serve on Lafayette's Transportation & Circulation Commission because we need long-term planning to handle the increase in housing downtown and the threat from wildfire. I am a trustee on the Contra Costa County Employees' Retirement Association (CCCERA) Board. This pension fund has around $13bn in AUM and its investment performance, risk appetite and operating efficiency matters to all of us as taxpayers in this county. Because of a potential conflict of interest, I stepped off the Advisory Commission overseeing the Contra Costa Fire Protection District.
More locally, I'm on the Board of Lafayette Partners in Education because the amount of funding our schools receive from the state is woefully inadequate and the burden of financing falls on us here in the community if we want to have excellent schools. I’m on the Community Foundation for Lafayette because I’ve found the best things in our community are a result of coordination from public authorities but a ton of local effort and resources. I’m going to be President of Lafayette Rotary in the upcoming year because I value the fellowship and ethos of service that Rotary embodies. I'm a CASA volunteer for Child Advocates of Contra Costa County; it hasn’t been easy but I firmly believe that children in foster care need and deserve our help. This last season, I coached baseball at Mt. Diablo High School (Concord). Baseball has given me so much and it was a great feeling to give back to kids who have not had nearly enough support.
(my kids and my dad celebrating a recent birthday)