Managing California: Governor Newsom’s Chief of Staff Ann O’Leary

Ann O’Leary is Governor Gavin Newsom’s Chief of Staff. In that role, she is charged with helping to manage the 5th largest economy in the world. She is one of most important political figures in California and she is the one is the room. How is she thinking about her role? How will she help the Governor prioritize and strategize? What are her goals? Who is this incredible woman?

Come join the discussion and meet Ann!

More about Ann below:

Ann O’Leary is Chief of Staff to the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom. Prior to joining the Governor’s office, O’Leary was a law partner at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP where she focused her practice on representing tech companies, philanthropies and non-profit organizations, and led numerous pro bono efforts. O’Leary brings decades of experience in government, politics, social policy, and non-profit leadership. She served as Senior Policy Advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and Co-Executive Director of the Clinton-Kaine Transition Project. She co-founded the national non-profit organization, the Opportunity Institute, as a continuation of her work as Senior Vice President of Next Generation– where she launched a national early childhood education initiative “Too Small to Fail” in collaboration with the Clinton Foundation.

Earlier in her career, she was a Deputy City Attorney in San Francisco; Executive Director of UC Berkeley Law’s Center on Health, Economic and Family Security; the legislative director for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; and a policy advisor with the White House Domestic Policy Council under President William Jefferson Clinton. O’Leary has served on numerous non-profit boards, including KQED, the San Francisco Bay Area’s NPR and PBS affiliate; the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings, which works in key communities across the South to equip incarcerated young people with the academic, workforce and social emotional skills they need to be successful; and, the East Bay Community Law Center, which provides free legal services to low-income community members. She holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, a M.A. in Education Policy from Stanford University, and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law. Ann is the proud mother of a 6th grader and 3rd grader, and is the first Chief of Staff to a California Governor to hold the job while parenting school age children (and she is a very grateful co-equal coparent with Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court Goodwin Liu).