Celeste Cantú

Celeste Cantú is chair of San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. She volunteers on the boards and advisory councils for the Water Foundation, Water Solutions Network Advisory Council, and the UC President’s Advisory Council for Agriculture and Natural Resources, and she is a UC Master Gardener in Riverside County. In 2017, she served as general manager for the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, where she worked on an Integrated Regional Watershed Management Plan called One Water One Watershed. She previously served as the executive director for the California State Water Resources Control Board and as the USDA rural development state director for California. She was born and raised in Calexico, where she served as planning director and later as executive director for the Imperial Valley Housing Authority. She joined the PPIC Water Policy Center Advisory Council in 2015 and became chair in 2017. She holds a master’s in public administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a BA in urban planning and policy from Yale.