Lenny Mendonca

Lenny Mendonca was the chief economic and business advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom and chair of the California High Speed Rail Authority. He is a senior partner emeritus of McKinsey & Company and a lecturer on inequality at the Stanford Business School. He founded McKinsey’s US state and local public sector consulting practice and 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 from McKinsey in 2014. Currently he is the chair of Fidelity Charitable and New America and vice-chair of Western Governors University. He is also the founding chair of the Coastside News Group (Half Moon Bay Review and Pacifica Tribune). He was the chair of Children Now, co-chair of California Forward, co-founder and chair of Fusecorps, and 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 has served on the boards of UC Merced, The Educational Results Partnership, The College Futures Foundation, California Competes, The Opportunity Institute, Commonwealth Club, National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers, Measures for Justice, and The Guardian.org. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He served on 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’s Statewide Leadership Council. He received his MBA and certificate in public management from Stanford. He holds an AB, magna cum laude, in economics from Harvard.