Laura Capps
Elected in 2022, Supervisor Laura Capps is now the Chair of the Board of Supervisors in Santa Barbara County. She has devoted her career to public service, serving as a White House speechwriter for President Clinton, a communications director on John Kerry鈥檚 presidential campaign, and a senior advisor in the United States Senate to Senator Edward Kennedy. An environmental advocate, she was the Senior Vice President of Ocean Conservancy, led the communications for Al Gore's climate change nonprofit, and in Santa Barbara was President of the Community Environmental Council. Her career has also been rooted in academia: she served as Director of Government Affairs for UC Berkeley and was an instructor at the UC Washington Center.
Capps has been in elected office since 2016. For six years, she served on the Santa Barbara Unified District School District board of trustees; there, she led the charge from the board to create a more sustainably powered school district. Capps previously served on the Santa Barbara County Commission for Women and on the Board of Trustees for her alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley. She has a Masters from the London School of Economics.