Town of FairfaxCandidate for City Council

Having lived in numerous regions of the US, our family moved to Fairfax in 1993.  Educated at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, my professional work has primarily been in laboratory instrumentation, solar R&D, and epidemiological software.  I co-founded a large product development consultancy in Mountain View, while caring for my aging parents and raising two children, now adults.

My involvement with Fairfax began as a member of the General Plan Advisory Committee.  The connections built there led to an appointment to the Planning Commission, and in 2017 election to Council, where I am currently Vice-Mayor.  I founded the Climate Action Committee and serve on the Racial Equity and Social Justice Committee, among others, and am leading the design of a Community Resilience Microgrid.

My core goal as a Council Member is to foster creative, respectful, and effective conversations as we find local opportunities to navigate this pivotal era.

I ran for Town Council in 2017 in a time of great divisiveness and contention within town. My hope, and my first priority at that time, was to improve the conversation in town, finding ways to keep citizens better informed with accurate information. I, and our entire Council and Staff, have indeed made great progress in this area, and we now have far more productive Council discussions.

As I now seek re-election, my top priority is deeper. As we now are all too well aware, we face multiple major crises. The pandemic, the economic struggle of so many as a result, and now yet another year of raging wildfires. All while worrying about the national election, and whether there will even be a peaceful transition of power.  As I see it, this time of chaos and struggle is not unexpected: we have known for many years that collectively we were living in ways that are not remotely sustainable, and have been repeatedly warned that there would be difficult times as a result.  While the pandemic is not directly a result of the same actions that are causing wildfires, floods and hurricanes, I believe the fragility of the social fabric most definitely is.

Out of this trying time has arisen a strong call for racial and social justice.  This is again not unrelated, and I am happy to say that within the worldwide conversation about climate, it has long been recognized that the actions taken to change our abse of the planet must equally and simultaneously be actions that advance justice.

Therefore, my long-term philosophy is that we need all hands on deck to seriously move on these linked priorities. The ground I can stand on is the town of Fairfax, which has in the past freqently been a leader, and is closely watched by other jurisdictions. I hope to bring out the pride of Fairfaxians in our outsized role, as we work together to, albeit late, do everything we possibly can in these pivotal times.