My wife and I moved to Portola Valley in 2006. Since then, we've welcomed two children: Naomi (age 13) and Kai (age 10), who have gone through the PVSD schools. My wife Sally now teaches math at Woodside Priory School, where Naomi is a student; Kai is a fifth-grader at Corte Madera School.

I first volunteered for the Town in late 2008, as a member of the Architecture and Site Control Commission (ASCC), where I reviewed building projects (new homes and major remodels mostly) for their adherence to our design guidelines and their fit with their surroundings. In 2011, I first ran for the Council and was unopposed. I was re-elected, unopposed, in 2015. As a Council Member, I have overseen all of our policy work. We have maintained balanced budgets, a lean staff, well-maintained roads, and a rigorous but service oriented planning department. We work continually on public safety with our partners at Woodside Fire and the Sheriff's Office; we also meet our regional obligations on housing and other infrastructure in close cooperation with our local stakeholders, particularly our safety authorities. 

In my day job, I work with architects and builders to ensure that their projects meet--and often exceed-- the California Energy and Green Building Codes. I feel that energy efficiency and conservation are a key consideration in protecting our home and planet for future generations. Thank you for your support.

I'm less concerned about the size of government than I am about its role: I think government exists to mediate between the competing interests of residents, businesses, and nature. Markets are generally a useful tool for allocating resources, but carefully considered regulation of those markets is essential. Much of our role in local government is balancing the competing interests of landowners with their neighbors. We have a wide range of laws, local, state and federal, that govern our decsions, but as an elected official, I'm here to interpret those laws and make decisions where the laws aren't clear.

I feel that my ultimate duty is to follow our processes for decision-making, and base my decisions on what I can find from the facts in front of me; while I have my own morals and beliefs, I'm not here to impose my those beliefs on any particular project contrary to what the law requires. We are a nation of laws, not people, and I have always done my best to respect that.

I am originally from Chicago and moved to the Bay Area with my husband in 1999.  We spent our first few years in San Francisco, Mill Valley and Burlingame, then moved to Portola Valley in 2006.

I vividly remember our first time driving down Alpine Road. We were looking for our “forever home” -- a place to raise our 3 young children, and were immediately hooked by the Town’s amazing natural beauty and it’s terrific schools. The time has flown since then as we just sent my oldest off to his freshman year of college, and his siblings are now in 11th grade at Woodside High School, and 8th grade at Menlo School.

I’ve worked in a variety of leadership roles for both private and public organizations. After business school I started my career in consulting, but in the late 90s shifted gears to web-based product management which led to roles managing a couple of the online businesses at Williams-Sonoma just as they were converting their brands from catalog to online retail.

My career pivoted a bit a few years after my second child was born with special needs, and it was around that time that I got involved in nonprofit work and volunteer leadership roles within the Portola Valley School District.

Within the Portola Valley School District, I served as Foundation Trustee, Gala Co-Chair, Endowment Co-Chair, Parent-Teacher Organization President and Vice-President, and on the Measure Z Leadership Committee.

I served 10 years as a Trustee, including three as Chair, of a national research foundation focused on developing treatments to improve cognition for people with Down syndrome.  During my tenure we grew from a small organization run from a garage at times, to one that has directed over $85 million in research, has an international board, and is the largest online Down syndrome community in the United States.

As my kids grew older, I had more time to dedicate to work. My career pivoted again in 2016, and for the last few years has been focused on state politics. I served as Chief of Operations for a non-profit focused on recruiting women for legislative office in California, and as Campaign Manager for Ann Ravel, candidate for CA State Senate, just south of us in Senate District 15.  Through this work, I’ve learned an incredible amount about the complicated issues we face in our state, and have further developed my appreciation for civic duty. 

If elected, I will be new to town governance and with that will bring a fresh perspective.

As your elected leader my responsibility will be to proactively solicit input and listen to the community, and make decisions fueled by this input. I value transparency, authenticity and inclusivity and believe organizations are at their best when divergent views are considered with a balanced, open approach. 

I have a long track record of leading both public and private organizations with a focus on effectiveness and operational efficiency and would bring this experience and expertise to the role.

All politics is local.  

Our environment is local. 
Local politics drives the environment.

And the environment drives local politics.

 I have been in love with Portola Valley since I arrived here in 1968 for college. My husband, Daniel Alegria and I raised two Hispanic sons in Portola Valley who attended town public and private schools and have watched them progress through an outstanding education at Stanford University. Still I know how it feels to be stereotyped and overlooked because of your last name or the color of your skin, a mother’s pain for her children is unbearable. Since my own education at Stanford I have actively sought to understand the cultural and aesthetic roots of the Foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Particularly. I am drawn to our indigenous predescesors and the sacred spaces of our lands in Portola Valley’s prehistory.

As a family, we rediscovered Portola Valley after medical training and after starting 3 family practice offices in the Sierra Foothills for the rural underserved with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and with the Chapa-De Indian Health Center in Auburn. After our children were born in Auburn, California we moved to Portola Valley to be closer to Daniel’s parents and to experience the wonderful schools in the Bay Area. After selling our medical practices in the Sierra Foothills, I practiced medicine at the Mayfield Public Health Clinic of Santa Clara County and then joined the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. For 25 years, I worked as a family doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation as well as founding and chairing the committees for Preventive Health Care, which transitioned to manage the health care guidelines of the Sutter Medical System, and I founded and chaired the Palo Alto Foundation Environmental Impact Committee working to assess the impact of our practice of medicine on the environment which is critical to our health and well-being.

 I am a trained and experienced listener. I am proud of my 30 years as a docent at Stanford’s glorious Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve teaching environmental science to students of all ages. I have a deep respect and knowledge of our local flora and fauna. Beginning with an honors degree in biology at Stanford and continuing through a life-long commitment to field stations throughout the world which provide the knowledge when the world is ready to save us from climate change and sea level rise on the board of the organization of Biological Field Stations.

I also have extensive experience teaching medical students and nurse practitioners and designed curriculum in general practice for midwives to provide services in underserved areas.

My desire to serve has extended to the town. I was elected in a contested election to the Westridge Architectural Supervisory Committee, and I currently serve on several local, national and international not for profit boards.  

This year I was part of an effort to bring neighbors together as Portola Valley Neighbors United to deepen the community investment and understanding of the issues of Fire Safety, Open Space and Affordable Housing in Portola Valley. PVNU is working for an equitable outcome in our General Plan and a revision of town policies to further protect our environment and our homes by enacting promises for fire safety that were made almost 10 years ago. We need a Building Inspector and a Safety Director to orchestrate safe building and complete the evacuation exercises that were previously recommended and adopted.  

This is no time to be postponing disaster preparedness. Over the last 2 years, every town owned open space was vulnerable to town financed, high density housing and it was with great effort and research that serious environmental and safety issues were revealed.   Portola Valley has a unique offering to surrounding communities- We are combatting sea level rise by improving our watershed, we are stabilizing our environment by saving open spaces, we are reaching for a carbon neutral footprint with our sustainability efforts, and we strive to do our part to alleviate and adapt to  Climate Change while enjoying truly democratic access to open spaces, trails and outdoor activities, including biking, hiking, running, trail riding, botanizing and caring for our beloved four footed friends.  

I am humbled by the huge gift of time and hard work the Council and all the committee members give to this town. Keeping the town engaged takes patience and openness I feel ready for the challenge and I believe that the Council will benefit from a contested election despite the great work and commitment they have been offering throughout this time of crisis.

Our Town leadership is critically important, as we recognize our responsibility in managing the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) and its great vulnerability to fire and to unsafe development. We are in the midst of a time of crisis with equity, housing, and with a terrible pandemic. We need to pay attention.

Bullet points for Mary’s Town Council Campaign

Maryforcouncil.org

If I were to serve on the Council, I would:

·      Recognize and enhance our community’s strengths- a solid General Plan for a small rural community.

·      Make sure that safety is prioritized over development. Assure that fire resilience, as well as, earthquake and flooding, receives comprehensive attention with completed emergency evacuation exercises and triage rehearsals.

·      Embrace the quiet and the dark night skies that have remained in Portola Valley thanks to the careful crafting of our building guidelines

·      Renew our commitment to the environment

·      Avoid the excess use of outside consultants that are not attuned to the assets which brought us to Portola Valley and which we offer to the larger community.

·      Support our astounding system of trail and conservation easements which is both aesthetic and democratic and allows us and our land’s wildlife green connections throughout our town and into surrounding open space.

·      Recognize and connect our trail system to the larger trail systems in the Bay Area and beyond.

·      Achieve an equitable and consistent housing plan with adequate town-based building inspection and safety oversight, administered consistently and even handedly to large and small property owners alike, under the guidance of the Town General Plan

·      Foster a respect for the Home Owners Associations within our town.

·      Respect and strengthen the character of a unique engaged, rural community, imperiled by Climate Change and fire risk, situated on the cutting edge of a powerful rapidly growing academic and industrial complex

·      Recognize the positive effects we can have on Climate Change by protecting our watersheds and wetlands, maintaining our Open Spaces, and engaging the community in environmental science to lead the Bay area towards a more verdant future.

·      Work quickly towards carbon neutrality

·      Encourage and respect the independence of Town Committees to bring issues and solutions to the Council’s attention.

·      Encourage and respect local businesses and home owners in their efforts to support the rural and open community we love- e.g. offering outdoor food or beverage service at their site of operation.

·      Recognize and respect the relief that our scenic corridors provide for people throughout the San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties including Portola Valley citizens.

·      Complete an evacuation plan and an emergency evacuation exercise for earthquake, fire, flooding and mud slides. Support a new and even-handed Safety Ordinance with a full time Town Safety Officer.

·      Appreciate and incorporate the constant citizen and committee review of the General Plan.

As a volunteer, Angela chairs the board of SpiritCare Ministry to Seniors. She is also vice president of the Imperial College Foundation. She has led projects for Taproot which include web development, strategic partner analysis and strategic planning prep. She has served on Portola Valley's Bicycle, Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee since 2013. She also helped the Computer History Museum with its initial fund-raising activities. More recently she has taken overseas visitors round the exhibits.
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As a management consultant, she has helped ventures commercialize technology and launch new products.  She has also helped companies assess technology partners and discover new markets. 

As a marketing manager, Angela created plans, launched products and gave presentations. She has worked with mobile devices, smart antennas, character recognition scanners and enterprise software.  She combines executive ideas with hands-on execution, rapidly creating materials for sales support, websites and publications.

As a technologist, Angela started by solving set covering algorithms using mathematical programming, network and graph theory algorithms. She worked with telephone companies, demonstrating how software standards could reduce costs and looking at interfaces for hundreds of operations support systems. In corporate R&D, she has advised managers on how to move products from the lab to the marketplace. As a hobby, she keeps up her skills by developing websites using content management systems, online services and commercial packages. Companies engaged Angela because she can see the big picture, as well as understanding technology details.  

As an analyst, Angela has written market research reports on enterprise software, advised on computer industry acquisitions and given executive seminars. She has also analyzed markets for semiconductors, messaging systems and open source software.

As a technology reporter, Angela has followed a wide range of software companies, including those in search, shopping, security and sports.

Angela was brought up on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, in a commuter community with a population similar to that of Portola Valley surrounded by open fields. In her lifetime, she has seen how a few 1960s buildings, thought to be modern and progressive for their time, near the main street, now mar the beauty of the old stone buildings. That is one reason she wants to ensure that buildings along Portola Valley's scenic corridors are screened appropriately and in keeping with the town's rural ambience.

She attended a highly competitive high school for girls, giving her a strong foundation in physics and mathematics. She led many school organizations, founding the Junior Debating Society, leading the Music Society, the History & Geography Society and helping with the Science Society. She created a Victorian Soiree, sourcing old music, conducting the choir and attracting an audience. At college she captained her college rowing club and was president of Cambridge University Mathematics Society, the Archimedeans. 

Living in London for 4 years, first studying management, then as a PhD student in management science, she lived a multicultural life, attending concerts, plays and events with global appeal. Such a cosmopolitan environment, resulted in friends from many different backgrounds and cultures.

Throughout her life she's enjoyed music making with piano, guitar and in choirs. In Portola Valley, she has enjoyed concerts at the town center as well as in town churches and other venues.She wants to encourage music through Portola Valley's Cultural Arts Committee. 

Leading organizations at an early age, helped her refine management skills as she worked in companies, large and small. She enjoys bringing diverse teams together to create products, from software solutions to analyst reports.

Angela has traveled widely, taking trains throughout Europe, leading an expedition to estimate termite populations in Northern Nigeria and horse trekking in New Zealand. She enjoys cycling - her longest ride being a Climate Ride, peppered with three seminars a night on sustainability and global warming, through redwoods and down the northern California coast to San Francisco. She has skied in many western North American resorts, after learning on cross country skis in Canada, progressing to icy slopes in the eastern US before moving to CA. Other activities include hiking, swimming and tennis.

She lives with her husband John Mashey, a technologist who has defended climate scientists and advised the University of California's San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research.

My website AngelaHey.com has my values, issues and more details. 

Here are ten things I hope to be able to do, this list is subject to change as I learn more from town residents and businesses what people are interested in:

1. Ensure our crosswalk improvement plan has the funding to be implemented when road resurfacing resumes working with the town’s Public Works Director and the Bicycle, Pedestrian and Traffic Safety Committee
2. Work on neighborhood resilience through Neighborhood Watch groups and Emergency Preparedness Zones.
3. Encourage residents to know how incidents are managed by having workshops and promoting Woodside Fire Protection District courses and FEMA’s Incident Command System online course.
4. Work with the Trails & Paths Committee and Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District to ensure our trails are well-connected, with clear signposts that are appropriate for today’s users – which include mountain bikers, as well as horse riders.
5. Encourage the town to apply for grants for infrastructure improvements, including fire mitigation and affordable housing. Some suggest that to finance affordable housing, a town might need 6 sources of financing.
6. Ensure the town remains beautiful and help update our General Plan with a 50-year vision, based on community input, government regulations and local culture.
7. Ensure we and town organizations offer inclusive town events that enable residents to mix, whatever their age, activity level or ethnicity.
8. Encourage a strong lecture and arts program at the town center put on by various town committees.
9. Help connect the town with San Mateo County services better, in particular the Commission on Aging who want to reach out to towns more and County Health services to help low income residents.
10. Encourage an Ad Hoc committee on Race & Equity to advise the town council on inclusion

Angela believes in Utilitarianism, believing in useful actions for the majority. People may not always agree, but she believes in striving for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. 

As to whether government should be centralized or distributed to local communities, operations research analysis teaches that sometimes the best answer is to centralize, other times it is best to spread things out. It is far too simplistic, when we have data, assumptions and algorithms that can advise on reasonable alternatives, to choose either libertarian philosophies of small central government or socialist philosopies of highly centralized government. So Angela believes in finding out what people want to make them happy, agreeing on goals, then collecting data and analyzing it to create alternative solutions that can be discussed and debated. Eventually, a culture is developed where the majority agree and a minority agree to disagree.

Angela is a huge fan of civilized debate where each side makes their point, then the opposition gives counter arguments. After that others can chime in with questions, ideas and comments which then help people make informed decisions. Even though debate has lost popularity in recent decades, it is a very useful approach to resolving differences when a community is divided. Angela wouldn't go as far as a "Liberty of the Ancients" where most citizens debate as that can be too time consuming. Instead she would advocate for getting to know people in the community well so that elected officials can be trusted to represent them fairly and without conflicts of interest.

Angela believes in open, transparent government, while respecting privacy when needed. In any enterprise, government, corporation, household or school, trust is fundamental to successful operations. Building trust between governments and those they represent is an ongoing job for an elected official. Collaborating on projects is one way that trust can be built.

Angela believes that the ideal amount of freedom is on a roughly bell-shaped curve - too much freedom and decisions are difficult to make - too little and people feel constrained. When Portola Valley showed The Pirates of the Caribbean at a Portola Valley town picnic, it ended with Laws are Guidelines which shocked Angela who believes laws are there to be obeyed. In Silicon Valley, breaking the rules sometimes makes great companies, however she hopes that it means cultural norms are broken, rather than laws of the state or country.

She prefers not to break up large businesses. For one reason, they are the ones who have the resources to support society more readily than smaller companies who need to watch cash flow more carefully. It is trendy to think that a because a business is large, it must be bad. Or because it is bureaucratic, it is difficult to deal with. Sometimes these things are true. The value of a well-run bureaucracy is that it divides tasks so that some a very simple for those with little training. Because of a failure to analyze work closely, delegating minor tasks in an orderly fashion to others is out of fashion. This is one reason that there is such a huge divide betwen the haves and the have nots. Her experience in getting things done, like setting up a software venture in California, for AT&T, which before it broke up was the biggest company in the world with a million employees, taught her the pluses and minuses of large scale operations and how to deal with committees.

Regarding equality, Angela believes that people don't all start with equal chances in life. Life is very unequal, but by collective effort those with poorer chances of a well-lived life can be encouraged. She believes every person has some talent that can be shared and some need more support than others. She is in favor of the town supporting gay pride, freedom of religion and all ethnicities.