Leadership Team

Thomas Cameron

thomas.cameron@sgc.ca.gov

Thomas was appointed as the Chief Deputy Executive Director of the California Strategic Growth Council in December 2024. Thomas began working in state service in 2006 and has a broad range of experience and expertise in leadership, departmental operations/administration, and fiscal policy. From 2022-24, Thomas was appointed as the Assistant Director for Strategic Initiatives at the California Department of Aging (CDA), where he provided oversight, consultation, and technical assistance for the department’s 45+ key initiatives that directly supported the ongoing implementation of the Master Plan for Aging, the Home and Community Based Services Spending Plan, CDA’s CA2030 Initiative, and other key administration priorities. From 2019-22, Thomas served as CDA’s Deputy Director of Administration where he led various departmental projects that resulted in CDA’s growth from a staff of 100+/- to a team of more than 300 employees. Thomas’s leadership also resulted in the implementation of multiple department efficiencies, process improvements, policy changes, and reorganizations to ensure the administrative operations were effective, streamlined, supported by appropriate tools and technology, all while ensuring a focus on the customer experience. Prior to that, Thomas held various different leadership roles in administration, program operations, budgets, and contracts/procurement across various departments including: Chief of Administration for the Board of State and Community Corrections (2015-19); Chief of Support Services (2013-15), Acting Mental Health Program Supervisor (2013), and Contracts and Business Services Manager (2012-13) at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) Division of Adult Parole Operations; Fiscal Officer at the California High-Speed Rail Authority (2011-12); Budget Manager (2010-11), Lead Budget Analyst (2009-10), and Budget Analyst (2008-09) with CDCR’s Budget Management Branch; IT Acquisitions Analyst (2007-08) and at the Department of Mental Health; Contract and Procurement Analyst (2007) at the Department of General Services-Office of Fleet and Asset Management; Buyer (2007) and Procurement Technician (2006) at CDCR’s Deuel Vocational Institution. Thomas enjoys spending time with his husband and their two mini schnauzers (KoKo and ViVi), who rule the house. Thomas also frequently visits his 87-year-old grandmother who lives in Modesto, to make sure she is well taken care of in her golden years.

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Amar Azucena Cid

amar.cid@sgc.ca.gov

Amar joins SGC as the Deputy Director of Community Investments and Planning. Amar values and utilizes her lived and learned experiences, rooted in racial justice, the environment, and the community’s ability to thrive, to inform her professional work. She has over 15 years of transportation and community planning and policy experience across public and nonprofit sectors, including positions in affordable housing, federal surveying, youth and health advocacy, legislative analysis, and transportation planning.

Prior to joining SGC, Amar led the country’s first State DOT office on Race and Equity at Caltrans. Under her leadership and through meaningful collaboration, she advanced internal and external DEI efforts with a people’s centered model. The Caltrans Office on Race and Equity (CORE) launched the development of the Equity Index, the Interagency Transportation Equity Listening Sessions, and the inaugural external Interagency Transportation Equity Advisory Committee. Before managing CORE, she was an integral statewide strategist in public transportation, including implementing and cultivating the $100M+ annual CA Climate Investment Low Carbon Transit Operations Program. Amar successfully advanced local transit entities in their transition to Zero Emission service, coordinated new routes for the direct benefit of priority populations, and negotiated service-wide free fare programs for students. Amar earned a MA in Community Development and Planning from Clark University and a BS in Community and Regional Development at UC Davis.

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Sean Kennedy

sean.kennedy@sgc.ca.gov

Sean Kennedy has over ten years of climate change planning and policy experience across public, private, and nonprofit sectors, including positions at the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency in Canberra, Australia, the World Agroforestry Centre in Bogor, Indonesia, and the Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. Before joining the SGC, Sean was an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research and teaching spanned the areas of international environmental planning, energy governance, and climate change planning, with an emphasis on equity impacts of energy and climate change policy in California and Southeast Asia. As a postdoctoral scholar, Sean contributed technical expertise and supported stakeholder engagement as part of the Los Angeles County Sustainability Plan. His research has appeared in numerous academic journals and mainstream outlets, including Energy Research and Social Science, Popular Science, The Conversation, and the conservation site Mongabay.

Sean has Ph.D. in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, a Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, a Graduate Diploma in Environmental and Resource Economics from the Australian National University, and a Bachelor’s degree in Business from Southern Cross University.

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Matthew Read

matt.read@sgc.ca.gov

Matthew (Matt) Read has a decade of experience in legal, government, and nonprofit sectors working on issues as varied as food security, land use, tobacco control, and bike lanes. As SGC’s Staff Counsel, Matt provides legal support to advance SGC’s work to help California achieve its climate change goals through place-based, community-driven programming.

Matt came to SGC from Sacramento City Hall, where he served as Policy Director and Chief of Staff to Sacramento Councilmember Steve Hansen. He managed a broad policy portfolio of housing, sustainability, homelessness, public works, transit, and active transportation issues, along with a team of dedicated staffers.

Before the City, Matt worked at Breathe California and in his own private practice, providing government relations, policy, and land use expertise to nonprofit and foundation partners advancing public health initiatives.

Matt received his Juris Doctorate from University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law with a certificate in Mediation. He attended Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, where he received a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Rhetoric & Media Studies as well as Politics. Matt lives in Sacramento with his partner, Merril, and their children, Margaret and Gio.

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Hoi-Fei Mok

hoi-fei.mok@sgc.ca.gov

Hoi-Fei Mok (they/them) is the Deputy Director of Equity and Government Transformation at the California Strategic Growth Council, based in Chochenyo Ohlone lands in the Bay Area. Fei brings more than 14-years of strong interdisciplinary experience across environmental science research, climate policy, and social justice to their work on developing equitable community-driven strategies for local resilience to climate change. Greenbelt Alliance recognized Fei for their climate resilience work with the Hidden Hero of the Greenbelt award in 2022. Prior to this role, Fei was the sustainability manager at the City of San Leandro, where they worked on numerous climate action projects including supporting resilience hubs, expanding the urban tree canopy, installing solar and EV chargers, and planning for sea level rise. They served on the executive committee for the Bay Climate Adaptation Network (BayCAN) and the equity advisory committee for the California Adaptation Forum and National Adaptation Forum. Their past research work spans global climate change, population genetics, wastewater reuse, ecological modeling, and fieldwork in Costa Rica, Tibet, and Australia. Fei’s organizing experience includes co-founding the California Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC) Climate Network, facilitating conversations around racial justice solidarity and collective liberation, and building queer and trans Asian Pacific Islander community. Fei completed their Ph.D. in Agriculture and Food Systems at the University of Melbourne and a B.A. in Biochemistry from Wellesley College with summa cum laude honors.

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Adrienne Moretz

adrienne.moretz@sgc.ca.gov

Adrienne is the Strategic Growth Council’s Special Advisor, Innovation and Partnerships. Adrienne has over a decade of experience building programs and executing strategic partnerships with the private and public sector. Her focus has been working at the intersections of transportation, land use, equity, and technology. She was most recently the Manager of Government Partnerships at Getaround, a peer-to-peer carshare company, where she built and managed partnerships with municipal transportation partners across the US to encourage and grow carsharing as well as advocated for positive policy change at the local and state level. Prior to Getaround, Adrienne worked on strategic initiatives across land use and transportation disciplines as a Senior Program Manager at the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG). She managed a start-up accelerator for local governments called Civic Lab, which used a design-thinking based framework to support 70+ partners and over16 launched projects over three years. She also developed the region’s Innovative Mobility Program, a federally funded $6 million program that supported transportation projects across the Sacramento region. Adrienne also managed community relations, marketing, and outreach to promote Frederick County Maryland’s public transit, paratransit and commuter assistance programs during her time as the Community Relations Manager.

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