Ryan Coonerty, the former Mayor of Santa Cruz, is an entrepreneur, author and educator. He currently serves as Director of Government Relations and Strategy for PredPol — Predictive Policing, a start-up software company that predicts the time and location of crime for law enforcement agencies around the world. He is the Cofounder and Chief Strategist of NextSpace Coworking + Innovation. Finally, he is a lecturer on law and government at UC Santa Cruz and the Associate Dean of the Monterey College of Law’s Santa Cruz campus.

 

Twice elected as Mayor of his hometown, Coonerty led successful efforts to reach a

historic agreement with UC Santa Cruz that reduced their housing, water and traffic

impacts on the community, invest the City’s reserve funds locally to spur the local

economy, author the Clean Oceans, Rivers and Beaches initiative and bring a new

generation into civic life through the creation of Santa Cruz NEXT. Coonerty played a

key role in attracting the Santa Cruz Warriors, creating the Downtown Improvement

Task Force, and supporting local businesses in creating good jobs. Prior to returning

to Santa Cruz, Coonerty served as Legislative Counsel to two national commissions,

President Carter and Ford’s National Commission on Federal Election Reform and the

Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.

 

Coonerty graduated from Santa Cruz’s public schools, the University of Oregon’s Clark

Honors College, received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics

and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. He is the co-author

of The Rise of the Naked Economy — How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace

(Macmillan, 2013) and Etched in Stone — Enduring Words from our National Monuments (National Geographic, 2007).

 

Coonerty has been honored by many organizations. He is the recipient of the Tony Hill Memorial Award, Entrepreneur of the Year for the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce, ACLU’s Hammer of Justice, and Community Hero by the United Way. In 2009, Coonerty was selected by the Aspen Institute to be a Rodel Fellow in Public Leadership as one of “the nation’s most promising young elected officials.”

 

Coonerty has been active in many local non-profits, including serving on the boards of the Santa Cruz Education Foundation, Dientes Community Dental Care, the Locally Owned Business Alliance, the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union and many others. In 2011 and 2012, he co-chaired the Second Harvest Holiday Food Drive that brought in millions of pounds of food for families in Santa Cruz County.

 

He is married to Emily Bernard Coonerty. They have a young daughter, Daisy Joan Coonerty.