Matt Mahan is the Mayor of San José, running for Governor to get California back to basics. Raised in Watsonville by working-class parents, a public school teacher and a postal carrier, Matt went on to Harvard, where he graduated with honors and served as student body president. After college, he spent a year in Bolivia building irrigation systems with family farmers, then returned to San José to teach on the city’s East Side through Teach for America.

Matt later helped scale civic participation startups at the intersection of technology and public life. He joined Causes (an early Facebook app) and rose to CEO as it grew to 190 million users. He also co-founded Brigade, a nonpartisan voter network designed to make civic engagement more social and actionable; it reached millions and was acquired in 2019 by Pinterest and Countable.

As Mayor of San Jose, he’s brought a product mindset to city hall — a focus on fewer things, clear goals, and dashboards to show taxpayers where every dollar is spent. And he’s integrating tech across public safety, homelessness, housing, and service delivery. The results are showing. Under Matt’s leadership, San Jose was named the Safest Big City in America, unsheltered homelessness fell by nearly a third, and thousands of new homes were unlocked. Now, Matt’s running for Governor to bring greater focus and accountability to addressing California’s challenges like housing costs, energy costs, the budget deficit, and homelessness.