Ryan Coonerty

Ryan Coonerty is a Supervisor for Santa Cruz County and a two-time former Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz. He is the host of An Honorable Profession podcast, a lecturer on law and government at UC Santa Cruz He was the cofounder of NextSpace Coworking + Innovation. He is the co-author of The Rise of the Naked Economy – How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace (Macmillan, 2013) and wrote Etched in Stone – Enduring Words from our National Monuments (National Geographic, 2007). Ryan 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.”

Ryan graduated from the University of Oregon’s Clark Honors College. He received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law. Prior to returning to Santa Cruz, he worked for The National Commission on Federal Election Reform and the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age.