Speakers

Steve Adami is the Executive Director of The Way Out, an initiative of the Salvation Army.

After spending more than two decades cycling in and out of jails and prisons, Steve’s life changed. His recovery and transformation started in a pair of handcuffs.

Following his release from prison in 2010, Steve rebuilt his life through education and public service. He earned a Master’s Degree in Public Administration, was inducted into the National Honor Society for Public Affairs and Administration and received the Barbara Jordan Award for Academic Excellence.

In 2014, Steve joined the San Francisco Adult Probation Department, where he later became Director of the Reentry Division. In this role, he managed San Francisco’s Reentry Council and Community Corrections Partnership and led the design and implementation of a $25 million portfolio of reentry and recovery programs. His work helped expand the city’s continuum of care for justice-involved adults, including the development of more than 600 units of drug-free recovery housing.

In May 2023, Steve was appointed Executive Director of The Way Out, a recovery-focused homeless initiative of The Salvation Army. Over the last three years he built a comprehensive Recovery System of Care and continues to lead innovative programs that help individuals break cycles of homelessness, addiction, and incarceration.

Adami’s professional goals are to create opportunities for those who have been marginalized by the juvenile or criminal justice system by designing robust prisoner reentry programs, community-based alternatives to incarceration, and residential treatment centers for those whom the consequences of addiction, alcoholism, and incarceration has impeded their ability to succeed.

Kevin Corinth is a senior fellow, the Daniel C. Searle Chair, and the deputy director of the Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility at the American Enterprise Institute, where he researches economic mobility, poverty, safety net programs, homelessness, social capital, and other issues.

Before joining AEI, Dr. Corinth served as the staff director of the Joint Economic Committee in Congress and chief economist in the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he previously served as chief economist for domestic policy and senior economist for poverty and social issues. He has also worked as executive director of the Comprehensive Income Dataset Project at the University of Chicago.

Dr. Corinth has testified before Congress and has been widely published in the popular press, including in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and the New York Times. He has published academic articles in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Urban Economics, and the Journal of Housing Economics.

Dr. Corinth has a PhD and an MA in economics from the University of Chicago. He holds a BA in economics and political science from Boston College.

Robert Doar is the president of the American Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Doar became AEI’s 12th president in July 2019, leading one of the nation’s oldest and most respected public policy think tanks. Since becoming president of AEI, Mr. Doar has recruited dozens of leading scholars and fellows across multiple issue areas and launched a new research division focused on Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies.

By supporting the extensive work of AEI scholars in areas including foreign and defense policy, education, the reform of key institutions, the US economy, and in opportunity and mobility studies, Mr. Doar has helped to solidify AEI’s position as a leading voice on the major issues facing the United States.

While at AEI, Mr. Doar has served as a co-chair of the National Commission on Hunger and as a lead member of the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Poverty and Opportunity. He was editor of “A Safety Net That Works: Improving Federal Programs for Low-Income Americans” (AEI Press, 2017) and a contributing author to “This Way Up: New Thinking About Poverty and Economic Mobility” (2018); “Work, Skills, Community: Restoring Opportunity for the Working Class” (2018); and “Opportunity, Responsibility, and Security: A Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream” (2015).

Mr. Doar joined AEI in 2014 to lead the Institute’s opportunity and mobility studies program after serving for more than 20 years in leadership positions in the social service programs of New York state and New York City.

Supervisor Matt Dorsey represents District 6. Matt is a City government veteran who most recently served on the command staff of the SFPD as the department’s communications director.

Previously, Supervisor Dorsey served for fourteen years in the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, where he worked to support groundbreaking cases around marriage equality, education access, public health, tenants rights, and worker protections.

Supervisor Dorsey is an out gay man and is also the only openly HIV positive member of the Board of Supervisors. He is also the only current member to acknowledge his history with substance-use disorder.

Prior to joining SFPD in 2020, Dorsey led Tobacco-Free Kids’ communications strategy for the 2019 No on Prop C campaign, soundly defeating a multimillion-dollar ballot measure by vaping giant JUUL Labs, Inc. that became the most expensive per-vote loss in San Francisco history.

Supervisor Dorsey is committed to providing paths to recovery for those struggling with addiction, supporting new housing at all levels to meet growing demand, and investing in public safety resources to ensure that all people can feel safe in their communities.

Rodney A. Fong is a fourth-generation native San Franciscan who serves as President & CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and as third-generation representative of the Fong family to own the world-famous Wax Museum Entertainment Complex located in the heart of Fisherman’s Wharf. He has extensive leadership experience across civic, tourism, and philanthropic organizations, including serving as President of the San Francisco Port Commission and Chair of SF Travel Association and President of the SF Planning Commission. Currently, he leads the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce as President & CEO, where he has launched the Yes SF initiative in partnership with the World Economic Forum and other major corporations, and led the Chamber’s rebrand celebrating its 175th anniversary in 2025. Rodney continues to serve on multiple boards including SF General Hospital Foundation, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Fisherman’s Wharf Community Benefit District, and the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association.

Rebecca Good is the Managing Director of Outreach at the American Enterprise Institute, where she oversees AEI’s engagement outside of Washington. This includes AEI’s college and university programming; state and local coalition activity, inclusive of AEI’s Leadership Network and FREE Initiative; and outreach to minority communities. In 2022, she served as AEI’s Director of Special Projects, supporting priority initiatives. In 2016, Rebecca cofounded, and subsequently led, the Augustine Academy, a classical Christian liberal arts K–8 school just west of Milwaukee. She previously served as director of advancement for the Trinity Forum and, prior to that, worked as a management consultant with McKinsey and Co. She’s also served as a student chaplain at Harvard University. She holds a BBA/Finance from Texas A&M University, a master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a post-graduate certificate from Wycliffe Hall at the University of Oxford.

Bill Jackson is the founder of the Bay Area Republican Reset Project, an effort to determine whether Republicans in the San Francisco Bay Area can meaningfully differentiate at the local level — and thereby rebuild trust, electability, and governing capacity — in a region where dissatisfaction with one-party Democratic rule is widespread but the national Republican brand remains deeply unpopular. He is also the co-founder of the Briones Society, a political club advancing a solutions-oriented conservative movement in San Francisco.

Previously, Bill founded and led GreatSchools.org, the nation’s leading source of information on K–12 schools. He is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow, a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, and a graduate of the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins was sworn in as San Francisco’s 31st District Attorney on January 8, 2023. She was first appointed District Attorney by San Francisco Mayor London N. Breed on July 8, 2022, and later elected by the voters on November 8, 2022. She was re-elected on November 5, 2024. District Attorney Jenkins leads the District Attorney’s Office and its mission to promote public safety and advance justice for all and is committed to implementing important and vital criminal justice reforms responsibly.

A Bay Area native and Black and Latina woman, District Attorney Jenkins has seen the imbalances and disproportionate impacts of the criminal justice system firsthand. She has had family members on both sides of the courtroom and has seen and felt the impacts of police violence and misconduct. She believes reforms are necessary to ensure that justice is proportional and fairly executed for every person in San Francisco regardless of who they are or where they are from.

Since the beginning of her career in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, District Attorney Jenkins has dedicated her life and career to the pursuit of justice, to advocating for victims and to striving to make San Francisco a safer place to live, work and visit.

Jenkins began her career as a prosecutor in the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office where she worked her way up the ranks. Jenkins served as an Assistant DA from 2014 to 2021, initially serving in the Misdemeanor and General Felonies Units before working as the office’s designated Hate Crimes Prosecutor. She was later promoted to the Sexual Assault Unit and eventually the Homicide Unit. Jenkins resigned from the San Francisco DA’s Office in October 2021 as a result of mounting dissatisfaction with the direction of the office. At the time of her departure, she prosecuted over 25 criminal jury trials and completed more than 100 preliminary hearings.

District Attorney Jenkins is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School. She received her undergraduate degree from U.C. Berkeley in 2003, where she was a member of the Track and Field Team.

Nat Malkus is a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an affiliate of AEI’s James Q. Wilson Program in K–12 Education Studies. He is the creator of AEI’s Return to Learn Tracker, which tracked pandemic school closures and masking policies and currently tracks post-pandemic chronic absenteeism, and the host of the podcast The Report Card with Nat Malkus.

Dr. Malkus’s current research interests include post-pandemic chronic absenteeism, student achievement trends, school choice, and government contracting. Previously, he also studied career and technical education, Advanced Placement, credit recovery, student loan forgiveness, and American school responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Malkus’s work has been featured in numerous outlets, including Education Next, Los Angeles Times, National Affairs, National Review, The New York Times, NPR, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.

Before joining AEI, Dr. Malkus was a senior researcher at the American Institutes for Research and spent four years as a public middle school teacher in Maryland. Dr. Malkus has a PhD in education policy and leadership from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a BA in historical studies from Covenant College.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman is the current President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing District 8. Supervisor Mandelman was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2018, and has remained committed to supporting small businesses, tackling climate-change related issues, advocating for affordable housing, and championing LGBTQ+ rights.

Prior to his election, Supervisor Mandelman served as a Deputy City Attorney for the City of Oakland, practicing primarily in the areas of real estate, economic development, and affordable housing. Supervisor Mandelman has also been active on a variety of public and nonprofit boards, having served as a commissioner on San Francisco’s Building Inspection Commission and Board of Appeals, a member of the Bay Area Jewish Community Relations Council, president of the Board of Directors of Livable City, and Co-Chair of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center Board.

Shola Olatoye, an experienced real estate executive, specializes in public-private partnerships. She serves as the inaugural Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the San Francisco Downtown Development Corporation (DDC).

The DDC is the independent nonprofit organization created to lead downtown San Francisco’s economic recovery. Working in close collaboration with Mayor Daniel Lurie’s administration, the DDC is raising high impact capital, braided with civic leadership investing in critical infrastructure solutions to support downtown’s revitalization. In December 2025, Shola announced that the DDC had raised $60M in contributions and commitments. This catalytic capital is being deployed to support conditions for future downtown investment: clean, safe, activations, real estate and open space projects.

Prior to joining the DDC, Shola served as the Chief Operating Officer at Eden Housing, a statewide nonprofit housing developer. In her role as COO, Shola managed operations across Eden’s 11,000-unit affordable housing portfolio in California. Her leadership spanned a 400-person team including property management, resident services, technology, human resources, training, development, and engagement. While at Eden, Shola led Emergency Business Continuity preparedness, held the first-ever executive emergency tabletop, and implemented an Enterprise-wide emergency alert system. Shola also led a team to revise Eden’s Five-Year Strategic Plan resulting in reduction in operating costs. She also led the team that created Eden’s first artificial intelligence agent: AskEden.

Before joining Eden, Shola was Director of Housing and Community Development for the City of Oakland, California. While there, she led the agency to create and preserve more than 17,000 affordable homes, launched the city’s distribution of over $48 million in federal COVID-era rental assistance, and oversaw the acquisition and renovation of more than 600 units to provide immediate housing for formerly unhoused residents. She also created and introduced Oakland’s first-ever housing data dashboard and established public-private partnerships with the San Francisco Foundation and Stanford University’s Changing Cities Lab.

Before relocating to California, Shola served as Chair and Chief Executive Officer of the New York City Housing Authority—the largest public housing authority in the nation. A mayoral appointee, Shola created and launched NextGeneration NYCHA, a $10 billion, 10-year strategic plan to stabilize and modernize the agency. This plan balanced the $3B budget for the first time in fifteen years and introduced technology to 5,600 frontline staff. She raised more than $2M to seed a nonprofit philanthropic organization, the Fund for Public Housing to support residents’ economic mobility. Earlier in her career, Shola spent two decades in the private and nonprofit sectors, holding leadership roles at Suffolk Construction, Enterprise Community Partners, HSBC Bank N.A., and HR&A Advisors.

She currently serves as board chair of the California Nonprofit Housing Association and sits on the advisory board of the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund. She served as Terner fellow and advisory board member for the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. Shola was also a 2024 Bisnow awardee for Outstanding Excellence & Influence in Northern California Commercial Real Estate.

She is also a proud member of the Berkeley Bay Area Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., an international public service organization. Ms. Olatoye earned her B.A. with honors in History and African American Studies from Wesleyan University and her M.P.A. from NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where she also served as a Visiting Teaching Scholar.

Tobias Peter is a senior fellow and the codirector of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center, where he focuses on housing risk and mortgage markets. Working closely with Edward J. Pinto, codirector of the AEI Housing Center, Mr. Peter has coauthored a variety of reports on housing policy, specifically on the impact of federal policy on housing demand and homeownership, housing finance risks, and first-time home buyers. He has testified before Congress, and his pieces have been published in policy journals and in the popular press, including in The Wall Street Journal, American Banker, and Business Insider.

He has a master’s in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a bachelor’s degree in history and applied economics from the College of St. Scholastica.

Supryia Ray is a parent, attorney, and Commissioner on the SFUSD Board of Education. She graduated from the University of Miami in 1995 (BA, summa cum laude) and from Harvard Law School in 1998 (JD, magna cum laude). She has two kids in SFUSD. She also has significant experience as an author, editor, public-interest advocate, and teacher (primarily in the area of adult basic education).

Matt Regan is Senior Vice President of Public Policy at the Bay Area Council. HIs responsibilities include promoting the Bay Area Council’s legislative and political agendas at the local, state and federal levels specializing in housing and land use, business climate/economic development and workforce issues.

Matt has over 20 years experience working in the political arena and prior to joining the Bay Area Council Matt worked as a contract lobbyist, an in house Government Affairs specialist for a large bank, a State Assembly legislative aide and a field organizer for several high profile elections across the Bay Area.

Matt is a native of Ireland. He attended the Middlesex University School of Law in London where he earned his LLB and the University of Ulster School of Business where he graduated with a Post Graduate Degree in Marketing. Outside the office he enjoys fly fishing with his daughter in the Sierra Nevada and falling off mountain bikes.

Peter L. Scher serves as Vice Chairman of JPMorganChase. In this role, Scher provides strategic counsel and thought leadership across the firm, drawing on decades of experience in business, public policy, and global affairs.

Previously, Scher oversaw several key business functions at JPMorganChase, including the J.P. Morgan International Council and the Center for Geopolitics, which delivers global analysis for business leaders. He also managed Morgan Health, a team focused on investing in companies that improve employer-based healthcare, and led the firm’s business expansion in the Mid-Atlantic region.

For more than a decade, Scher led the firm’s Corporate Responsibility efforts, overseeing all government, regulatory and public policy functions and shaping the firm’s strategy to address global economic challenges. The JPMorganChase Institute and PolicyCenter were created under his leadership, as well as programs to address affordable housing, support small business, create skills-based training and career pathways, as well as the firm’s Second Chance efforts to help remove barriers to employment for people with criminal records.

Scher developed and led the firm’s $200 million investment in the City of Detroit following the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.  The firm’s role in the revitalization of Detroit has been featured on 60 Minutes, profiled by Fortune Magazine in ranking JPMorganChase number one on its list of companies “Changing the World” and chronicled through a Harvard Business School case study.

Business Insider named Scher as one of 10 people in the country “transforming how we think about capitalism” and Washington Life Magazine called him one of the most influential people in the U.S. Capitol. The Washington Business Journal recognized him as one of the top business executives in the Washington, D.C. region.

Prior to joining JPMorganChase, Scher was the Managing Partner of the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Mayer Brown and earlier served as Chairman of their Government and Global Trade Practice. He was recognized by the legal guide Chambers USA for his “depth of understanding” about international markets.

Scher spent nearly a decade in public service. Nominated by President Clinton, he was confirmed by the United States Senate as U.S. Special Trade Ambassador and served as one of the lead negotiators on China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. He previously served as the Chief of Staff for the U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Department of Commerce, Staff Director for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Max Baucus.

Scher is a co-founder and previously served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Greater Washington Partnership and a member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.  He serves on the Boards of Directors of the secure identity company CLEAR and healthcare provider Centivo, as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Advisors for the Center for New American Security and the Advisory Board of the Stanford University Emerging Technology Review.

Scher received his B.A. from American University and his J.D. from American’s Washington College of Law.

Ned Segal is the Chief of Housing and Economic Development for the City and County of San Francisco and a passionate San Franciscan. He previously served as CFO at Twitter, SVP of Finance for Intuit’s Small Business Group, and a board member of Tipping Point Community.

Dr. Maria Su, Psy.D., is a dynamic and visionary leader in public service, education, and children and family advocacy, with over 25 years of transformative impact in the San Francisco Bay Area. As the Superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), she is dedicated to driving excellence and equity in education for 49,000 students. Dr. Su oversees the District’s $1.2B budget and almost 9,000 employees. Her leadership is defined by her focus on fiscal stability, operational effectiveness, and fostering inclusive partnerships to enhance student outcomes.

Prior to coming to SFUSD, Dr. Su was appointed by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2009 to serve as the Executive Director of the Department of Children, Youth, and Their Families (DCYF) in the City and County of San Francisco. In this capacity, she managed a $350M budget and spearheaded innovative programs that benefited youth from birth to age 24. Under her leadership, DCYF became a national model for youth-focused services committed to advancing equity and healing trauma so that young people can thrive and be successful.

Living in San Francisco with her husband and two sons, Dr. Su remains deeply rooted in the community she serves. A former SFUSD parent, she is profoundly committed to advancing educational opportunities and addressing systemic challenges to create a brighter future for all students.

In June 2025, Anne Taupier was appointed by Mayor Daniel Lurie to serve as Executive Director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development (OEWD) for the City and County of San Francisco.

Prior to this role, Anne served as OEWD’s Director of Development, where she led the management and entitlement of large-scale public-private, mixed-use development and housing projects. She spearheaded negotiations with private real estate partners to deliver community benefits packages that advance the City’s goals for housing affordability, sustainability, workforce development, equity, open space, and transportation. Anne and her team also played a key role in advancing economic and housing policy for the Mayor’s Office, including legislation to streamline housing construction, convert commercial properties to residential use, and revitalize economic corridors citywide.

Since 2009, Anne has contributed to San Francisco’s most transformative development projects, including the 2013 America’s Cup, 5M, The Plumber’s Union, the Flower Mart, Conservatory of Music, Potrero Power Station, Balboa Reservoir, Treasure Island, and Stonestown Galleria. Collectively, these projects are expected to deliver more than 30,000 new housing units to San Francisco.

Anne holds a Master of Arts in Education and a B.A. in French and Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts. In 1985, she co-founded The Kerouac Corporation, a nonprofit based in her hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts. The organization honors the legacy of local Beat writer Jack Kerouac and supports youth engagement in arts and writing programs.
A lifelong trail runner and former competitive cyclist and triathlete, Anne has also worked as a fitness instructor. She is a passionate advocate for programs that encourage girls and young women to participate in sports, dance, and movement to build confidence and leadership skills.

Anne serves on the Executive Board of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and is active on the ULI P3 Local Product Council. She is also a member of the Lambda Alpha Institute Land Economics Society – Golden Gate Chapter.