Santa Barbara is lucky – we attract highly qualified people to serve in local office. Devon Wardlaw, running for the 4th City Council district, is a case in point.
Devon grew up with parents who were struggling and not able to parent her. That could have steered her wrong. Instead, she found her way to Santa Barbara as a pre-teen. She says that Santa Barbara raised her, because her S.B. Hight School teachers and the community were her support network.
She worked in restaurants from age 14, interned at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and served as field organizer for Lois Capps’s 2010 campaign. After graduating from UCSB, she did graduate study at Hebrew University (during the Arab Spring!), worked on an MBA at Dartmouth, then was appointed Special Assistant to Obama’s Secretary of Labor, where she worked at the interface of government and the private sector.
Devon’s passion for bringing private and government sectors together continues. She worked for Facebook (small business support), Lyft (EV infrastructure), and, newly legalized retail cannabis (restrictive protective policies and community benefit programs). She now is Head of Public Policy for a statewide traffic safety company. Her range is impressive!
She’s been on our Planning Commission for five years, holding developers to account, pushing for housing instead of hotels, and focusing development on the downtown core, where it belongs. In all these settings, she focuses on problem solving that brings together disparate interests and finds common ground.
Devon’s combination of passion for service and high level expertise are exactly what we need on our City Council.
