Mark Baldassare is survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California, where he holds the Arjay and Frances Fearing Miller Chair in Public Policy. For the previous 15 years, he also served as president and CEO of PPIC. Prior to that, he served as PPIC’s director of research. He is a leading expert on public opinion and survey methodology, and has directed the PPIC Statewide Survey since 1998. He is an authority on elections, voter behavior, and political and fiscal reform, authoring ten books and numerous reports on these topics. He often provides testimony before legislative committees and state commissions. Before joining PPIC, he was a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of California, Irvine, where he held the Johnson Chair in Civic Governance. He has conducted surveys for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the California Business Roundtable. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Xavier Becerra is the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services and the first Latino to hold the office in the history of the United States. As secretary, he carries out President Biden’s vision to build a healthy America; his work focuses on ensuring that all Americans have health security and access to health care. Previously, he served 12 terms in Congress as a member of the US House of Representatives. During his tenure, he was the first Latino to serve as a member of the powerful Committee on Ways and Means, and he served as chairman of his party’s caucus, ranking member of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Health. For over two decades in Congress, he worked so that every family had the assurance of care that his own family had when he was growing up. As attorney general of the state of California, he took on pharmaceutical companies that restricted competition through “pay for delay” schemes and held several companies accountable for legal violations in not protecting patients’ health information. He took action early in the pandemic to protect workers from exposure to COVID-19, secure key safeguards for frontline health care workers’ rights, and take on fraudsters trying to take advantage of people. Born in Sacramento, he was the first in his family to receive a four-year degree, earning his BA in economics from Stanford University. He earned his JD from Stanford Law School.

Dr. Mark Ghaly is the secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency; he works with partners across sectors and disciplines to improve the lives and life chances of all Californians. This work has been especially urgent during the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a primary care pediatrician, Dr. Ghaly uses his clinical and community experiences to inform a whole-person, whole-community approach to integrating services so that they are equity-anchored and person-centered, especially for the most vulnerable Californians. Previously, he was medical director of the Southeast Health Center, a San Francisco public health clinic. In addition to having a large primary care pediatrics practice, he led the clinic’s transition to the patient-centered medical home model of care, expanded specialty care and diagnostics services, and addressed issues such as teen health, youth violence, food security, and environmental health. In 2011, he became the deputy director for Community Health and Integrated Programs for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. In this role, he directed clinical operations in the juvenile detention system and led the transition of jail health services from the Los Angeles County Sheriff and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health into one integrated system of care. He also led a county team to expand health and behavioral health services on the Martin Luther King, Jr., health campus in South Los Angeles, which included the opening of the public-private Martin Luther King, Jr., Community Hospital. He earned his MD and MPH from Harvard University.