Today we sit down with Jessica Duboff, the Vice President of Public Policy at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce.They have over 1,600 members that employ 250,000 people.
Jessica is 3rd generation L.A. – you don’t meet too many people actually from L.A.! She also went to Berkeley – obviously, she’s very smart.
After college, she had an internship on the Paramount studio lot thinking she wanted to do PR work in Hollywood. To accomplish that, she went to get her masters degree at USC, but discovered that she didn’t really want to do that type of PR.
Instead, she discovered she liked doing PR in the public policy arena, and ended up working for Cerrell Associates (this name kept coming up in L.A.!). After USC, she went to work for a member of Congress, and then did her first stint at the L.A. Chamber.
At the L.A. Chamber she was part of the team that worked on Measure R, which raised L.A.’s sales tax by ½ cent to pay for 10 large infrastructure projects. Since that time, the sales tax has been increased by another ½ cent – the increases are expected to raise over $120 billion to fund infrastructure improvements over 40 years.
After working with the L.A. Chamber, she went to work for a L.A. City Council member – which Jessica really enjoyed. One definitely gets the feeling that City Hall is the center of the political universe in L.A. She then ended up back at the L.A. Chamber – running the public policy department.
Today, besides transportation, Jessica spends a lot of time working on homelessness and housing issues. In regards to housing, we also discuss a number of ballot initiatives that Jessica is working on. There are 12 ballot initiatives this November - an almost uniquely Californian phenomenon!
It was great to sit down with Jessica – I hope you enjoy the interview.