Retired Chief Executive, San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation
Julie Meier Wright is the retired chief executive of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation and formerly California’s first Secretary of Trade & Commerce and a member of Governor Pete Wilson’s Cabinet. She is a Senior Fellow of the US Council on Competitiveness and the California Council on Science & Technology. Earlier she spent 14 years with TRW Inc. in senior public affairs positions in the Information Systems, Electronics and Space & Defense Sectors of the company.
She is a co-founder of a new political party in California, which is currently registering voters to be certified by the California Secretary of State. While the two major political parties in California have been captured by their extremes, the Common Sense Party will be responsible, open and inclusive and will be a party “for the rest of us.”
Since her retirement from EDC in 2011, she has consulted on public affairs, marketing, and advocacy, serving as Strategic Advisor to Collaborative Economics of San Mateo, California, and for five years as a consultant to the California Council on Science & Technology. With the founder and chairman of Collaborative Economics, she founded the California Economic Summit, now in its eleventh year. She has served as an advisor to the Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology Graduate University and to the STS forum, both founded by Japan’s former Minister of Science & Technology Koji Omi.
For nine years, she served on the Board of Directors of Sharp HealthCare, San Diego’s largest healthcare system, as well as its Nominating and Governance Committee (former chair), Audit and Compliance Committee, and Executive Committee. She continues to serve on the Advocacy Committee. Earlier she served on the Board of Directors of Maxim Systems, a privately held defense systems engineering company sold to Accenture in 2007, and the Advisory Board to Retirement Capital Group, an executive compensation and benefits company, and its successor company, Clark Bardes Consulting. She was named Director of the Year for Not-for-Profit boards and Director of the Year for Companies in Transition by the Corporate Directors Forum. She has also served on a wide array of university, not-for-profit and civic boards, and continues on the board of the Jacobs School of Engineering as well as the California Institute for Advanced Information Technology at the University of California San Diego. She serves on the Board of Expert Advisors for the California Emerging Technology Fund.
Ms. Wright is a graduate of the University of Maryland (BA in Criminology) and completed the Stanford University Advanced Management College.