Staff

Executive Director

Mike Montgomery is the Executive Director of CALinnovates.

Mike is a veteran strategist with extensive experience working at the local, state and federal levels. Throughout his career, Mike has worked on political, fundraising, legal, public policy and new media issues in both the public and private sectors.

Mike’s work in California began on Governor Gray Davis’s campaign, where he served as the Northern California Finance Director. In this capacity, Mike directed all fundraising efforts throughout the Northern California territory, working as the Governor’s principal campaign advisor in the region.

Following the Governor’s campaign, Mike became the National Finance Director for Newsom for Mayor, where he built Mayor Gavin Newsom’s nationwide fundraising network with bases in Los Angeles, New York, and major cities throughout the country.

In addition to his background in politics, Mike has extensive experience crafting solutions to regulatory, political and legal challenges in the private sector.

Mike is a sought-after voice on technology and innovation issues, and has been published in the San Jose Mercury News, Forbes and The Hill.

Mike is a graduate of the University of Washington.

 

Chief Evangelist

Kish-web

Kish Rajan has a 20-year track record of success in government and the private sector.

After graduating from UC Berkeley, he began his public sector career on Capitol Hill as an aide to Senator Barbara Boxer and then later to Phil Angelides who went on to become California State Treasurer.

Kish then built a 14 year career in the private sector as a business development executive in mobile technology managing vital business partnerships that created hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars of shareholder value.

During this time, Kish earned a J.D., started a family, and served a term on the Walnut Creek City Council, becoming a Bay Area regional leader in economic development, transportation planning and advancing technology in government.

In 2012, Kish was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to lead the newly formed Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO Biz).  His directive from Governor Brown was to enhance California’s job creation effort by promoting statewide economic development, improving the business climate, and fostering greater international trade.   During Kish’s tenure at GO Biz, California grew substantially, once again becoming the world’s 7th largest economy.

In 2015, Kish returned to the private sector to lead advocacy efforts to modernize and grow California’s economy through his role at CALinnovates as its Chief Evangelist.

 

Senior Policy Fellow

Tim

Tim Sparapani is a legislative, legal and strategic advisor who helps CALinnovates’ partner companies understand and respond to the pressures created by emerging technologies for businesses, consumers and governments.  Tim’s specialties are privacy, technology and constitutional law.

Tim is a frequent public speaker on topics related to emerging technologies.  He has testified before Congress five times and given more than 500 TV, radio and print interviews.

Most recently, Tim served as the Vice President, Policy, Law & Government Affairs for the Application Developers Alliance, a trade association serving more than 30,000 application “app” developers and 150 member companies.

Prior to his role at the Application Developer’s Alliance, Tim was the first Director of Public Policy at Facebook. Tim was responsible for developing and implementing the company’s interaction with the federal, state, local and international governments and with opinion and policy makers.  He managed these roles as the company grew from 150 million to more than 900 million active users and from 350 employees to more than 3,000.

Prior to joining Facebook, Tim was Senior Legislative Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, where he helped advance the constitutional principle of the right to privacy, representing the ACLU before Congress, the Executive Branch and before the media.  For the more than four years preceding his time at the ACLU, Tim served as an associate at the law firm of Dickstein Shapiro where he helped clients navigate interconnecting constitutional, statutory, political and policy challenges.  Tim holds a bachelor’s degree with honors from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the law school at the University of Michigan.