In early 2020, Len Materman was appointed CEO of the San Mateo County Flood and Sea Level Rise Resiliency District, also known as OneShoreline. OneShoreline was established by State legislation on January 1st of that year as the first independent government agency in California focused on planning for and reducing the impacts of climate change on a region. These impacts have already proven to be substantial and, in key respects, will exceed those of all other California counties.  

Len recently served as the first Public Policy Practitioner in Residence at Stanford University’s Center for the American West and, together with colleagues at Stanford and UC Berkeley, he was a contributing author of two recent books on financing and implementing large-scale climate resilience. Previously, Len led a regional government agency on the San Francisco Peninsula that completed the largest multi-jurisdictional sea level rise protection effort in the state for which the agency was highlighted as a model in the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other major media outlets. 

Prior to his work in regional government, Len consulted to the U.S. State Department and foundations and nonprofits around the world, and he served as executive producer of a nationally-broadcast PBS documentary. During the Clinton Administration, Len served as an advisor to the Director of FEMA and as FEMA’s representative on two White House Task Forces. Before working in Washington DC, Len was the Director of Government Affairs at UC Berkeley, where he received two Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Awards. He has spoken on a range of topics at conferences from Hawaii to Chernobyl and many locations in between, and he has degrees in Political Science and Biology from UC Davis.