Patterson returned to public policy in 2019 as the legal affairs secretary for Gov. Newsom, where she spent a good portion of her early work as counsel on the energy team, tackling the PG&E bankruptcy after the destructive North Bay and Camp fires. As cabinet secretary, Patterson advises the governor on policy and oversees all state agencies and departments within the administration.

Her sense of adventure and interest in new experiences led her from her upbringing in Ohio to now nearly four decades living in the Capital Region. It’s also what led her to shift from a 36-year career working in nonprofits to building the new Nevada County Economic Development Office from the ground up as its first program manager. Throughout her career, Parker says, she has felt an openness to learning new things.

After more than 20 years at KeyPoint Credit Union in Santa Clara, Nabhani joined SAFE Credit Union in 2016 as executive vice president and chief credit officer, overseeing their lending programs. In January 2023, she became the first female president and CEO in its 85-year history. “I’m really excited this year about where we are as an organization,” she says. 

FROM THE PUBLISHER: I always look forward to our annual Women in Leadership issue, where we’re able to shine a spotlight on the best and brightest women in our region. … What makes women leaders special?

Since joining Stoel Rives five years ago, Ewens has represented both public agencies and private clients, such as vintners and ranchers, navigating the legal maze of water access. Her work frequently involves mediating between competing interests: agriculture, municipalities, environmental concerns and historical water rights holders. 

She began her legal career in Washington, D.C., where she worked for the U.S. Department of Justice. She chose the civil division, which handled cases such as aviation disasters, the U.S. government giving LSD to soldiers in the 1950s as an experiment, and whether radioactive atomic testing in Nevada caused cancer. “It was pretty exciting stuff,” she says.

Buño certainly knows a thing or two about stepping outside her comfort zone. At 16, she immigrated to the U.S. from India with her family and joined the Air Force just a year later.

Back in 2019, Diana Gamzina presented her powerful amplifiers at a space agency. The feedback was direct: At about $1 million per device, they were just too expensive for real-world infrastructure. It was a hard truth, but instead of giving up, she doubled down.

In the four decades that Laura Knauss has been practicing architecture, a lot has changed. In the late 1980s when Knauss began her career, women were woefully underrepresented in the field. Now women make up nearly one third of all architects and almost half of all candidates pursuing a license.

Despite polls showing overwhelming public support for teaching financial literacy skills to school students, prior to the passage of McCarty’s bill California had no statewide requirements around financial literacy courses in the schools. As a result, the infrastructure that does exist around this has largely been developed through the initiatives of a few banks and some forward-looking schools.