Jeffrey Sosnaud was raised in San Francisco and is a 1976 graduate of the Coro Center for Civic Leadership’s Fellowship in Public Affairs. He has a broad array of experience working in business, higher education and the nonprofit sectors, and has held positions in government at the local, state and federal levels.

Prior to moving back to the Bay Area last year, Jeff lived in Maine for twenty years, where he most recently served as Deputy Commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development. He was also appointed by the Governor of Maine to co-chair the state’s Creative Economy initiative, directed at enhancing Maine’s knowledge and culture-based economy. Prior to this, he was the founding executive director of the Maine Small Business Alliance, a nonprofit, nonpartisan small business advocacy organization.

An attorney, Jeff has worked as a mediator and was a member of the faculty teaching business law at the College of Business Administration of the University of Maine, where he was also Interim Associate Dean. During this period, he was elected to the City Council in Bangor, Maine, the state’s third largest city. Prior to moving to Maine, Jeff practiced law in Silicon Valley, worked as a staff assistant in the Office of the Secretary of the Interior in Washington, D.C., and was an assistant to civil rights leader and Fayette, Mississippi mayor Charles Evers.

Jeff is a graduate of Yale University and the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Once again a San Francisco resident, he is married to Jean Curran, a practicing physician, and they have two children in college.