Community leaders and experts in policy and economics will gather to discuss solutions to California’s big problems at a July 23 event in Santa Barbara.

Spotlight Santa Barbara is holding its second speaker event with a panel including Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Kristen Miller, Pepperdine School of Public Policy Dean Peter Peterson, economics professor Lee Ohanian, and two-time Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearingen. 

Spotlight SB, founded by Brian Goebel and Jeff Giordano, will host the event along with Bill Macfadyen, Noozhawk’s publisher, who will be moderating the panel. Noozhawk is also an event sponsor.

“I feel good overall about the panel we’ve put together, the topics we’re going to cover, and the quality of the event,” Goebel said. “Especially in an election year where there are so many important issues facing the city of Santa Barbara and the community at large.”

The first Spotlight SB speaker event included a discussion with political columnist Dan Walters, who dived into California’s history and big problems on Feb. 5. 

This time the audience will be treated to a panel discussion analyzing how Santa Barbara can tackle the state’s biggest issues.

“I thought it would be important this go round to bring in people with different backgrounds and experiences that directly translate to challenges here in Santa Barbara,” Goebel said.

Meet the Panelists

Ohanian is a distinguished professor of economics at UC Los Angeles and serves as director of macroeconomic research. He’s a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution whose articles about housing, homelessness, infrastructure and education have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek and Forbes.

“He’s an academic, but he’s deeply pragmatic,” Goebel said. “And he’s a local, so he’ll bring his insights directly to our community.”

Ohanian told Noozhawk that he’s looking forward to discussing homelessness, water infrastructure, and K-12 education.

“I worry about the fact that many of our kids are not entering adulthood with the skills that are needed to succeed,” Ohanian said. 

Swearingen will be bringing her experience as a former mayor of Fresno and the CEO of the Central Valley Community Foundation to the panel. Swearingen inherited a city on the verge of bankruptcy and worked to revitalize its urban core.

“I thought it was important to try to get a former mid-sized city mayor in California to come in and talk about how she handled some of the very same challenges that Santa Barbara is facing,” Goebel said. “Whether it’s budget difficulties, lack of economic dynamic behavior in the community, those kinds of challenges. She inherited almost all of those when she became mayor of Fresno.”

Swearingen told Noozhawk that she hopes people leave the event feeling empowered and energized to make a difference in their community. 

“More people feeling a sense of ownership about their own community and making a commitment, however big or small, that they’re in it for the long haul with their neighbors — I would love for even half the audience to leave the room feeling more that way,” Swearingen said. “I think that would be a huge success.”

As a past director of the bipartisan reform organization California Forward, and dean of Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy, Peterson will be discussing where California is now, and where it should go. He’s also co-creator of the seminar “Public Engagement: The Vital Leadership Skill in Difficult Times,” and ran for California secretary of state in 2014.

“Pete Peterson … has built quite a reputation around state and local government for being able to work with state and local governments to help them solve some of their biggest problems,” Goebel said.

Peterson said he’s looking forward to discussing policy decisions that are improving economics throughout the state, and those that need to be left behind. 

“It’s not true to say that people are leaving the entire state,” Peterson said. “There are actually parts of the state that are growing, and they’re doing different things from a perspective of housing policy and energy policy and economic development that people are responding to.”

Last but certainly not least, there are few people as clued in on Santa Barbara businesses as Kristen Miller.

As Santa Barbara Chamber of Commerce president and CEO and board member of Housing Trust Fund of Santa Barbara County, Visit Santa Barbara and UC Santa Barbara’s Economic Forecast Project, Miller has 25 years of experience dealing with public policy on the South Coast. 

“She is working tirelessly in our community to try to develop solutions at the policy level to support local businesses,” Goebel said. “And I think that’s a critical missing piece, personally, here in Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara County.”

Miller said she’s looking forward to bringing a local perspective to the state’s big issues.

“What we have really learned in the last 10 years is that while our issues are the same, they’re often amplified,” Miller said. “So something that is a statewide issue with housing, we find in Santa Barbara we have an even more exaggerated housing problem. If there’s a problem in the state with immigration, we have an amplified situation here. If there is an affordability question in the state, then it’s even more so here.”

Know Before You Go

Goebel said returning attendees may notice a few changes to the July 23 event, including that there will be more time for the panel to answer questions from the audience.

Questions can be submitted ahead of time through the Spotlight SB website here.

Anyone who buys a ticket will receive an email about a week or so before the event with a reminder to send questions.

There will also be time to mingle with other attendees and the panelists on Lobero’s Esplanade before and after the event. 

The event will be held on July 23 at the Lobero Theatre at 33 E. Canon Perdido St. An hour of mingling and cocktails will start at 6 p.m., and the panel is set to start at 7 p.m.

Click here to learn more and buy tickets.