Newsom has named veteran executive Yolanda Richardson, 49, of Roseville, to be secretary of the Government Operations Agency — a key position under which the California Department of Technology, among others, resides. The GovOps secretary position was most recently held by Marybel Batjer, whom Newsom named president of the California Public Utilities Commission last July. GovOps Undersecretary Julie Lee has been acting secretary in the interim.
Richardson has been president of Teloiv Consulting since 2016. She was chief deputy executive director of Covered California from 2011 to 2016; chief operating officer at Cal eConnect from 2009 to 2011; and chief operating officer for San Francisco Health Plan from 2007 to 2009. She had held several positions at Pac Advantage from 2003 to 2007, including vice president of operations, director of operations and training officer. Richardson is a member of the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce and is a Democrat. The GovOps secretary position, which requires Senate confirmation, has an annual salary of $217,292.
Newsom this week also appointed a secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency (BCSH) -- Lourdes M. Castro Ramírez, 49, of San Antonio, Texas.
Castro Ramírez has been president of the University Health Systems Foundation since 2017. She was principal deputy assistant at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 2015 to 2017. Castro Ramírez was president and chief executive officer at the San Antonio Housing Authority from 2009 to 2015. She held several positions at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles from 1999 to 2009, including director of housing assistance programs, interim director of the resident relations department, and project director for the jobs plus national demonstration program. Castro Ramírez was a community planner at Cabrillo Economic Development Corp. from 1996 to 1999. She earned a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of California, Los Angeles.
In Castro Ramirez’s LinkedIn profile, she notes that she has more than 25 years’ experience in leading housing, health and community development initiatives, She describes herself as a skilled practitioner and policymaker devoted to reducing poverty, bolstering economic self-sufficiency, and improving health and educational outcomes. She succeeds Alexis Podesta, who was appointed to the secretary position in 2017 and whom Newsom has appointed to the board of directors of the State Compensation Insurance Fund.
This position requires Senate confirmation, and the compensation is $217,292. Castro Ramírez is a Democrat.
And on Thursday afternoon, Newsom took another step toward his stated goal of transforming the state's IT culture by naming Ajay Gupta, 45, chief digital transformation officer at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Gupta has served as a special consultant and an adviser to the director of the DMV since 2019. Gupta previously worked for several consulting firms serving departments in the California, Texas and Hawaii. He was managing director at KPMG from 2013 to 2019, where he led the delivery of legacy transformation, technology innovation and managed services for state departments nationally. Between 1996 and 2013, Gupta was an IT project manager and a senior software engineer at CGI, Visionary Integration Professionals, Deloitte and Tata Consultancy Services.
He earned a master’s of business administration in marketing and IT from the University of California, Davis. He is a certified project management professional, scrum master product owner, cloud practitioner and an enterprise architect. This position does not require Senate confirmation, and the compensation is $155,004. Gupta is not registered to vote.
Encouraging innovation in state IT has been a longtime goal of Newsom’s and is one of the tenets of his governorship. Gupta’s new role at the DMV underscores the importance that the administration has placed on removing the technological and cultural hurdles that have contributed to the beleaguered agency’s problems.
