SPEAKER BIOS
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Rob Lapsley
President, California Business Roundtable
Rob Lapsley was named President of the California Business Roundtable in 2011. He leads an organization comprised of senior executive leadership of major California employers representing all sectors of California’s economy and with a combined workforce of more than 600,000 employees.
The Business Roundtable’s mission is to strengthen California’s economy and grow jobs while ensuring an educated workforce prepared for the next generation of jobs. Major policy priorities include efforts to address California’s housing crisis, rising energy costs, and the regulatory environment’s impact on the ability of California businesses to compete both nationally and internationally. In 2012, the California Business Roundtable successfully launched the nonpartisan California Center for Jobs and the Economy, which compiles federal and state economic and
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jobs data into state, county, region, congressional, senate and assembly district profiles. The Center for Jobs’ mission is to provide state and local policy makers with the latest trends and analysis impacting jobs and wages.
Previously, Lapsley was the vice president and state political director for CalChamber, serving as executive director of JobsPAC, a broad, employer-based, bipartisan committee that helped elect over twenty pro-business Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and Assembly. As an appointee of President George W. Bush, Lapsley served in the U.S. State Department as special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to Spain during the Iraq war.
He was a long-time Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Bill Jones and managed both of Jones’s successful campaigns for that constitutional office. Lapsley also served as a senior executive appointee to Cal-EPA in the administration of Governor Pete Wilson and held senior staff positions in the California Legislature for over six years.
Lapsley is a graduate fellow of the Coro Foundation and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He holds a B.S. in biology and political science from Illinois State University.