Senior Advisor
Former City Manager of Santa Monica, CA
Former City Manager of Poway, CA
Former City Manager of San Rafael, CA
Former City Manager of Monrovia, CA
Former Assistant City Manager of Walnut Creek, CA
Rod Gould has successfully managed five cities over 29 years in both northern and southern California. He has also held leadership roles in the city management profession, including serving as a Vice President of the International City and County Management Association (ICMA), on the Board of Directors of the League of California Cites and as President of the City Managers Department and currently serves on the boards of the Institute for Local Government, Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University, and SAGE Publication’s “State and Local Government Review.”
Rod Gould has taught at USC’s Price School of Public Policy, San Francisco State University and California State University Long Beach in the MPA programs and the Stanford Local Government Institute and has served as city manager in residence at Stanford, Pepperdine, USC, Cornell, and Berkeley.
He authors articles for professional publications, lectures at graduate schools, speaks at conferences, provides professional training and consultation, mentors young professionals and has been honored by his peers and various organizations over the years.
Prior to city management, Rod worked as a management consultant for a Big Eight firm and the Boston Housing Authority, served as a VISTA volunteer in the Mission District in San Francisco and worked several summers in Washington, D.C. in the Secretary’s Office of HHS and HEW.
Rod Gould studied public management and finance in graduate school at Harvard University and political science and economics in college at Yale.