The Top 50 San Diego Women Leaders of 2026
San Diego’s influence is bigger than its skyline. It’s a region where biotech and wireless sit next to navy-driven logistics, where tourism and cross-border commerce power small businesses, and where housing, water, and energy choices determine what growth even looks like.
This list is written for professional women who care about the “real levers”: who controls budgets, talent pipelines, infrastructure, legal frameworks, capital, and convening power in the greater San Diego metro.
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#1 Patty Maysent
If you want to understand where San Diego is heading, follow healthcare-because it’s the region’s biggest employer engine, cost center for families, and talent magnet for researchers and clinicians. As CEO of UC San Diego Health, Patty Maysent leads the region’s only academic health system, where decisions about growth, access, and clinical strategy ripple into workforce development, medical innovation, and employer benefits across the metro. Her broader industry leadership (including hospital-association board roles) also gives her “outside the walls” influence on how the region aligns around care capacity and quality.
#2 Catherine Owen Adams
San Diego’s life-sciences identity is built by companies that choose to scale here-hiring, partnering with research institutions, and investing in specialized talent. As CEO of Acadia, Catherine Owen Adams is one of the most consequential leaders in that story: her decisions shape how a neuroscience-focused biopharma competes for talent, capital, and scientific partnerships in a global market while remaining anchored in the region. When biopharma scales locally, it doesn’t just create jobs-it fuels the vendor ecosystem (clinical research, legal, accounting, HR, facilities) that sustains San Diego’s innovation economy.
#3 Caroline Winn
Economic development in 2026 is inseparable from energy: electrification, grid resilience, wildfire mitigation, and affordability are boardroom topics now-not just policy topics. Caroline Winn oversees Sempra California’s dual-utility platform (SDG&E and SoCalGas) and serves as chairman of the board for both, giving her enormous influence over how the region modernizes infrastructure while balancing cost pressures for households and employers. If you’re watching where San Diego can grow (housing, EVs, advanced manufacturing), you’re also watching the systems her organization enables.
#4 Kimberly J. Becker
Airports quietly function like regional headquarters: they determine how easily capital, customers, and talent can move. Kimberly J. Becker has led the Airport Authority and announced her retirement, with a leadership transition planned for March-making this a “legacy moment” in which long-horizon projects, operational discipline, and stakeholder trust matter tremendously. The decisions made under her watch influence business travel, tourism, and the region’s first impression for everything from conferences to biotech recruiting.
#5 Sharon Cooney
Transit is one of San Diego’s most practical equity tools: it determines how reliably workers reach jobs and how easily neighborhoods connect to opportunity. Sharon Cooney, appointed CEO by the MTS Board, has shaped the agency’s direction through critical years when service expectations, safety needs, and ridership realities all shifted. Her influence is felt in everyday commute time, in employer access to labor, and in how the region plans growth around mobility rather than congestion.
#6 Karin Burns
Community Choice Aggregation has become one of California’s most important-and least understood-economic levers: it affects rates, procurement strategy, and the speed of decarbonization. As CEO of San Diego Community Power, Karin Burns sits at the intersection of climate goals and cost-of-living realities, shaping how the region buys power and invests in programs that can benefit residents and businesses. In a metro where sustainability commitments are increasingly a hiring and brand differentiator, her role has real talent-market consequences, too.
#7 Terra Lawson-Remer
The County is one of the region’s biggest “platforms”-public health, behavioral health, child welfare, land-use-adjacent decisions, and the safety net all live here. Terra Lawson-Remer serves as Chair of the Board of Supervisors, leading a county of 3.3 million people with a budget exceeding $8 billion. That means her influence isn’t abstract: it shows up in whether systems execute-housing stability, public health strategy, and coordinated responses to crises that affect employers and neighborhoods alike.
#8 Ebony N. Shelton
If elected officials set direction, the CAO makes the machine run. Ebony N. Shelton serves as Chief Administrative Officer for the County of San Diego, placing her at the center of operational execution across departments and budgets. In a time when implementation capacity is the difference between “plans” and real outcomes, her leadership shapes how effectively the region delivers services that stabilize the workforce and the broader economy.
#9 Danielle Moore
The Port is one of the region’s most strategic assets: waterfront development, maritime commerce, environmental stewardship, and tourism flows converge here. Danielle Moore serving as Chair signals both governance influence and agenda-setting power-especially as the Port navigates public trust, long-range redevelopment, and the balance between economic use and coastal preservation. For anyone tracking where San Diego invests next along the bay, her role is a key signal.
#10 Heather Ferbert
City attorneys shape a city’s “rules of the game”: enforcement priorities, litigation posture, and the legal scaffolding under housing, consumer protection, and public-safety strategies. Heather Ferbert serves as the 28th San Diego City Attorney-chief legal officer and city prosecutor-an office that impacts everything from how the city defends (or initiates) litigation to how it prosecutes cases and advises policymakers. In practice, her decisions influence business certainty, risk tolerance, and what policies can actually survive legal scrutiny.
#11 Betsy Brennan
Downtown is where brand, tourism, office economics, housing pressure, and public safety perceptions collide. Betsy Brennan leads the Downtown San Diego Partnership, which convenes stakeholders and delivers services aimed at economic vitality and neighborhood conditions in the urban core. When downtown works, it lifts the whole region’s reputation and business climate; when it doesn’t, every sector feels the drag.
#12 Nancy L. Sasaki
United Way leadership isn’t just philanthropy-it’s systems influence. Nancy Sasaki’s work is consequential because it mobilizes employers, donors, nonprofits, and government partners toward measurable outcomes (financial stability, education access, and community resilience). In a tight labor market, the organizations that reduce instability for families indirectly strengthen the workforce-and that’s why this role matters to business leaders.
#13 Dr. Adela de la Torre
SDSU is one of San Diego’s most important talent engines-feeding employers across healthcare, government, education, tech, and business. Dr. Adela de la Torre has led SDSU since 2018, shaping strategy that influences research partnerships, degree pathways, and how effectively the region retains and upskills local talent. For professional women tracking pipeline health-internships, credentials, leadership development-this presidency is a major lever.
#14 Ann Chaplin
Qualcomm is a global company with outsized local gravity-its decisions affect San Diego’s engineering ecosystem, supplier networks, and innovation brand. As EVP, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, Ann Chaplin operates at the intersection of governance, legal strategy, and technology business risk. Her influence shows up in how the company navigates complexity (IP, partnerships, compliance), which in turn affects stability and confidence across the region’s tech economy.
#15 Heather Ace
In a talent-driven region, the CHRO seat is a strategic seat. Heather Ace leads human resources at Qualcomm, influencing how one of San Diego’s flagship employers competes for talent, shapes culture, develops leaders, and builds the kind of workforce brand that pulls skilled people into the region. These decisions cascade: when Qualcomm raises the bar on leadership development, many local employers feel the competitive pressure-and benefit from the talent ecosystem it helps build.
#16 Valerie Bille
Strategy becomes real when finance allocates capital. Valerie Bille serves as CFO for both SDG&E and SoCalGas, leading accounting/finance, treasury, planning, and business strategy functions-work that directly influences infrastructure investment pace, affordability tradeoffs, and long-term resiliency priorities. In a region where energy costs and reliability matter to every employer, this is one of the most quietly powerful finance roles in the metro.
#17 Pat Leckman
San Diego’s life-sciences advantage depends on people as much as science: recruitment, retention, leadership pipelines, and inclusive cultures are competitive differentiators. As Chief People Officer at Illumina, Pat Leckman influences the talent strategy of one of the region’s iconic genomics companies. That doesn’t just affect Illumina-it shapes expectations and practices across the broader biotech ecosystem that clusters around it.
#18 Sadie Stern
Medtech is one of San Diego’s defining strengths, and Dexcom is a major anchor within it. As CHRO, Sadie Stern’s influence is felt through workforce strategy, leadership development, and how a scaling company sustains culture while competing for specialized talent. In a region where medtech roles are high-demand and high-mobility, the leaders who set “how we work” standards shape the whole market.
#19 Kylie Canaday
Strategy leaders determine where growth capital and organizational focus go next-markets, product bets, partnerships, and transformation priorities. As Chief Strategy Officer at ResMed, Kylie Canaday operates at the level where long-range decisions translate into local impact: jobs, innovation partnerships, and the kind of global visibility that keeps San Diego competitive as a health-technology hub.
#20 Lisa Jones
Housing is San Diego’s defining constraint: it affects recruitment, retention, entrepreneurship, and whether families can stay rooted here. Lisa Jones leads the San Diego Housing Commission, an agency with a large staff and hundreds of millions in budget scope-making her role central to how the city operationalizes affordability and homelessness responses. When housing programs execute well, employers feel it in stability and reduced churn; when they don’t, every workforce strategy becomes harder.
#21 Sarah Boyce
As President and CEO of Avidity Biosciences, Sarah Boyce has helped turn leading-edge RNA science into a focused clinical engine, building the team and momentum required to advance therapies for serious disease. Her leadership strengthens San Diego’s life-science economy by scaling a local innovator with global reach, creating high-value jobs and accelerating breakthroughs that can change patients’ lives.
#22 Vered Keisar
Vered Keisar shapes the workforce strategy for ResMed, aligning talent, culture, and organizational design with the pace of a global digital health leader. By building inclusive leadership pipelines and enabling large-scale transformation, she helps a San Diego headquartered company compete worldwide while keeping innovation and employee experience at the center.
#23 Jennifer J. Rhodes
Jennifer J. Rhodes provides strategic legal and governance leadership at Acadia Pharmaceuticals, guiding complex decisions where science, regulation, and public trust intersect. Her steady counsel helps protect the company’s ability to deliver important medicines responsibly, supporting durable growth and reinforcing San Diego’s reputation as a hub for high-integrity biopharma.
#24 Jennifer Brown
Jennifer Brown’s influence reflects the high-stakes legal leadership required in medtech, where product decisions touch patient safety, data privacy, and global compliance. By supporting innovation at scale while safeguarding governance and reputation, she contributes to the strength and credibility of San Diego’s health-technology ecosystem.
#25 Ann Moore
Ann Moore brings pragmatic, public-minded leadership to the Port of San Diego, where decisions on waterfront development, environmental stewardship, and maritime commerce ripple through the regional economy. Her ability to balance growth with community access and long-term resilience makes her a key figure in how San Diego invests, builds, and competes along its most valuable natural asset.
#26 Vivian Moreno
Vivian Moreno’s work on the San Diego City Council makes her a decisive voice on land use, housing, and neighborhood investment in communities that keep the region’s cross-border economy moving. By bridging business, labor, and resident priorities and pushing for practical delivery on services and infrastructure, she helps shape a more stable environment for employers and families alike.
#27 Pamela Gray Payton
Pamela Gray Payton helps translate philanthropy into measurable regional progress, leading partnerships and impact strategy that address San Diego’s most persistent quality-of-life challenges. Her cross-sector approach mobilizes capital, data, and collaboration at scale, expanding opportunity and strengthening the civic foundation businesses depend on to attract and retain talent.
#28 Stephanie Cook
Stephanie Cook leads the San Diego Women’s Foundation with a clear focus on collective giving that lifts women and girls while tackling root-cause inequities across the county. By expanding the network and directing resources to high-impact nonprofits, she amplifies community capacity and helps build a more inclusive economy where more people can thrive.
#29 Felena Hanson
Felena Hanson pioneered a women-centered coworking and business-support model with Hera Hub, creating a launchpad where entrepreneurs can access community, mentorship, and practical tools to grow. Her work expands pathways to economic independence and strengthens San Diego’s innovation culture by helping small businesses scale with confidence.
#30 Jenny Black
Jenny Black leads Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest through a complex healthcare landscape, bringing seasoned operational leadership and a patient-first focus on access and quality. By strengthening a major regional provider’s capacity and partnerships, she supports healthier communities and a more resilient workforce, outcomes that directly influence San Diego’s long-term competitiveness.
#31 Martha Gilmer
Martha Gilmer has guided the San Diego Symphony through a transformative era, expanding its reach and elevating the region’s cultural infrastructure through landmark projects and community engagement. Her leadership turns the arts into an economic engine, boosting downtown vitality, tourism, and civic pride while helping San Diego attract the creative talent that fuels broader business growth.
#32 Michelle Gastil
Michelle Gastil’s presidency of the San Diego County Bar Association reflects a commitment to professional excellence and to expanding access to justice across the region. By convening the legal community around civility, inclusion, and service, she strengthens the institutions that businesses and residents rely on when the stakes are high.
#33 Maria Chavez
Maria Chavez is a force for equity in San Diego’s legal community, pairing frontline immigration expertise with leadership that advances inclusion and professional opportunity. Her work equips individuals, families, and employers to navigate high-impact legal realities, while her community-centered approach helps build a more stable and welcoming region for growth.
#34 Karie Boyd
Karie Boyd has built Boyd Law into a high-performing practice by combining sharp trial skills with decisive business leadership and a client-first operating model. In a market where legal outcomes can reshape assets and enterprises, her results-driven approach delivers clarity and momentum for clients navigating complex, high-stakes transitions.
#35 Theresa Cunningham
Theresa Cunningham helps power one of San Diego’s most important industries by leading people strategy, equity initiatives, and social impact for the San Diego Tourism Authority. By strengthening workplace culture and aligning tourism with community benefit, she supports a sector that drives jobs, small-business demand, and the city’s global brand.
#36 Diana Puetz
Diana Puetz shapes the Padres’ public affairs and community strategy, connecting a major sports franchise to civic partners and policy stakeholders that matter to the region. Her work extends the team’s impact beyond the ballpark, supporting community investment and strengthening San Diego’s identity as a destination city.
#37 Summer Shoemaker
Summer Shoemaker leads a landmark waterfront resort with an operator’s discipline and a guest-experience mindset, elevating service quality while driving performance across a complex hospitality operation. In a city where meetings, tourism, and local leisure spending are major economic drivers, her leadership helps sustain jobs and reinforces San Diego’s reputation for world-class hospitality.
#38 Helena Gibson
Helena Gibson has built Strut Hair Solutions into a trusted, purpose-driven business that restores confidence for clients facing medical or genetic hair loss through personalized, high-touch solutions. By turning empathy into an enduring enterprise and innovating products and services that meet an underserved need, she exemplifies the kind of community-rooted entrepreneurship that strengthens the region’s small-business economy.
#39 Emma Storm Sabo
Emma Storm Sabo has turned The Mudd House into more than a studio, building a community hub that supports local makers, creative education, and the small-business ecosystem around the arts. Her ability to grow a women-owned brand with loyal participation and real neighborhood pull shows how experiential retail and creativity can translate into durable economic impact.
#40 Sean M. Scott
Sean M. Scott’s tenure at California Western School of Law demonstrates how visionary academic leadership can strengthen an institution’s financial footing, relevance, and student outcomes. By modernizing programs, expanding scholarships, and investing in innovation, she helps develop the legal talent pipeline that underpins San Diego’s business environment and civic resilience.
#41 Steph Johnson
Steph Johnson co-founded Voices of Our City Choir to harness music as a pathway to dignity and healing for people experiencing homelessness, transforming creative expression into real social impact. Her leadership has built a widely respected model that mobilizes donors, partners, and audiences, strengthening San Diego’s nonprofit sector while reimagining what community investment can look like.
#42 Lindsey Seegers
Lindsey Seegers brings disciplined nonprofit leadership to Voices of Our City Choir, strengthening programs and operations that help people impacted by homelessness rebuild stability and community. By pairing compassionate outreach with savvy fundraising and partnerships, she scales a model that changes lives while elevating San Diego’s reputation for innovative, arts-driven solutions.
#43 Tara Monsod
Tara Monsod has put San Diego on the national culinary map as the executive chef of Animae and Le Coq, earning top-tier recognition for her bold cooking and leadership in the kitchen. Her success fuels the region’s hospitality economy by drawing diners and attention that lift local talent, tourism, and the city’s brand as a serious food destination.
#44 Alex Morgan
Alex Morgan has translated an iconic playing career into lasting business influence by investing in San Diego Wave FC and championing the growth of women’s sports as an engine for community pride and economic value. Her leadership, entrepreneurship, and advocacy continue to raise the city’s global profile while inspiring the next generation of athletes and founders.
#45 Becca Fox
Becca Fox helps turn a lifestyle brand into a scalable local business by driving marketing, operations, and member experience for Freedom Boat Club of San Diego. Her work grows participation on the water through smart programming and community engagement, strengthening a recreation sector that supports tourism, hospitality, and the region’s coastal economy.
#46 Brooke Martindale
Brooke Martindale founded and leads Cheer Home Care with a clear mission to raise the standard for in-home aging services, combining compassionate care with professionalized operations and caregiver support. In a region where demographic shifts are reshaping healthcare demand, her company improves quality of life for families while creating meaningful jobs and trusted community infrastructure.
#47 Toni Atkins
Toni Atkins has been one of San Diego’s most consequential public leaders, with a record of historic legislative leadership and a reputation for turning big goals into workable results. Her work on issues that directly affect business and families, including housing, healthcare, and economic opportunity, has helped shape a more resilient and competitive environment for the region.
#48 Catherine Blakespear
Catherine Blakespear brings a rare blend of local executive experience and statewide policymaking to her Senate role, informed by a track record leading a fast-growing coastal community. By focusing on transportation, housing, and regional coordination, she influences the infrastructure and quality-of-life factors that determine where businesses invest and where talent chooses to live.
#49 Sara Jacobs
Sara Jacobs represents San Diego in Congress with a focus on pragmatic problem-solving and a strong connection to the region’s military, innovation, and cross-border economy. Her work to secure federal resources and advance policies that support workers, small businesses, and community stability makes her an influential force in the long-term trajectory of the local economy.
#50 Teresa Acosta
Teresa Acosta stands out as a civic and business leader who brings real-world small-business experience to local government and regional water governance, where long-term decisions directly shape growth and resilience. Her collaborative leadership on critical infrastructure and community priorities helps ensure North County’s economy can expand sustainably with reliability that employers and residents depend on.
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