President & Chief Executive Officer

Jim Wunderman serves as the president and chief executive officer of the Bay Area Council, a business-backed public policy organization in the Silicon Valley-San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area.  Led by CEOs, the Bay Area Council is the strong, united voice of more than 275 of the largest Bay Area employers, representing more than 500,000 workers, or 1 of every six private sector employees.  Since becoming CEO in April of 2004, Wunderman has led the 60-year-old public-policy organization to tighten its focus, significantly increase its advocacy work, and expand its efforts globally, starting with China.

Prior to the Bay Area Council, Wunderman spent about half of his career in the private sector and the other half in the public sector.  In the private sector he worked for Providian Financial Corporation,   Norcal Waste Systems, and ran his own consulting company, The Wunderman Group.  From 1992 through 1995, Wunderman served as Chief of Staff to San Francisco Mayor Frank M. Jordan.  He also worked in San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s administration from 1984 to 1988 and played a key role preparing the city for the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

Under Jim Wunderman’s leadership, the Bay Area Council has preserved the Bay Area’s leadership in the state legislature; built formal relationships between the Bay Area and China; fought successfully to locate the new Stem Cell Institute in the region; and helped secure the $36 billion bonds on the November 2006 ballot, the passage on the Million Solar Roofs Initiative and the Global Warming Solutions Act. 

He holds degrees from San Francisco State University, and Kingsborough College of the City University of New York.