This week Richard and Joe welcomed two candidates running for San Diego City offices in the June 7th primary, Gil Cabrera and Barbara Bry. Gil Cabrera is running for San Diego City Attorney and Barbara Bry is running for a City Council seat in the highly contested District 1

Gil Cabrera

Gil Cabrera has been an attorney in San Diego for over fifteen years. Prior to forming The Cabrera Firm, Mr. Cabrera was a senior associate with Cooley Godward Kronish LLP and an associate with Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps LLP where he specialized in business litigation, securities litigation, intellectual property, employment law and white collar criminal defense.
Gil’s reputation as one of the best attorneys in San Diego and has earned several awards and recognition for his work. For seven years, Gil served as an appointed Judge Pro Tem of the Superior Court. In 2000, then San Diego Police Chief David Bejarano appointed Gil to serve on the San Diego Police Department Use of Force Task Force. From 2001 through 2004, Gil also served on the Chief of Police’s Latino Advisory Committee.

In 2005, Gil was appointed by the Mayor and City Council to the San Diego Ethics Commission and served as the Ethics Commission Chairman between 2007 and 2009. During his tenure, the Ethics Commission recommended, and the City Council passed, a complete overhaul of the City’s Lobbying Ordinance, which created greater transparency of lobbying activities in San Diego. Most recently, in February 2014, Gil was appointed by Interim Mayor Todd Gloria and the San Diego City Council to the San Diego Convention Center Corporation’s Board of Directors, which oversees the operations of the San Diego Convention Center.

In 2003, Gil was appointed to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of America’s National Board of Directors. In this role, Gil was responsible for overseeing the performance of every Make-A-Wish chapter in the country.

Mr. Cabrera received his J.D. from Boston College in 1997 where he served as Notes Editor for the Third World Law Journal and was a Presidential Scholar. Mr. Cabrera received his B.A. in Political Science from California State University, Fullerton in 1994. Mr. Cabrera lives in San Diego with his wife Krista and two daughters.

Barbara Bry

Barbara Bry is COO of Blackbird Ventures and has been on the founding team of two tech companies and three nonprofit organizations. At Blackbird, she uses her experience to help high-tech companies with their management needs. As a successful high-tech entrepreneur, she was a co-founder of Atcom, the leader in developing Internet kiosks and high-speed internet access in hotel rooms.

Barbara is the founder of San Diego Athena, San Diego’s premier organization for women technology executives and entrepreneurs. She spent 10 years at the University of California, San Diego where she was the first associate director of CONNECT, which has received international recognition for its efforts in linking technology entrepreneurs with the resources they need for success. She was the founding editor and CEO of Voice of San Diego, an innovative news and information Web site that has been featured nationally for its leadership in community-based journalism.

In the community, Barbara was on the Board of Directors of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest, the San Diego Jewish Community Foundation, and the San Diego Jewish Women’s Foundation. She and her husband Neil taught entrepreneurship at UC San Diego’s von Liebig Center for Entrepreneurism and Technology Advancement at the Jacobs School of Engineering. Recognized as a national leader in entrepreneurship, Barbara was also appointed by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Barbara’s early career was as a business and political writer for the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times. She has a B.A. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A from Harvard Business School. She is married to entrepreneur Neil Senturia, and the couple has four adult children and a grandson.

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Listen to a podcast of Gil Cabrera’s interview!
Listen to a podcast of Barbara Bry’s interview!