Phil Angelides
Phil Angelides is a Principal of Canyon Capital Realty Advisors LLC and the Chairman of the Canyon-Johnson Urban Communities Fund. Mr. Angelides has been a successful businessman and effective public leader. He has earned a national reputation over the last 30 years in both the private and public sectors for his pioneering work in urban reinvestment, housing, green investment and smart growth.
Mr. Angelides served as California State Treasurer from 1999 – 2007 and was the Democratic nominee for Governor in 2006. For more than a decade prior to his election to public office, he headed his own real estate investment firm that managed nearly $500 million in construction and planned and built communities which provided over 15,000 new homes.
During his eight years in elected office, Mr. Angelides transformed the State Treasurer’s Office into a force for progress. The Associated Press reported that he made “the sleepy treasurer’s office a policy powerhouse,” and The Sacramento Bee praised him as “the most effective and dynamic state treasurer in a generation.”
As Treasurer, Angelides launched groundbreaking investment initiatives to promote smart growth and to create jobs, housing, and opportunities in inner cities. He put the weight of the state’s pension funds behind pioneering investments in energy efficiency and environmental technology and the fight against global warming. He mobilized pension funds and investors across the nation to usher in a new era of corporate responsibility. And, he created innovative programs to foster educational excellence and reform, and to expand college opportunities.
In the private sector, Mr. Angelides pioneered the building of smart growth communities in the 1980s long before the concepts of sustainability were embraced by the marketplace. Among his ventures was the town of Laguna West which was featured in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, and ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” and sparked a national dialogue around building more livable, environmentally responsible communities.
Mr. Angelides has been active in charity and the civic life of his community and his state for over three decades. He was Chairman of the California Democratic Party from 1991 – 1993, leading the campaign that elected two women senators for the first time in any state’s history and that carried California for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in 28 years. He currently serves as National Chairman of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of business, labor, environmental, and community leaders committed to catalyzing a clean energy revolution in America. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the National Inner City Leadership Award from the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City; the California League of Conservation Voters’ Environmental Leadership Award; and the Congress for the New Urbanism’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Mr. Angelides is a graduate of Harvard University and completed the Coro Foundation Public Affairs Fellows Program in Los Angeles.
