SACRAMENTO - State Treasurer John Chiang on Thursday announced several major appointments to his executive staff.
Chiang, who previously served two terms as state controller, was sworn into his new office on Jan. 5.
Collin Wong-Martinusen, 44, will serve as chief of staff. Most recently, he served as Chiang’s chief of staff at the State Controller’s Office. During his tenure, the office set productivity records in nearly all major lines of business, including optimizing the use of its auditing authority to root-out $9.5 billion in government waste and inefficiency.
Previously, he ran the Attorney General’s Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse, where he improved the agency’s health care fraud prosecutions by 116 percent and elder abuse prosecutions by 797 percent.
Under his leadership, the bureau was twice recognized as the top performing health care fraud prosecutorial agency in the nation.
He also held several positions in the State Senate, including as policy advisor to the president pro tempore.
In this capacity, he was lead staff in drafting and negotiating a seminal 1997 tax relief package – commonly referred to as “Mega-Deal” – that provided nearly $1 billion in tax relief to middle-class Californians. It was the largest tax cut for personal income taxpayers since World War II.
Wong-Martinusen is a Democrat and a graduate of the University of Southern California.
Tim Schaefer, 67, will serve as deputy treasurer for public finance. Schaefer previously served as senior financial advisor to the state controller. He also founded and operated an Orange County-based public finance advisory firm after serving as president at a similar firm in Southern California and a regional vice president with a national financial advisory practice.
As a consultant, Schaefer was called upon several times during the worst cash crises of the past three decades to assist the state with the structuring and sale of complex cash flow borrowings.
The largest of these borrowings exceeded $10 billion; another involved one of the largest sales of medium term notes ever attempted in the national markets.
He began his 40-year career as a municipal bond salesman, syndicate manager, and secondary market trader.
Later, he managed the national municipal trading desk at Chemical Bank and the Public Finance Division of Bank of America. Schaefer is a Democrat.
Vince Brown, 62, will serve as deputy treasurer for administration and fiscal policy.
Brown has nearly 40 years of experience in public finance and budgeting. He currently serves as chief executive officer of the Alameda County Employees' Retirement Association Board of Retirement, which holds an investment portfolio of more than $6.9 billion.
Brown also served as the first CEO of Santa Barbara County Employees’ Retirement System, and as a global director at Grant Thornton LLP.
He worked as chief deputy director at the department of finance, where he managed the state’s budget process. He also served as chief operating officer for the state controller, along with numerous positions in both the California and New York state legislatures. He also served as co-chair for the Sacramento Unified School District's first Bond Oversight Committee.
Brown has a bachelor of arts degree in Political Science from LeMoyne College, as well as a master’s degree in public administration from the State University of New York at Albany.
Brown is a registered as decline to state. His appointment becomes effective on March 16.
Grant Boyken, 45, will serve as deputy treasurer for retirement security and healthcare. Boyken previously served as the treasurer’s pension and benefits officer.
In that capacity, he was the treasurer’s lead representative on the CalPERS and CalSTRS governing boards where he helped shape governance and compensation policy reforms, including one increasing oversight and transparency of corporate political spending.
Boyken also served as the first executive director of the Secure Choice Retirement Savings Investment Board, a groundbreaking program that will provide retirement security to California workers in the private sector.
In 2007, Boyken staffed the Governor’s Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission, where he authored reports on retiree health benefits, actuarial methods used to determine pension and retiree health benefit funding, and a report on the funded status of all public pension systems in California.
Many of the provisions of the seminal 2012 Public Employee Pension Reform Act were rooted in the Commission’s final recommendations.
He holds a master of arts degree in sociology from the University of California, Davis, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Boyken is a Democrat.
Alan Gordon, 59, will serve as deputy treasurer for legislation and infrastructure financing. He previously served as deputy state controller for environmental policy.
Gordon has spent a significant portion of his career in the State Capitol in the roles of principle consultant to the Senate Committee on Delta Conveyance and Conservation, counsel to the Senate Environmental Quality and Insurance committees, and a senior staffer to two senators. He also served as deputy director of the department of toxic substances.
Gordon has a bachelor of arts degree in history, a master of arts degree in political science from Emory University, and graduated from Golden Gate University’s Law School. He is registered as decline to state.
Jan Ross, 56, will serve as chief of information technology.
Previously, she worked as the chief information officer at the State Controller’s Office, where she oversaw the successful implementation of more than twenty-four independent IT initiatives, including the acclaimed government transparency Web sites, www.PublicPay.ca.gov , www.TrackProp30.ca.gov and www.ByTheNumbers.sco.ca.gov .
Ross joined the Controller’s Office after 11 years with the Franchise Tax Board, where she supported a variety of technology initiatives.
Her public service career was preceded by 16 years in private industry supporting technology systems predominantly in the financial industry.
Ross holds a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in management information systems, and bachelor’s degree in French, both from California State University, Sacramento. She is a Republican.
