Candidate for
San Mateo County, Board Member; County of San Mateo; Supervisorial District 1

Terry Nagel currently serves as Mayor of Burlingame. She was elected to the Burlingame City Council in 2003 with the highest number of votes in a six-way race. In 2007 she served as mayor and was re-elected to a second four-year term.

During her tenure on the council, Terry has promoted open government, civic engagement, financial responsibility, environmental sustainability, campaign finance reform, emergency preparedness, city-school partnerships, better public transportation and e-government.

Terry was elected by council members throughout the county to serve as Chair of the San Mateo County Council of Cities during 2009. In 2009 and 2011 they elected her to the Board of Directors of the county's Transportation Agency. She advocates a comprehensive transportation plan for the Peninsula that integrates Caltrain, high speed rail (if warranted) and feeder connections that will enable more people to use mass transit.

Terry has a history of building coalitions to address unmet needs. She founded Burlingame's Neighborhood Network, which encourages neighbors to band together for emergency preparedness and crime prevention. She also created the Community Wish List, which links donors of goods and services with more than 80 nonprofits in San Mateo County. She is currently working to create a nonprofit center and social innovation incubator to bring together nonprofits with those who have the resources to create change.

She is best known for organizing hundreds of residents in 2002 to protest Burlingame's frequent power outages. After citizens suffered repeated and prolonged power failures, she formed a citizens' action group called Burlingamers Unwilling to Live with Blackouts (BULB) that persuaded PG&E to spend more than $2.4 million on improvements to circuits in Burlingame and Millbrae. As a result, power outages on Burlingame's five worst circuits decreased 85 percent from 2002 to 2003. During 2010, due to her efforts, PG&E spent another $3 million improving power reliability in Burlingame, San Mateo and Hillsborough.

Terry has extensive experience in the nonprofit sector as Managing Editor of Civic Ventures, a nonprofit that channels the talents of experienced workers into paid "encore careers" that give back to the community; as Managing Editor of GreatSchools.net; and as Communications Officer for the Skoll Foundation.

She started her career as a travel editor and went on to become a staff writer and editor for the San Mateo Times. She later worked as an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, as Assistant Managing Editor of Forbes ASAP magazine, and as Managing Editor of GreatSchools.net, a nonprofit website offering free education information for parents. She also founded and managed two online travel forums for Expedia.com devoted to family travel and adventure travel. She experienced the challenges of running a small business while operating an out-of-print book search business in Burlingame for 18 years. From 2003 to 2008, she was Communications Officer for the Skoll Foundation. Terry earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, cum laude, from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Terry and Jim Nagel have lived in Burlingame for 32 years. They have three children: Katie, 30, Matt, 27, and Greg, 25. For more information, visit http://www.terrynagel.com.