Candidate for
Council Member; City of Burlingame

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, again with the most votes.

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 the mayors of 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, which is responsible for allocating the half-cent sales tax dedicated to transportation.

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 90 nonprofits in San Mateo County.

She started a Green Ribbon Task Force and helped draft Burlingame's Climate Action Plan along with other green initiatives that were cited in a national environmental award in 2011. She is currently working to create a social innovation center to bring together nonprofits with those who have the resources to create change. Just for fun, she started the Burlingame Pet Parade, an annual celebration of crazily dressed pets and owners that has been running since 2003.

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. During 2011, she has been leading efforts to demand full inspections of underground gas pipelines to ensure their safety.

Terry's three children attended Burlingame public schools from kindergarten through Burlingame High. She served as PTA President of Lincoln School and was awarded Honorary Life Membership in the PTA. She led fundraising drives and helped on school parcel tax campaigns. She chaired the Communications Committee at Burlingame High School, started the school's e-newsletter for parents and headed the BHS Music Boosters' annual holiday fundraiser.

Terry has extensive experience in the nonprofit sector with Civic Ventures, a nonprofit that channels the talents of experienced workers into paid "encore careers" that give back to the community; with GreatSchools.net, which offers free education information for parents; and with the Skoll Foundation, which advances social entrepreneurship and addresses urgent threats.

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 and Civic Ventures.   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 graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Washington in Seattle.

In 2006 Terry was one of 20 elected leaders chosen for the League of California Cities' California Civic Leadership Institute, a highly selective program that educates future leaders on issues facing the state. She is a 2003 graduate of the Coro Center for Civic Leadership's Community Fellows leadership program.

Terry and her husband Jim have lived in Burlingame for 33 years.  They have three grown children.