Kathleen Connell, MPIA '72
 

Kathleen Connell received a bachelor's degree in political science from Hastings College in 1969 and earned the Master of Public and International Affairs at GSPIA in 1972.  In 1975, while doing graduate work at UCLA on a grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, she was hired as Special Assistant to L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley.  Two years later, she was promoted to Director of Housing for Los Angeles, a post she held for six years.  As Housing Director, Connell raised more than $300 million to finance new housing, was responsible for building and rehabilitating over 10,000 units of affordable housing, and earned a national reputation for innovative housing finance.  In 1981 she was elected the first President of the National Association of Local Housing Finance Authorities.  In 1983 Connell was recruited by Chemical Bank of New York, the nation’s fourth-largest bank at the time, as a Vice President and Director.  Shortly after returning to Los Angeles in 1985 to start her own investment banking firm, Connell was hired to teach at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and chair its Center for Finance and Real Estate.  Concurrently, she earned her PhD at UCLA in 1986 with a dissertation on “Timing the Markets.”  She was voted an outstanding professor and received the UCLA Alumni Award for Distinguished Service.  In 1993 she taught graduate-level international investing at UC Berkeley, and was again honored for her teaching.  In 1994 Connell became the first woman to be elected Controller for the State of California; she was reelected in 1998 and thus served from 1995 through 2003.  As Controller she was responsible for managing a $100 billion budget, $10-12 billion monthly cash flow, payroll and retirement for nearly 400,000 employees, all state accounting functions, and auditing of federal, state and local programs.  During this eight-year period, Connell was a Trustee for both CalPERS and CalSTRS retirement funds, the world’s largest pool of investment capital, chaired the California Franchise Tax Board, and served on 57 policy boards, including six state debt boards.  Following her service as Controller, Connell returned to teaching as an Adjunct Professor in the Executive MBA program at the UC Berkeley Haas Graduate School of Business.  She taught courses in International Finance and Corporate Governance and was Founding Director of the Corporate Directors Enterprise Center at Haas.  Connell is currently President of the Connell Group, an investment advisory firm in Washington, D.C., and serves as Executive Director of the University of California Retirement Security Institute.  She is the author of a personal finance book, Moving Up To Millions: A Life Calculator Guide to Wealth, and a former weekly finance columnist for the Christian Science Monitor.  Connell holds five securities licenses and was named as one of the 25 Smartest Investors by Smart Money magazine in 2002.