Nearly 100 C-suite executives from local companies and institutions have joined the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce's newly created CEO Council that will advise the chamber on key challenges facing the local business community.
 
The CEO Council announced Nov. 4 will initially focus on ways to boost affordable housing and workforce development. The hope is that the combined clout of the top-level executives on the council will lend weight to the strategies and solutions it endorses.
 
Initially, the council is being led by chamber Chief Executive Maria Salinas and Board Chair Raul Anaya, who is also president of business banking and president of the greater Los Angeles region for Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America. The pair spearheaded the effort to create the council over the past year or so as an attempt to help the local economy recover from the ravages of the Covid pandemic and resulting business lockdowns. The council has been meeting informally for several months as it has ramped up in size.
 
“We are looking to unify the business community at the CEO level,” Salinas said. “This council will help establish policies to enable the region and its economy recover, rebound and thrive over the long term.”
 
As of Nov. 3, 89 executives — about two-thirds of them chief executives and most of the rest presidents or other top-level executives — had publicly committed to participate on the council. Salinas said another dozen executives have indicated they wish to serve on the council but still needed to go through governance approvals from their respective companies.
 
Many of the participating executives are familiar names in Los Angeles civic circles, including Alan Rothenberg, chairman of Century City-based 1st Century Bank; Jerry Neuman, partner in the downtown office of multinational law firm of DLA Piper; Sean Burton, chief executive of Century City-based development company Cityview; and Elise Buik, chief executive of downtown-based United Way of Greater Los Angeles.
 
But there are also chief executives who have not been fixtures on L.A.’s civic scene, such as Ken Moelis, chief executive of New York-based investment firm Moelis & Co.; Jay Wintrob, chief executive of downtown-based Oaktree Capital Management; and Larry Miller, chief executive of Gardena-based mattress store Sit ‘N Sleep.

Others on the list include Hawthorne-based SpaceX's president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell; El Segundo-based Mattell's chief executive, Ynon Kreiz; Chicago-based United Airlines' president, Janet Lamkin; Beverly Grove-based Cedars-Sinai's president and chief executive, Thomas Priselac; and London-based professional services firm Ernst & Young's Los Angeles office managing partner, Andy Park. 
 
Anaya said the council’s members represent 13 different industries.
 
But notably absent from the council is substantial representation from the region’s most prominent industry: entertainment. Only one company — Burbank-based payroll services firm Entertainment Partners Inc. and its chief executive, Mark Goldstein — hails from that signature industry. No major studios are represented, including Burbank-based Walt Disney Co., which is the county’s largest publicly traded company by market cap and the largest Fortune 500 company still headquartered in the county.
 
Both Salinas and Anaya said they are hoping to grow the council’s roster of C-suite members in coming months and years, including making more inroads in the entertainment industry. Salinas said the chamber has reached out to Disney and held preliminary discussions with executives there, but as of Nov. 3, there was no firm commitment from Disney to join.
 
Another challenge for the new council: succeeding in making a mark on both the local business community and the region as a whole over the long term. The last group of local chief executives to leave such a mark was the Committee of 25 in the middle decades of the last century, which among other things laid the groundwork for the redevelopment of downtown’s Bunker Hill.
 
Since then, the business community has become more diverse and geographically spread out, making it more difficult to marshal a unified voice. One of the more notable recent attempts was the creation of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, or BizFed, in 2008; that organization is now headquartered in Commerce. But BizFed is an umbrella organization of local business groups; it does not have dozens of corporate chief executives on its board.
 
Anaya acknowledged this difficult history.
 
“For too long the business community has not been at the table to help shape our region,” he said. “We aim to change that.”

Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Council Members