Pete Peterson

Pete Peterson is dean of Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy, and also serves as a senior fellow at the School’s Davenport Institute for Public Engagement – a state/local government policy center he helped launch in 2010.

Peterson is a nationally-recognized expert on local government leadership, and the role technology is playing to make government more transparent and responsive. In 2017, he helped to create the “American Project” (which has become the Meese Institute), which has gathered dozens of scholars, policymakers and activists over the last six years to explore the importance of a “communitarian” approach to politics for an era of increased loneliness.

Peterson was the Republican candidate for California Secretary of State in 2014.