Steve Poizner

Stephen Leo Poizner (born January 4, 1957) is an American businessman, technology entrepreneur and former Republican California Insurance Commissioner and Gubernatorial candidate.

Poizner was born on January 4, 1957, in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Poizner attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1978.

He was also a member of the prestigious Friar Society and Tejas Club, as well as president of the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity.

After graduating from UT, Poizner moved to California to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received his M.B.A. in 1980 and was named an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Two years after Poizner graduated from Stanford, the national Jaycees organization sued the Palo Alto Jaycees chapter to expel the chapter for admitting female members.

Working in coordination with other Jaycees chapters around the country, Poizner led the Palo Alto Jaycees in their legal defense of their efforts to admit women against the national organization's wishes, and the case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

Poizner and the Palo Alto chapter, along with its fellow groups in other communities, won the suit.

Poizner's wife was one of the first women admitted to the Palo Alto chapter.

In addition to his academic degrees, Poizner has also earned a black belt in Shotokan, a traditional Japanese form of martial arts.

Poizner and his wife, Carol, live in Los Gatos, California.

They have one daughter, Rebecca.

Poizner has started and run technology companies in Silicon Valley for over 35 years.

Poizner served for several years as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group.

In 1983, Poizner founded and served as chief executive officer of Strategic Mapping Inc., a software company that developed a program to display geographic data on digital maps, assisting police departments, utilities, transportation companies, banks and retailers with selecting new locations and plotting distribution logistics.

The California Insurance Commissioner was created in 1988 via the voter approval of Proposition 103.

In 1995, Poizner founded SnapTrack, Inc., which pioneered technology that put GPS receivers into cell phones.

Strategic Mapping was sold to Claritas in 1996, with the GIS mapping software being sold to ESRI.

Poizner served as its chief executive officer until he sold the privately held company to Qualcomm in 2000 for a reported $1.0 billion in Qualcomm stock.

Poizner's personal net worth is believed to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Poizner has been a Silicon Valley high tech entrepreneur, founding and selling SnapTrack, Inc., Strategic Mapping, Inc, and EmpoweredU, and he is currently the founder and CEO of next generation GPS startup OneNav Inc. In 2001, following privately held SnapTrack's sale for $1 billion to Qualcomm, Poizner served a year as a White House Fellow in the National Security Council.

Starting one week before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Poizner held the position of Director of Critical Infrastructure Protection, and was involved in developing Homeland Security programs relating to cybersecurity and emergency response communication protocols.

In 2001, Poizner co-founded EdVoice, an educational non-profit organization dedicated to improving public schools and serving the interests of K-12 children in California.

From September 2002 to June 2003, he served as a volunteer teacher in San Jose's Mount Pleasant High School teaching 12th grade American Government.

Poizner authored a New York Times best selling book about his experience – "Mount Pleasant" – which has been both praised and criticized for its depiction of a low income public high school.

In 2003, Poizner co-founded the California Charter Schools Association.

Poizner took office on January 8, 2007, and served until January 3, 2011.

As Insurance Commissioner, Poizner received praise for his handling of the San Diego wildfires in 2007, for taking on health insurance companies' illegal rescission practices and rate increases, and for decreasing spending in his state government department's discretionary operating budget by 13%.

At the end of his term, Poizner was praised for his efforts to streamline and modernize the CDI through spending cuts and conducting a top-down review of the department.

Poizner oversaw nearly 2,800 fraud-related arrests, the most in CDI history, in a 3-year span and conducted the first ever terror finance probe by a US Insurance Commissioner, which resulted in millions of dollars diverted from Iran.

In June 2011, Poizner co-founded Empowered Careers, a mobile learning platform technology company in partnership with UCLA and Creative Artists Agency.

In June 2011, Poizner joined two education Boards at the University of Southern California.

In February 2014, Steve Poizner was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame.

In July 2014, Qualcomm Inc acquired EmpoweredU.

Terms not disclosed.

In September 2016, the San Diego Union Tribune reported that Steve Poizner has joined UC San Diego's Rady School of Management as its inaugural entrepreneur in residence.

In June 2017, Steve Poizner formed a non-profit organization in collaboration with select California Universities and research institutes, venture capitalists, and business leaders to grow the southern California venture capital and start-up communities.

"The purpose of the alliance is to make it easier for tech talent, especially students and professors at area universities, to start companies that commercialize the technology they've worked on. The group will work with universities to make processes like licensing of technology easier, and connect budding entrepreneurs with resources like potential investors."

Poizner also was an independent candidate in the 2018 California Insurance Commissioner election.

On February 13, 2018, Poizner announced he would seek a second term as Insurance Commissioner, running as an independent.