Rebecca Eisenberg

This page was last updated during the official's most recent election or appointment. Please contact us with any updates.

Rebecca Eisenberg

Nonpartisan

Santa Clara Valley Water District District 7

Tenure

2022 - Present

Term ends

2026

Years in position

2

Predecessor

Gary Kremen

Report an officeholder change

Elections and appointments

Last elected

November 8, 2022

Education

Bachelor's

Stanford University, 1990

Law

Harvard Law School, 1993

Personal

Profession

Attorney, business owner

Contact

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

Campaign Twitter

Personal LinkedIn

Rebecca Eisenberg is a member of the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors in California, representing District 7. She assumed office on December 2, 2022. Her current term ends on December 4, 2026.

Eisenberg ran for election to the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors to represent District 7 in California. She won in the general election on November 8, 2022.

Eisenberg completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Rebecca Eisenberg earned a bachelor's degree from Stanford University in 1990. Eisenberg earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1993. Eisenberg's career experience includes working as an attorney and business owner.

Elections

2022

See also: Municipal elections in Santa Clara County, California (2022)

General election

General election for Santa Clara Valley Water District District 7

Rebecca Eisenberg defeated incumbent Gary Kremen in the general election for Santa Clara Valley Water District District 7 on November 8, 2022.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Rebecca Eisenberg (Nonpartisan)	54.9	46,156
		Gary Kremen (Nonpartisan)	45.1	37,866

---

	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 84,022
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Rebecca Eisenberg completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Eisenberg's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

Stanford BA Decision Sciences, Phi Beta Kappa

Harvard Law School, Cum Laude & Harvard Law Review PayPal, Trulia, Reddit, Terraformation

Santa Clara County faces the worst drought in history, with little end in sight, and District 7 needs a principled and ethical representative who will lead with integrity and competence. As residents you deserve relief from ever-rising water bills and protection from climate events and floods.

I will bring my 30 years of success in technology, innovation, finance, and law to move us in a better direction. I will manage our limited water resources and taxpayer funds by balancing responsibility and compliance with creative thinking and collaboration.

To protect our communities, I focus on climate action and environmental justice, never sacrificing one town to serve another. To minimize water bills, I will invest in innovative water reclamation and recycling, making more responsible use of existing resources. To build sustainable solutions, I will invest in reclamation and restoration. And because I value your perspectives, I will make community input and engagement my top priority.

With your vote, I will bring transparency, integrity and sustainability to Valley Water and ensure we all have clean water today and in the future.

Endorsed by current Board Directors Hons. Barbara Keegan and Linda LeZotte, Assessor Larry Stone, Judge LaDoris Cordell (Ret), Hon. Ann Ravel.

I appreciate your vote. www.rebecca4water.com

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• I Believe Water is a Human Right. Every person deserves access to safe and clean water, regardless of financial circumstances or social status
• I Believe in Climate Action & Social Justice. We must stop destroying and start repairing our natural environment. Climate events harm vulnerable communities and working families the hardest. We must prioritize protecting our most vulnerable.
• I believe in clean government, transparency, and fiscal responsibility. The community must be involved in all matters that impact them.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I am an an attorney and sustainable investor. I am passionate about the UN's 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Those goals include ending poverty, providing economic opportunity, ending racial and gender discrimination, and protecting and preserving life on sea and land. I grew up on the shores of Lake Michigan, and spent my summers in Wisconsin's Great North Woods. What so many of us took for granted as children is becoming out of reach for our children and their future generations. The time is now to change that direction,

Here in California, earlier generations treated water as an unlimited resource, depleting almost all of our groundwater, and crippling our rivers and streams with counterproductive dams and outdoor reservoirs. These actions destroyed ecosystems, contributing to climate change events like our current, ongoing drought. My opponent wants to continue in this destructive path, despite its record of harm and failure.

I propose better, more sustainable, and responsible management of existing resources. Across the globe, and in California, water districts have embraced water recapture, recycle, and reuse. Orange County currently recycles almost half of its water, and in Israel, that number is closer to 95%! When we use existing resources appropriately, we won't have to build $3 billion dams or tunnels at taxpayer expense, leading to ever-higher water bills.

Water recycling reduces costs & lowers water bills. It's a win win! Vote for Rebecca.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

Elizabeth Warren was my professor, mentor, and advisor at Harvard Law School. Before I studied under her at Harvard Law School, she had worked with my father, who then was a United States Bankruptcy Judge in Wisconsin. At that time, Professor (now Senator) Warren was working on her breakthrough research on why American families enter bankruptcy (spoiler alert: unplanned medical expenses, rather than irresponsibility). Because information on personal bankruptcy was not publicly available, Professor Warren had to travel to judges to ask them to share their records. My father was one of the first judges to take the time to share his files and analyze them with Professor Warren. Elizabeth Warren's work on personal bankruptcy was an instrumental part of financial reform and the creation of the CFPB, which has done so much good for so many regular people by protecting consumers from exploitative practices sometimes conducted by credit card companies and other lenders. Senator Warren has truly changed lives with her work, for this reason and many others.

Senator Warren is one of my role models, because her life work has genuinely improved, and even saved, the lives of others. I hope to leave a legacy of positive change as well.

My other role model was my Grandmother Charlotte, my father's mother. Charlotte too was a fighter, who was ahead of her time. She always took time to help others, weeding neighbors' gardens when they could not, and watching local kids after school. Everywhere we went, Charlotte listened to the stories of others and made new friends. Charlotte cared passionately about her community and it showed in everything she did. Charlotte's last act before dying at age 98.5 was going door to door in her apartment building in Milwaukee, encouraging her neighbors to vote for the first African American President. She died the day after President Obama's Inauguration.

I admire my grandmother's heart, spirit, and endless optimism for a better future.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

I am very high integrity, ethical, hard-working, and fair.

What legacy would you like to leave?

I am committed to doing what I can to preserve our planet for future generations.

What is the first historical event that happened in your lifetime that you remember? How old were you at the time?

I remember the slow ratification by different states, little by little, of the ERA, starting in the early 1970's. I am hoping that this process will come to completion during my lifetime.

What was your very first job? How long did you have it?

I have worked my entire life. My first job was babysitting, starting at age 10. I was the regular sitter for two different families, between 15-20 hours a week while in elementary school and junior high. This taught me time management. Once I was in high school, I was able to get a job at the record store in the mall, which was for the holiday season only, so I transitioned to a job as a clerk at a relaxation spa. While at Stanford, I helped pay my costs by working in the outdoor patio grill, the coffee shop, and the pizza/frozen yogurt restaurant, where I was promoted to shift manager. On the day I turned 21, I walked to the only full bar in town, and came back with a job as a cocktail waitress, which I held for the rest of my junior and senior years at Stanford, while maintaining my grades to earn Phi Beta Kappa and acceptance at Harvard Law School.

Sadly, once I entered law school, my jobs became a little less interesting. I still loved working though. I have been extremely fortunate to have a career filled with incredible teams, exciting work, and successes that not only brought me personal success, but more importantly, that improved the lives of others. To me, that is what working is about, and why I enjoy it.

What is something that has been a struggle in your life?

I have served in senior leadership positions in technology companies since graduating law school in 1993. I am often the only woman in the room in many business settings. Even today in 2022, there is bias, and the worst among us sometimes use that bias as a weapon. While being a highly intelligent, well-educated, hard-working woman with a successful career should make life easier, sexism can make it a struggle. I seek to continue to break down barriers, as so many women have before me, to work towards a world where being the most qualified is always a benefit rather than a challenge. We need all hands on deck to right our climate ship and that means leaving no person behind.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

See also

2022 Elections

What's on the ballot? U.S. Congress U.S. Congress special elections State executives State legislatures State courts Ballot measures Municipal government School boards Election analysis hub

Government

Who represents me? U.S. Congress State executives State legislators State courts Ballot measures Municipal government School boards

Newsletters

The Heart of the Primaries The Daily Brew The Weekly Brew The Ballot Bulletin Checks and Balances Economy and Society Hall Pass Number of the Day Robe & Gavel Union Station

External links

Search Google News for this topic

Candidate

Santa Clara Valley Water District District 7

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Personal

LinkedIn