Mayor Catherine Blakespear

SANDAG | City of Encinitas

Sacramento Delegation Attendee 2020

Encinitas Mayor Catherine S. Blakespear was elected to her second term as mayor in November 2018. Catherine was first elected to serve on the Encinitas City Council in 2014, became the City of Encinitas’ second directly elected mayor in 2016, and was re-elected by 84 percent of the voters in 2018. She also serves on a number of outside boards, including those of regional water and waste water districts. In 2018 she was chosen by her elected peers on the county’s largest regional transportation agency, SANDAG, to serve as vice-chair. Before running for elected office, Catherine served for four years as the Cardiff representative on the Encinitas Traffic & Public Safety Commission, nominated by her peers to be the commission’s chair in her final year. Catherine grew up in Encinitas, moved away for college and career reasons, and returned to Encinitas with her husband and two children in 2009. Graduating from Torrey Pines High School in 1994, she played varsity basketball for four years, earning the MVP award for her last three years. She attended college at Northwestern University in Chicago, earning a bachelors and masters degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism. For her first professional job, she was hired as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times’ in the Ventura County bureau. Her beat was transportation, which sparked an interest in urban planning that still inspires her today. Before the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, Catherine became a staff reporter with the Associated Press and moved to Utah to work in the AP’s Salt Lake City bureau. After five years in journalism, Catherine decided to attend law school and earned a law degree at University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, graduating in 2006. She served as editor-in-chief of one of the law school’s three law journals, The Journal of Law and Family Studies. She subsequently clerked for the Honorable Pamela Greenwood on the Utah Court of Appeals and worked for the highly regarded law firm of Ray, Quinney & Nebeker in Salt Lake City. Catherine, her husband Jeremy and their two children moved back to her hometown of Encinitas in 2009, where she co-founded her own estate planning law firm. Catherine is passionate about our American democracy and all elements of the governmental structure that support equality, liberty, freedom and happiness that Americans enjoy. She also loves to garden and pick fruit, run and play with her family on the beach and in the ocean, follow politics and policy issues, watch musicals and live theatre, and mountain bike with her husband.