San Rafael resident Kyri McClellan walks along the Bay on Bridgeway in Sausalito. McClellan is the executive director of the America’s Cup Organizing Committee. Alan Dep (IJ photo/Alan Dep)
In the final days before Christmas last year, San Francisco City Hall emptied out in typical fashion, but a handful of people stayed behind. They included then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, two high-level aides and Kyri McClellan, a San Rafael mother of two who worked in the mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development.
McClellan had been the mayor’s point person in the bid to host the 34th America’s Cup sailing race, and she was now facilitating last-minute negotiations in the face of a looming deadline on New Year’s Day.
“The joke around my house was, ‘we’ll celebrate Christmas and New Year’s next year,'” McClellan said.
On Dec. 31, race officials finally announced San Francisco would be the host, but that only marked the begin-
ning of McClellan’s work. For months, she had helped craft a complex scheme whereby an independent group would help cover the city’s costs as host. Earlier this month, she became executive director of that very group, the San Francisco America’s Cup Organizing Committee, charged with raising $32 million before the 2013 event. The money helps ensure the launch of the world’s third-largest sporting event, projected to pump more than $1 billion into the Bay Area economy.
“It definitely is the culmination of a lot of different experiences with public service and primarily with City Hall,” McClellan said of the new job. “It’s also daunting and humbling, and I’m sort of
catching the wave and riding it. I guess that’s the way I’m approaching it. I’m holding on for dear life.”
The new role represents a major step into the spotlight for McClellan, who has worked on some of San Francisco’s largest public-private transactions in recent years but has remained mostly behind the scenes. Since 2004, she has helped to facilitate deals including the new California Institute for Regenerative Medicine stem cell research facility, the Transbay Terminal and the Treasure Island and Hunter’s Point redevelopment projects.
“She was the one in the background, the one usually doing a lot of the work, the heavier lifting, and she kept a low profile all those years,” said Newsom, now lieutenant governor. “She is perfectly positioned as the go-to person for the America’s Cup.”
McClellan, 37, grew up in Davis, where her mother was a state legislative staffer. As a child she would ride the bus to nearby Sacramento after school to sit in the legislative chamber.
“My mom really instilled in me a sense that there is a lot of honor in public service,” she said.
She moved east to study journalism at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and returned to California to work in the office of former Marin Assemblywoman Kerry Mazzoni.
During the mid- to late 1990s she worked as a producer for the Chronicle Broadcasting Co. and, after a brief stint at a public relations firm, returned to government to work for former San Francisco Supervisor Michael Yaki. She remained at City Hall after Yaki’s defeat in 2000, serving for several years in the office of former City Attorney Louise Renne before joining the mayor’s economic development team.
Part of a group focused on real estate and military base reuse, McClellan often found herself in the middle of complex negotiations with private companies and state and federal officials. Beginning in 2005 she juggled that work with her new role as a mother; her first son was born two days before a request for proposals went out for the stem cell project.
“That’s how I measure time these days,” she said.
In 2008 she moved with her husband, an attorney, and son from San Francisco to the Peacock Gap neighborhood in East San Rafael. Her second son was born a year later.
“We were looking for the outdoor life,” she said of the move to Marin. “We always found ourselves on the weekend going up to the headlands to spend our weekend time in Marin, and we decided to make it a seven-day-per-week thing.”
Despite her love of the outdoors she was admittedly not a fan of sailing when her boss approached her in February 2010 to discuss the America’s Cup bid. When he asked her what she knew about the sport, she remembers answering, “Not much, yet.”
McClellan quickly learned the basics about the race, which was founded in 1851. Every few years, titans of industry around the world fund elite crews that compete on the most advanced sailboats available. The defending champion, in this case a team funded by Oracle software magnate Larry Ellison, selects the host cities and organizes the race.
McClellan’s nonprofit organizing committee will work with the America’s Cup Event Authority, the for-profit entity created by Ellison’s team that will put on the race, and which is charged with raising more than $250 million in additional funding.
Beyond raising money, McClellan’s committee will spearhead educational and environmental programs tied to the race, including the goal of a carbon-neutral event.
The job will place McClellan in close contact with former City Hall colleagues, something typically forbidden for recent city staffers. But last month, McClellan secured a waiver from a unanimous San Francisco Ethics Commission allowing her to begin work immediately.
“There’s no conflict (of interest) here,” she said. “Quite the contrary: There is a very healthy alignment of interests.”
The event is forecast to bring in more than $1 billion as deep-pocketed racing teams from around the world take up semi-permanent residence in the Bay Area. But the race also comes at an enormous cost, including everything from police to transit to parks. And it is fraught with challenges including holding the event near the shore for the first time, and in the middle of national parkland.
As the race approaches, McClellan will be among a key group of officials who will have to answer the question of whether the event is ultimately a benefit to the public.
“The idea of putting this together is a real challenge for everyone concerned,” said Mark Buell, chairman of the organizing committee. McClellan “has enormous management skills and she’s very tactful and she’s also tireless, and those are three skills that are going to be totally put to the test in this process.”
