Marc Carrel served as JPAC Chair from 2009-2010.
Carrel is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.
Carrel has been involved in the local and national Jewish communities for many years. From 2005-2007, Carrel served as the Los Angeles Area co-chair of the United Jewish Communities’ National Young Leadership Cabinet, served on the Jewish Federation’s Young Leadership Division Steering Committee, served as a member of the Los Angeles Federation’s premier leadership group Platinum One, and participated as a member of the 2006 Class of the Federation’s New Leaders Project. Before moving to Los Angeles, Carrel served two years as chair of the Sacramento Jewish Community Relations Council. He assumed that role just 17 days before three Sacramento synagogues were firebombed in a series of hate attacks in Northern California in 1999. Carrel played an integral role in the response of the Jewish community and the greater Sacramento community to these incidents. He worked with Jewish community leaders, law enforcement, and other Sacramento political and community leaders, to ease the tension in the community, and to build a cohesive coalition to denounce the incidents. The highlight of the response was a unity event, just three days after the arsons, which attracted more than 4,500 people to the Sacramento Community Theater to show their support of the Sacramento Jewish community.
During the day, Carrel oversees federal government relations for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. He has previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff to Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) where he managed her Los Angeles offices and oversaw policy matters for the Congresswoman in both Los Angeles and Washington, DC. Prior to this, Carrel served for two years as California’s Assistant Secretary of State for Policy and Planning. Besides serving as a member of the team implementing California’s first statewide recall election in 2003, Carrel played a pivotal role in California’s response to the national uproar over electronic voting. He served as co-chair of the Secretary of State’s Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force, the nation’s first governmental body to examine the security of electronic voting machines, and as Vice Chair of the state’s Voting Systems and Procedures Panel. His leadership propelled California to become the first state to decertify certain touch screen voting systems and to require a paper copy of all electronic votes. Besides writing the Secretary of State’s Directive banning electronic voting machines, he has written several pieces of legislation signed into law including the California Corporate Disclosure Act of 2002 and the Voting System Security Act of 2004.
Prior to joining the Secretary of State’s Office, Carrel has also served as Senior Advisor to the Lieutenant Governor, Counsel to the Speaker of the California Assembly, Deputy Chief of Staff to the California State Assembly Majority Leader, and in Washington, DC, as a staff member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry under the chairmanship of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT).
Carrel has served on numerous community committees and task forces, including the LAX North Airfield Safety Advisory Committee, the Central California Area Maritime Security Committee Executive Committee, and the Metro Green Line Interagency Task Force. He served for five years as a Sacramento Human Rights Commissioner and as a member on the Sacramento City Unified School District’s Bond Oversight Committee. He helped establish the Lieutenant Governor’s Commission for One California and the Department of Insurance’s California Organized Investment Network. Carrel also served as a member of California’s State Job Training Coordinating Council, as the Lieutenant Governor’s appointee to the State Lands Commission, on the California World Trade Commission, and on the Governor’s Commission on Building for the 21st Century.
Originally from Buffalo, NY, Carrel received a B.A. cum laude from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is admitted to the State Bar of California and the District of Columbia Bar.
