Matt Haney

Haney was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and attended public schools. His mother taught at San Francisco State University and has since worked on children's health care issues. His father is a national advocate of prisoners rights. Haney's older sister is a public defender.

Haney earned a Bachelor of Arts in 2005 from the University of California, Berkeley. He then became a member of the 2005–2006 class of California Senate Fellows. He went on to Stanford University where he received a Master of Arts in 2010 from the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a JD in 2010 from Stanford Law School.[1] He also earning LLM in human rights from the National University of Ireland, where he was a Senator George Mitchell Scholar.[1] Haney worked at both the Stanford Design School and at the JFK School of Law, and Sociology at Palo Alto University, where he taught education law.[1] He was executive director of the UC Student Association, representing 200,000 students across the state.[1]

Haney served as the national political director for the Dream Corps, a "social justice accelerator", where he advocated for rehabilitation initiatives as an alternative to incarceration.[1] In 2015, along with Mill Valley mayor Jessica Jackson Sloan and former Barack Obama adviser Van Jones he founded #cut50, an Oakland-based national nonprofit aiming to find bipartisan solutions to end mass incarceration. #cut50 was the lead proponent of the First Step Act, which became law on December 21, 2018.[1]

Haney ran for election to the San Francisco Board of Education in 2012, winning re-election in 2016, and was its president and vice-president.[2][1] Haney supported several housing initiatives during his time on the school board, including protecting teachers from evictions during the school year, building affordable housing for teachers, and expanding services for homeless students, including securing housing for them.[1] He also worked to open a new school in the Mission Bay neighborhood and to expand students' access to technology.[1]

Haney was elected supervisor for District 6 on November 6, 2018, receiving 14,249 first preference votes (56.24 percent of all valid votes).[3] After allocation of preferences from eliminated candidates in San Francisco's ranked-choice voting system, Haney received 63.12 percent of final-round votes, compared to 36.88 percent for runner-up Christine Johnson, a former planning commissioner.[4][2]

Haney was sworn in at the Board of Supervisors' January 8, 2019 meeting, replacing Jane Kim, who was ineligible to run for re-election after two four-year terms.

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