About Sean
Sean Roberts is a Livermore resident, computer engineer, and 25-year veteran of large-scale infrastructure programs. He is running for the Zone 7 Water Agency Board of Directors in the June 2, 2026 California Direct Primary Election.
Engineering and infrastructure
Sean holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from San Jose State University (EECS). He has spent more than 25 years leading infrastructure programs, from the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC National Lab) to GE Digital, where he led an effort that delivered $14 million in cloud infrastructure cost reductions. He co-founded the OpenStack Foundation, which grew into a $5 billion open-source ecosystem.
Governance and board experience
Sean was elected three times to the OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors and chaired its Finance and Tax Affairs Committee. He reviewed monthly financials, led the response to a clean external audit, and managed the Foundation's 501(c)(6) IRS filing. He served on the DefCore interoperability committee and co-initiated the Product Working Group at the Paris Summit.
He treats board service as a job, not a title. He attended every meeting, did the reading in advance, and brought prepared questions. He understands financial disclosures, conflict of interest compliance, and the open-meeting standards that govern policy-making bodies under the Brown Act.
Public sector and civic technology
Sean has managed public-sector projects for the City and County of San Francisco, including the Elections Commission's open-source election system. He served as Director of Engineering for the Foundation for American Innovation's Open Data Initiative, advancing government financial transparency, and chaired the Open Source Initiative's Public Policy Working Group. As the second employee of the Open Mobility Foundation, formed by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, he built collaboration structures across roughly 50 contributors from public agencies and private companies.
Why Zone 7
The Zone 7 Water Agency is the wholesale water supplier, groundwater manager, and flood-control authority for 265,000 Tri-Valley residents. The seven-member board sets rates, approves capital budgets, votes on participation in billion-dollar statewide projects, and oversees a groundwater basin that took decades to restore from overdraft.
Three of four seats are on the ballot in 2026. The next board will decide how Zone 7 closes the remaining gap on PFAS remediation, how it diversifies away from a single fragile import corridor, and how it funds flood resilience for a climate that no longer matches the one our channels were designed for. Sean is running because those decisions need members who can read a budget, ask hard questions, and plan past the next election cycle.