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 Yahoo and GE Digital, where he led an effort that delivered $14 million in cloud infrastructure cost reductions. He was elected three times to the OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors, 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, reviewed financials, led the responses to audits, and contributed to 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 worked for the City and County of San Francisco and their Elections Commission on their open-source election system, with the Foundation for American Innovation on government financial and election transparency projects, 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.
Four of seven seats are on the ballot in 2026. The next board will decide how Zone 7 continues its PFAS treatment program through the Mocho plant, 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.
Stewardship
Zone 7 is more than pipes, pumps, and rates. It is the groundwater basin manager for the Livermore Valley, the steward of 37 miles of arroyos, and the direct water supplier for thousands of acres of South Livermore vineyards. A board that treats the watershed, the wine industry, the Pacific Flyway, and the Tri-Valley employer base as connected makes better decisions for all of them. Read more →