Quick Take:
Wallace Baine introduces a new Lookout series on highly influential and consequential people who have made an outsized impact in Santa Cruz County. Come back Sunday for the first installment of “The Shapers,” and send us your nominees.
In many fundamental respects, Santa Cruz County is what it is today, for better or worse, because of the efforts and decisions of a few highly influential and consequential people. We here at Lookout are attempting to do something audacious and take the measure of those foundational people in our new series of profiles called “The Shapers.”
Who are the Shapers? They are people who have left a lasting mark on how many of the rest of us live and work today in Santa Cruz County. Obviously, some are elected officials, but others are government employees, businesspeople, nonprofit/arts leaders, entrepreneurs, academics/teachers, community activists, artists/writers and philanthropists. Many of those significant people are now retired from public life and are perhaps due for a reappraisal from the current generation. Others are still active and exerting influence in the realms of culture, business, the arts, development and public policy.
Who do you think has fundamentally shaped life in Santa Cruz County? We’d love to hear from you, especially if you have an under-the-radar nominee. Send us a note at theshapers@lookoutlocal.com, and make your case.
Our occasional, ongoing series “The Shapers” begins Sunday as we look at the influence of longtime city redevelopment director Ceil Cirillo.
Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.