Nick Maduros

Nick Maduros is Secretary of the California Government Operations Agency (GovOps), appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom in March 2025. In this role he oversees 13 state departments, more than 23,000 employees, and a combined annual operating budget of nearly $5 billion — a portfolio that includes the California Department of Technology, the Department of General Services, and the Department of Human Resources. As the cabinet officer responsible for the agency in which CalCompute is statutorily housed under SB 53, Maduros is the senior executive accountable for translating California’s public AI infrastructure ambitions into operational reality.

Maduros’s most direct contribution to CalCompute stems from GovOps’s central role in California’s generative AI agenda. Following Governor Newsom’s 2023 executive order directing state agencies to responsibly adopt GenAI, GovOps became the lead coordinating body for that work across the entire executive branch. In December 2025, Maduros helped launch the Emerging Technology Accelerator — a formal partnership between GovOps, the California Department of Technology, and the Office of Data and Innovation on one side, and organizations including Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, UC Berkeley, the Mozilla Foundation, the Tech Talent Project, U.S. Digital Response, and Nava Labs on the other — with the explicit mandate to design, develop, deploy, and evaluate AI products that modernize government service delivery. That cross-sector architecture closely mirrors CalCompute’s own model of linking public research institutions with state government infrastructure.

Prior to his current appointment, Maduros spent nearly eight years as Director of the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA), where he led a workforce of 4,000 and was responsible for 42 tax and fee programs generating close to $100 billion in annual state revenue. His tenure at CDTFA became a widely cited example of data-driven public management: through operational improvements and better use of administrative data, the department reduced the cost per dollar of revenue collected by more than 25 percent while holding expenditures over $100 million below authorized levels in each of the final two fiscal years. He also served as president of the Federation of Tax Administrators’ Board of Trustees, bringing a national peer network to California’s tax modernization work.

Before returning to California state service, Maduros served in the Obama Administration as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Small Business Administration, where he managed a workforce of 3,000 across 70 field offices, an $871 million annual operating budget, and a $120 billion loan-guarantee portfolio. Under his leadership the SBA reached record highs in small business lending — growing its flagship loan program 25 percent to $24.1 billion — and met the women-owned contracting goal for the first time in the agency’s history. Earlier in his career he was a Director and Partner at Quinn Gillespie and Associates (2000–2010), President of the Delta Policy Group (2010–2014), and an Associate at Arnold & Porter, where he advised nonprofits and corporations on public policy.

Nick Maduros holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. in History from Yale University. A native of Stockton, California, he lives in Davis with his wife and three daughters. In his capacity as GovOps Secretary he serves as the senior state official responsible for the agency that houses CalCompute, and leads California’s broadest effort to harness artificial intelligence — safely, equitably, and at scale — in the public interest.