Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Tracy Arnold

22. Tracy Arnold

Tracy Arnold was appointed earlier this year as assistant director of the Department of Health Care Services, the state agency that supervises California’s mammoth Medi-Cal program, which serves about 13 million people, or one in every three Californians. It’s an enormous task, but Newsom found the right person: Arnold was Newsom’s chief deputy cabinet secretary for two years, and before that she was his director of research, a job that took in a lot of territory, including international trade, business development and economic empowerment – all of which take a front-row seat in the era of the pandemic. She spent a decade as a partner and senior adviser at Mercury Public Affairs, an international consulting firm, and before that she was head of the office that targeted jobs and economic growth in the office of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. She earlier worked in the state of Washington on China trade issues where her fluency in Mandarin probably came in handy.

Updated Aug. 9, 2022.