Personnel Profile: Leo Kay

Leo Kay is the newly appointed communications director of the Air Resources Board. A Bay Area native with a journalism background, Kay previously worked in public affairs for the EPA in Boston and San Francisco.

You’ve had a long career in public affairs working for environmental agencies. How did you get into this work?

I was about a year out of journalism school. I was sending out application after application and doing a little stringer work for the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, south of Boston. I just wasn’t having any luck and I finally saw an advertisement for a job at the U.S. EPA … and so I put in for it and I got it.

Where did you go to journalism school?

San Francisco State. And I was the editor of the paper down there