Senator Michael Machado was appointed to State Fund’s Board of Directors by Chair of the Senate Rules Committee, Darrell Steinberg, in 2009 and reappointed in 2013. He was reappointed by Senate Pro Tempore of the Senate Rules Committee, Toni Atkins, in 2019 and 2023. He chairs State Fund’s Investment and Risk Committee and is a member of the Audit Committee.
A former member of the California State Senate (2001 -2008), Machado served as chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Finance and Insurance and the Budget Subcommittee on Budget and Fiscal Review of State Agencies. He also served on the Natural Resource and Water committee, and the committee on Revenue and Taxation. In addition, he served in the California State Assembly from 1994 to 2000.
Notable accomplishments during his tenure on the legislature include his authorship of Proposition 13 (Safe Drinking Water, Clean Water, Watershed Protection, and Flood Protection Bond Act), his leading role in the passage of Prop 50 (Water Security, Clean Drinking Water, Coastal and Beach Protection Act of 2002), and 2006 reform legislation in response to California’s foreclosure crisis.
He serves on the board of California Farmland Trust, Restore the Delta, California Walnut Board, and is a member of the committee for the Apprenticeship Program of the Center for Land-Based Learning.
Machado served as an officer in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War, and owns and operates with his wife Diana, a family farm in Linden, California. They have two grown children.
He graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University, earned his master’s degree in agricultural economics from the University of California, Davis, and in 1998 attended the Harvard Agribusiness School in London.