Michael Bernick

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Michael Bernick (born October 1, 1952) is a national authority on job training and employment, who served as Director of California’s labor department, the Employment Development Department (EDD), from 1999 through 2004.

Born in Los Angeles, Bernick attended Harvard University (B.A. 1952), Oxford University (Balliol College, B. Phil. 1976) and the University of California, Berkeley law school (J.D. 1979). After graduating from law school in 1979, he spent much of the next 7 years as Executive Director of the San Francisco Renaissance Center, a community job training agency that operated a series of literacy and vocational training classes, an early welfare-to-work program, several businesses, and an entrepreneurship center. In 1986, Bernick went into private law practice, and continued in local training as a board member of several community agencies, until being appointed as EDD Director in 1999. Bernick has written several books on job training, including Urban Illusions (Praeger, 1986) and Job Training That Gets Results: 10 Principles of Effective Employment Programs (Upjohn Institute, 2006).

Bernick also has been involved in the transportation field in California, as a member of the board of directors of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) district from 1988-1996, and President of the BART district in 1995. With Professor Robert Cervero, he was co-director of a University of California, Berkeley research institute on land use and transit during the early 1990s, which lead to their book, Transit Villages in the 21st Century (McGraw Hill, 1996).

Since leaving EDD in 2004, Bernick has been a Fellow at the Milken Institute, based in Santa Monica California, specializing in workforce projects, and Special Counsel in employment law to the San Francisco-based firm of Sedgwick, Detert, Moran and Arnold.