Grant Mack
Grant Mack has nearly two decades of experience developing, shaping and implementing local and state energy and environmental policies. He has technically deep expertise and leverages his distinguished career to assist our clients in navigating the enormous and complex landscape of California state government.
Before co-founding Compass Advisors, Grant served as a Deputy Legislative Secretary covering energy, climate, telecommunication and natural resource issues in the Office of California Governor Gavin Newsom. In this role for nearly four years, he acted as the Governor’s primary legislative strategist and chief advisor on these matters where he influenced and molded dozens of pieces of market transforming and innovative legislation while leading Governor Newsom’s major climate and energy legislative policy initiatives from 2022 to 2025. Most notably, the 2024 Special Session on Petroleum Issues and the 2025 Energy Affordability and Climate Action legislative packages.
Grant offers our clients an unmatched, nuanced understanding of California’s energy and environmental policies and their interaction with the state’s electric, petroleum and gas sectors. As a former Director of Governmental Affairs and Senior Legislative Consultant at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for nearly eight years, he managed a high-performing team of analysts and served as the agency’s primary representative to the Legislature, navigating complicated regulatory and legislative processes and procedures to align legislation with the state’s policy objectives. In this role, Grant also represented three different CPUC Presidents as a voting member on the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority (CAEATFA) Board, providing strategic guidance on advanced manufacturing and clean energy financing.
His advisory capabilities are further amplified by his five year tenure as a Policy Advisor and eventually Chief Policy Advisor to Chair Robert Weisenmiller of the California Energy Commission where he organized, guided and managed several distributed energy resource deployment initiatives, pioneered partnership with the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy on innovative research and development projects, and spearheaded international clean energy collaboration between California and China.
Earlier in this career, Grant served as the President of the Associated Students at San Diego State University (SDSU), leading a $22 million non-profit university auxiliary that represented over 35,000 students and managed eight facilities. In this executive capacity, he led the elected Board of Directors, oversaw 90 full-time staff and championed several large infrastructure projects, including the successful initiation of the first $100 million double Platinum certified Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) student union building in the California State University system, and the deployment of over $1.2 million in on-campus distributed energy resource projects.
A published author on the modern sustainability movement in higher education, Grant holds a Master of Arts in Public Policy and Administration from California State University, Sacramento, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History from SDSU. He also holds advanced certifications in leadership and management from the University of California, Davis and the Panetta Institute for Public Policy.
