Matt Mahan

Mahan was born in San Francisco, California, and was raised in Watsonville, California. His father was a letter carrier and his mother was a schoolteacher; he stated that his family lived "paycheck to paycheck" in a working-class community. Raised Catholic, he attended Bellarmine College Preparatory on a low-income scholarship. While in high school, Mahan worked with former state senator Jim Beall and former Santa Clara counsel Ann Ravel.

Mahan graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2005 with a degree in social studies. He served as president of the Harvard Undergraduate Council. He also received a Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship to Bolivia, where he spent the year after graduation working on economic development projects.

Mahan spent a year building irrigation systems in Bolivia and then joined Teach for America where he was matched to Alum Rock Middle School in San Jose and taught seventh and eighth grade English and history from 2006 to 2008.

In 2008, Mahan joined a tech startup led by Sean Parker and Joe Green. Together, they formed Causes, a for-profit civic technology Facebook application. Mahan became CEO and president of Causes in 2013.

In 2014, Mahan launched Brigade with investments from Parker, Ron Conway, Marc Benioff, and others. Brigade was created as a social medium for civic engagement. In 2019, Brigade was acquired by Pinterest and its technology was purchased by Countable.

Mahan married Silvia-Wedad Scandar in 2012. The couple met at Harvard in their freshman year at school. They have two children and live in San Jose's Almaden Valley neighborhood.

San Jose City Council

In early 2020, Mahan entered the San Jose City Council District 10 race and was endorsed by Santa Clara county assessor Larry Stone, then-mayor Sam Liccardo, then-vice mayor Chappie Jones, and city council members Lan Diep and Pam Foley. The Business San Jose Chamber Political Action Committee also endorsed him, saying they supported Mahan's plan to spend tax dollars appropriately and reduce tax burdens to encourage business growth in the city and wanted a transparent government. He won the seat with 58% of the vote, succeeding term-limited incumbent Johnny Khamis and took office in January 2021. He was elected for a four-year term. Arjun Batra was appointed to fill his vacated seat in 2023, after Mahan was elected mayor.

Mayor of San Jose

Campaigns

In September 2021, Mahan became a candidate for mayor of San Jose. He proposed an accountability dashboard which would track progress on issues like crime and homelessness. He pledged to end automatic raises for politicians and city department heads unless progress is shown. Mahan received the endorsement of three former mayors of the city, including Liccardo, who stated that he liked Mahan's commonsense and realistic solutions and disliked Cindy Chavez's campaign of fear politics.

In November 2022, he was elected mayor of San Jose, defeating Santa Clara County supervisor Cindy Chavez. That same year, San Jose passed Measure B, which would align mayoral elections with presidential elections. As a result, Mahan's term would be two years, rather than the standard four-year term.

He was re-elected in 2024 with marginal opposition, defeating minor candidate Tyrone Wade with 86.6% of the vote. He was elected for a four-year term.