As president and chief executive officer of San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC), Mark Cafferty sits at the center of a unique partnership of business, trade, community, and education leaders who have reinvented the region’s economic development agenda.

Cafferty has spent the last three decades designing and managing systems to support career advancement and economic opportunity for American workers. His leadership and service at EDC have positioned San Diego as a pillar of the global economy, while also establishing ‘inclusion’ as the foundation for the organization’s mission, goals, and work.

He previously served as CEO of the San Diego Workforce Partnership and deputy executive director for the Boston Private Industry Council—where he led the nation’s largest summer youth employment program in the summer of 2000.

Cafferty serves on numerous boards and committees, including the President’s Council at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM), and the board of directors and governance committee for Curebound—a San Diego-based non-profit organization dedicated to curing cancer in our lifetime. He was honored to be awarded the 2026 Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge Builder award in recognition of his passion for fostering collaboration and developing connections.

A Boston native who now considers San Diego home, he earned a B.A. in marketing and communications from Assumption University, and his advanced certification in Performance Measurement and Non-Profit Management from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Cafferty was also selected as a Center for Social Innovation Fellow at Stanford Graduate School of Business and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from CSUSM.
He resides in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood with his amazing wife Charlene Kakimoto—a dermatologist and former lieutenant commander with the United States Navy—and their teenage sons Kai and Quinn.