Paul Hernandez
Vice President, Los Angeles
Paul Hernandez has more than fourteen years in public policy, government relations, and strategic communications on issues ranging from health care and education to public safety and violence prevention. His clients include the Blue Shield of California Foundation and First 5 Los Angeles.
He has a broad network of relationships with state legislators, city and county policymakers, opinion and community leaders, along with nonprofit and advocacy groups throughout California. His insider knowledge of county and state government, coupled with his longstanding relationships with key decision-makers, has enabled him to help organizations navigate through the complex public policy and political environment at the state and local levels, and to shape a wide array of policy issues.
Prior to joining Fenton, Hernandez was managing director for SNR-Denton, where he was responsible for providing strategic counsel and communications, public affairs, and other consulting services to foundations, corporations and nonprofit organizations, to successfully achieve key advocacy, policy or business objectives. For example, when a group of California’s leading children’s advocacy groups wanted to protect health coverage programs like Healthy Families from budget cuts, Hernandez helped develop communications and public affairs strategies to educate and influence state lawmakers. And Hernandez serves as a lead policy advisor to the Blue Shield of California Foundation on how the foundation can best play a role in the successful implementation of the new federal health reform law in California.
Hernandez spent more than eight years with The California Endowment, where he was responsible for managing all public affairs, government relations and strategic communications efforts. He developed and implemented strategies to build alliances, raise public awareness and generate support among state decision-makers on health and human service issues. He regularly served as a liaison to state legislative offices along with city and county officials, and developed tactics to keep these audiences informed and engaged in The Endowment’s policy and programmatic efforts around health care issues. He was a key strategist in crafting and implementing a multi-million dollar campaign to advance statewide health reform in 2007.
Hernandez is also a veteran of local government and politics, having served as a legislative deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, where he acted as the Supervisor’s chief advisor on law enforcement, public safety and transportation issues.
