Almis Udrys

Bio

Almis Udrys has built a career fostering teams and organizational cultures that transform buzzwords like efficiency, transparency, and accountability into reality. With 20 years of public service, Almis believes that government can work. He has deployed creative strategies to empower his teams, the public and decision-makers, most notably via San Diego’s popular Get It Done reporting app, that allows users to report issues in their neighborhood from potholes to streetlight outages and graffiti. 

Starting out his career as a performance auditor for the State of California, Almis reviewed government operations and developed recommendations for process improvement. Continuing as a policy consultant in the state legislature Almis participated in public policy making, including a stint as a senior staffer responsible for negotiating the $125 billion state budget with the Schwarzenegger administration.

At the city of San Diego, Almis worked in a variety of policy and operational roles to tackle a multi-billion dollar infrastructure backlog, develop an open data policy, and served as the founding Director of an award-winning Performance & Analytics Department. Under Almis’ leadership, San Diego was recognized by the California League of Cities, the Harvard Ash Center, Governing Institute, and Bloomberg as a “What Works City.”

Concluding his time in local government, Almis served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant Chief Operating Officer, helping to spearhead the city’s Covid-19 response, including establishment of one of the nation’s first small business relief funds, driving major reforms around the city’s approach to both homelessness and housing (such as the much-lauded Complete Communities) as well as climate action and mobility, while bolstering intergovernmental and binational relations, immigrant affairs, and equity initiatives. Almis also served on the boards of the San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System where he helped adopt a trajectory toward full funding of the pension system and the San Diego County Water Authority where he worked on innovative approaches to diversify regional water supply and improve relations with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Today, Almis is a Senior Professional Services Director for OpenGov, a well-known govtech startup, where he has leveraged his experience to oversee financial, procurement, permitting, and asset-management cloud-based software deployments for state and local governments. Almis focuses on building strong teams that deliver projects on time, on budget and with unprecedented customer satisfaction.

Almis often shares his insights with students and professionals in both domestic and international settings, including as an adjunct professor teaching a graduate course on Innovative Local Leadership at Pepperdine University.

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