Attorney General Kamala D. Harris Announces Top Staff Appointments

SACRAMENTO – Attorney General Kamala D. Harris today announced a series of appointments to senior staff positions in the Department of Justice.

Matt Rodriquez, a 24-year-veteran of the Department of Justice, will continue to serve as acting chief deputy attorney general for legal affairs, with oversight of the department’s more than 1,100 attorneys in the nation’s second largest public law firm. Until a new chief assistant is appointed, he will also maintain his dual post as the chief assistant attorney general for the department’s public rights division, which handles consumer, environmental, anti-trust, civil rights and charitable trust cases.

Terri M. Carbaugh was appointed in March by Attorney General Harris to serve as California's chief deputy attorney general for administration and policy. In this capacity, Carbaugh has day-to-day oversight of the department’s $735 million budget and 3,700 non-attorney employees. She is also the attorney general’s key liaison to the governor, Legislature, and other state and federal leaders. She has extensive public policy and executive management experience with state constitutional offices, including the chancellor’s office of the California Community Colleges, the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, the office of First Lady Maria Shriver and the California Secretary of State. She also has spent more than a decade working in the private sector, specializing in state and local government issues.

Michael Troncoso, who led the San Francisco district attorney’s mortgage and investment fraud unit, will serve as Attorney General Harris’ senior counsel, reporting directly to her. In this position, he will oversee the special assistant attorneys general and lead some of the office’s most difficult, sensitive and high-profile matters, including the new multi-divisional mortgage fraud task force and California’s participation in the 50-state group of attorneys general working on foreclosure practices and the mortgage servicing industry.

Suzy Loftus, a veteran prosecutor who in the San Francisco district attorney’s office specialized in domestic violence and elder abuse cases and served on the DA’s executive staff, will serve as a special assistant attorney general, working on criminal law issues, as well as serving as the office’s primary liaison to local, state and federal law enforcement offices.

Travis LeBlanc will serve as a special assistant attorney general with a portfolio overseeing the office’s work on technology, high tech crime, privacy, and health care issues. Before coming to the attorney general’s office, LeBlanc worked for Keker & Van Nest LLP in San Francisco and, since 2009, for the U.S. Department of Justice’s office of legal counsel, which advises the president and U.S. attorney general on the legality of the programs and activities of the federal government.

Shum Preston will serve as the department’s director of communications. He brings 14 years of experience in communications at the local, state and national level. Since 2004 he has been a communications specialist with the California Nurses Association. He has worked on presidential campaigns, in the high-tech sector, as a promoter of labor and human rights, and as an advocate for families and children.