Assistant to the City Manager
City of Pleasanton
Municipal Management Association of Northern California (MMANC) Liaison

Aarón Zavala is the Assistant to the City Manager for the City of Pleasanton, where he serves on the executive team supporting a community of 80,000 residents. He leads BELONG Pleasanton (Building Equity, Leadership, Opportunity, Nurturing, and Growth), the City’s initiative to build a more equitable and inclusive organization and community. He also oversees emergency services and supports a range of citywide strategic initiatives.

Aarón’s career in local government has taken him across California and Texas, with roles spanning the County of Fresno, the cities of Mesquite, San Bernardino, and Petaluma, before joining Pleasanton. Along the way, he has built a broad foundation in public works, budget development, emergency management, and city management. In Petaluma, he established a citywide grant program that secured over $50 million in funding and led implementation of the City’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging framework. This range of experience across communities of 62,000 to 216,000 residents has deepened his commitment to strengthening the local government profession and the people who serve in it.

Aarón is the Vice President and President-Elect of the Municipal Management Association of Northern California, where he has served on the Board of Directors since 2022 and previously served as Membership Director. He chaired MMANC’s Inaugural Equity Summit, which drew over 250 attendees and sold out. He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Local Government Hispanic Network, as Vice President of Los Cien Sonoma County, and as a member of the Board of Directors for the California Local Government Management Collaborative (Cal-ICMA). He is a graduate of MMANC’s UpNext Leadership Program and the ICMA, Kettering Foundation, and National Civic League Leadership Institute on Race, Equity, and Inclusion. He holds professional certificates from ICMA and the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement at Pepperdine University, and is an alumnus of Stanford University’s Local Governance Summer Institute.

Aarón earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Sonoma State University, a Master of Public Administration from California State University, Fresno, and an Executive Master of Urban Planning from the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. A first-generation Mexican-American, he is a 2026 North Bay Business Journal Forty Under 40 honoree and a proud Sonoma County native. He lives in Rohnert Park with his wife, Christy, and their dogs, Barney and Oscar. They are the proud parents of Joaquín and Sebastián.