Our Team

Mark Cafferty

President & CEO

As president and chief executive officer of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, Mark Cafferty sits at the center of a unique collaboration of business, trade, community, and education leaders who have redefined the region’s economic development strategy, cementing the region as a key stakeholder in the global economy.

Cafferty has spent more than 20 years designing systems to support career advancement and economic opportunity for American workers. He has served in numerous public-sector leadership positions and has been sought as a consultant on workforce development efforts throughout the country.

Over the last few years, Cafferty was asked to chair San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s Workforce and Economic Advisory Committee, and was appointed to serve on Governor Jerry Brown’s International Trade and Investment Advisory Council.

Cafferty has been recognized regularly by local publications like the San Diego Business Journal, SD Metro, The Daily Transcript, and U-T San Diego. He has been quoted in the New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek and the Los Angeles Times.

A Boston native who now considers San Diego home, he earned his bachelor’s in marketing and communications from Assumption College in Worcester, Mass., and his advanced certification in Performance Measurement and Non-Profit Management from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2007, Cafferty was selected as a Center for Social Innovation Fellow for International Non-Profit Leaders at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

He resides in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood with his amazing wife Charlene Kakimoto and their beautiful sons Kai and Quinn. Charlene is a dermatologist and former lieutenant commander with the United States Navy.

Nikia Clarke

Chief Strategy Officer

Dr. Nikia Clarke is Chief Strategy Officer of San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC). She oversees the economic development, research, and global engagement priorities of the organization.

Clarke sits on the National Investment Advisory Council, a collection of senior leaders that advises the administration on FDI policy and strategy, and is founder and former Director of OUCAN, an international network of emerging market industry leaders, policy makers and researchers.

She is also a professor at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, and serves on the boards of SDSU’s International Business Program and Innovation District, Lifeline Community Services, the San Diego Innovation Council, the San Diego & Imperial Small Business Development Center Network, and Port Maritime Advisory. Previously, she advised the San Diego STEM Pathways Community and World Design Capital 2024.

She holds a BA from Loyola Marymount University, an MPhil from Cambridge University, and a PhD from Oxford University.