We champion ethical leadership, good governance, honorable political campaigns, and public trust in local government.
Public Ethics Now examines the City of Santa Clara through an ethics lens and the perspective of the eight core values the city identified in its 2000 Code of Ethics & Values.
Everything we examine focuses on one central question:
Is the city earning and rebuilding public trust that city government, at all times—in public and in private—meets the people's needs and advances the public's best interests, never serving or appearing to serve personal, private, or special interests?
Dr. Tom Shanks, Founder
Dr. Shanks is a Stanford-trained social scientist and communication scholar, a Jesuit-trained ethicist and educator, and a well-known ethics consultant with thirty years of experience building mission-driven, values-centered organizations that earn stakeholder trust.
Santa Clara's Ethics & Values Consultant, 1998-2015
He designed California's first municipal consensus-based Code of Ethics and Values, created the Campaign Ethics Program, and led the Vote Ethics Public Outreach Program—making Santa Clara a national and international model.
Former Executive Director, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (1992-1999)
In 1999, the San Jose Mercury News named him one of the Millennium 100—100 people who "made Silicon Valley what it is today." The Mercury wrote that Shanks "elevated the Center into the region's standard bearer for teaching the value of ethical conduct."((San Jose Mercury News, "Millennium 100," December 19, 1999.))
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Dr. Shanks knows what ethical governance looks like in Santa Clara because he helped build it.
The programs he created with city officials and staff achieved:
- 91% residents said the City was going in the right direction (2006); 40% (2024)
- UNESCO recognition as global best practice (2002)
- Two Helen Putnam awards from League of California Cities (2000, and Highest Honors, 2002)
- National model other cities studied.((See, for instance, the League of California Cities Guide for Developing an Agency Ethics Code, based on Santa Clara's 1998-2000 Process.))
He watched this program get systematically dismantled after 2015. He knows the difference between the Center of What's Possible and what Santa Clara has now, something perilously close to Politics Without Principle ((https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/seven-deadly-sins/politics-without-principle.php)).
