At the age of 23, Carl DeMaio started his first company - the Performance Institute - to provide training and consulting solutions to help financially-troubled government entities cut costs while improving performance. DeMaio turned his business success into a life-long crusade to improve the performance, transparency, efficiency and accountability of government at all levels. DeMaio won a seat on the San Diego City Council in 2008 - and helped turn that city around from the brink of bankruptcy through his Roadmap to Recovery reform agenda.

Carl DeMaio is no stranger to adversity. Carl's mother passed away two weeks after his father abandoned the family. At age 14, Carl was taken in by Jesuits and given the opportunity to earn his way to Georgetown University.

After college, Carl founded two successful businesses before the age of thirty. Carl built the Performance Institute into one of the largest government reform think tanks in the nation and the leading authority on performance-based management in government, law enforcement, non-profits and schools. In 2003, Carl founded the American Strategic Management Institute (ASMI), which provides training and education in corporate financial and performance management. In late 2007, Carl sold both of his companies to Thompson Publishing Group.

As a resident of San Diego, Carl turned his expertise toward his own local government. In 2003, Carl underwrote and directed a study of the city's budget and reporting his findings of widespread waste and inefficiency to the City Council.

Not content to wait for city leaders to implement reforms, Carl repeatedly took his case to the voters - sponsoring city-wide voter education drives during each election, helping defeat tax and fee increases, and sponsoring a number of reform ballot measures.

In 2006, Carl helped craft and sponsor two major ballot measures- Proposition B that gives voters final say on any future pension benefit increases, and Prop C that requires competitive bidding and outsourcing of some city functions to cut costs and create jobs.

In 2008, Carl helped build a coalition to pass the Strong Mayor measure to improve accountability and transparency in government. In 2010, Carl led the fight to defeat Proposition D, a $500 million tax increase. His message was clear- force the politicians and unions to start reforming city government by refusing to give them more money.

In 2012, Carl authored and led the coalition to pass the landmark pension reform initiative that ends pension spiking abuses, caps pensionable payouts, and closes the city's troubled pension system and gives new hires 401(k) style retirement accounts instead. On June 3, 2008 Carl DeMaio was elected to the San Diego City Council to represent District 5. Carl made history as a non-incumbent taking a Council seat by the widest margin in a primary-winning 66% of the vote.