Leon Panetta co-founded the Panetta Institute for Public Policy with his wife Sylvia in 1997 upon completion of his service as White House chief of staff in the Bill Clinton administration. The Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit study center that seeks to attract thoughtful men and women to lives of public service and prepare them for the policy challenges of the future. In 2009, he left Monterey to serve as CIA director and then secretary of defense under President Obama. He returned to the Institute as chairman in 2013. 

A Monterey native and Santa Clara University School of Law graduate, Secretary Panetta began his public service career in 1964 as a U.S. Army intelligence officer receiving the Army Commendation Medal. Upon discharge he went to work in Washington as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senate minority whip Tom Kuchel of California. In 1969, he was appointed director of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, where he was responsible for ensuring equal opportunity in public education, and later he served as executive assistant to the mayor of New York City. He then returned to Monterey, where he practiced law until his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976.

He served his Central Coast district in Congress for sixteen years and in 1993 he served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget for the Clinton administration.  In 1994, he accepted appointment as the president’s chief of staff, and is credited with bringing order and focus to White House operations and policy making. Secretary Panetta returned to public service at the start of the Barack Obama administration as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he supervised the operation to find and bring the international terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice. Then, as secretary of defense, he led efforts to develop a new defense strategy, conduct critical counter terrorism operations, strengthen U.S. alliances, and open military service opportunities to Americans regardless of gender or sexual orientation.  He chronicles his life in public service in his best-selling memoir Worthy Fights, which was published by Penguin Press in 2014.