Over the past decade, Patrick Mulvaney has not only created one of Sacramento’s most celebrated restaurants, but perhaps the city’s de facto salon, with a cross section of engaged citizens and power brokers charting the region’s future in his dining room. Meanwhile, he’s morphed from gregarious host to having a seat at the proverbial table, effecting change through food, wine and his wits.

For the first time since 1882, a Sacramentan will be the second most powerful politician in California. After decades of state leadership coming from the Bay and Southern California, we’ll finally have one of our own at the big table. So what will it mean for this region? And does Darrell Steinberg have what it takes to deliver?

Forty years after his first break at KCRA, Lester Holt was tapped this summer for the top spot in American broadcast journalism—the anchor of NBC Nightly News. Here’s how “Lightning Bolt Holt” guided his career from the streets of Rancho Cordova to the heart of Rockefeller Center.

Four years after UC Davis police pepper-sprayed student protesters, chancellor Linda Katehi has not only strived to build stronger ties with her campus community, but her hyper-ambitious plans to transform UCD into one of the top 10 schools in America—and maybe help save the planet while doing it—finds her building an entirely new legacy for her university, and for herself.

In 2012, an Elk Grove mother of three caused a social media stir with a single Facebook post. By 2013, that post went viral, transforming Maria Kang into a polarizing figure at the center of a national debate on obesity and fitness. With a new book out and her nascent “no excuses” movement growing, she’s grabbing the spotlight again. Is she helping or hurting? It’s more complicated than you might think.

How Anne Gust Brown has helped craft some of the biggest political milestones of the past decade in Sacramento, and redefined what it means to be California’s first lady.