Appointed in 2007 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the general counsel for the California Department of Corporations (DOC), Clopton oversaw all litigation counsel, both in house and outside, reviewed all Office of Administrative Hearings decisions, reviewed and implemented all DOC employment policies and procedures, and served as liaison with the governor’s legal staff and other governmental agencies.

Prior to her gubernatorial appointment, Clopton was CEO and general counsel for Workplace Consulting. Recruited in 2002 to be the first chief of operations and corporate counsel for the San Francisco State University Foundation Inc., Clopton successfully chaired the University’s 42-member Task Force on Intergroup Relations with its initial focus on the relationship of the Palestinian and Jewish communities to, universal plaudits.

Clopton was appointed by Mayor Frank Jordan to the San Francisco Civil Service Commission in 1993 and was re-appointed by Mayor Willie L. Brown in 1999. During her tenure she streamlined the classification system and personal services contracting process. She was serving an unprecedented fourth term as president of the commission when the Port Commission recruited her in 2000 to become the Port’s first chief of operations, overseeing human resources, information systems, communications, legislative affairs, business services, contract compliance, and environmental health and safety.

Clopton also served on the San Francisco Mayor’s Advisory Employee Relations Panel from 1992-94 chaired by the Honorable Joseph Grodin under Mayor Jordan. Clopton is an accomplished author and lecturer on professional responsibility and corporate governance, workplace diversity and discrimination issues, sexual harassment prevention and investigation policies, and alcohol and substance abuse policies. She is currently president of the San Francisco League of Women Voters. In 2000, Clopton was appointed by the California State Bar’s Board of Governors to the Labor and Employment Law section’s executive committee, where she is currently chair.

She began her career at the National Labor Relations Board’s Division of Advice in 1983 and practiced labor and employment law on behalf of management from 1990-2000. She is a graduate of Vassar College cum laude and Antioch University School of Law and was awarded the highly competitive Maguire Fellowship by Vassar College for post-graduate study in international and comparative labor-management relations in London, England. Clopton majored in Political Science and Hispanic Studies at Vassar, studied in Madrid, Spain and speaks Spanish.

Clopton joined the Junior Statesmen Foundation board of trustees in 1991. She started her Junior State Chapter at Alain Leroy Locke High School in Los Angeles, attended the Junior State’s 1975 Summer School at U.C. Davis, and served as Lt. Governor of the California Junior State in 1975-1976, presiding over spring state.