Fifteen years ago Neal Andrews built a successful consulting service, Horizon Management Services in Ventura, which specializes in providing management advice to business and government in strategic planning, management and marketing. Horizon focuses especially on assisting corporate clients to develop and execute appropriate strategies to support new business initiatives or to respond to new business challenges. Mr. Andrews is principally noted for his work in helping clients to manage or respond effectively to major organizational or market changes, especially in the health care field. He is also noted for his work in the public policy arena on behalf of his client's interests and concerns. Neal is now semi-retired and only takes on new projects on a pro bono basis for non-profit organizations or worthy causes he supports.

Neal has had a varied career, moving back and forth several times between the private and public sectors. He has been a university professor at major academic institutions, a hospital administrator, a senior manager in one of the largest and most successful health care corporations in America, a high level state government administrator, the executive director of a regional medical services organization, an entrepreneur, and an author and popular speaker for regional and national conferences.

He received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He also completed post-graduate studies in health care administration with the University of Michigan School of Public Health and in public policy administration and public law at the Michigan State University School of Public Administration.

He served as a Scholar Diplomat under the auspices of the U.S. State Department and as a National Defense Fellow and is the author of a book entitled "Foreign Policy & the New American Military". He has also authored many articles and papers on a wide variety of business, health care, and public policy issues and has served on the faculty of the Conference Board, the California Medical Society, UCLA's Anderson School Health Care Management Program, and the National Managed Health Care Congress, among many others.

In 2001 he was elected to the Ventura City Council.

Since his election to Council, Neal has been the leading spokesman for the introduction of performance management tools and techniques into city management and for the primacy of economic policy and economic development in city planning. In addition, he has championed two broad areas of public policy - the needs of the socially disadvantaged and the arts. He successfully sponsored the inclusion of the proposal for a city cultural arts center and the development of a transitional living center for homeless families in the City's top policy priorities, and he has remained one of the strongest and most consistent advocates for these programs throughout his tenure on the Council. In addition, he has been the principal voice of fiscal prudence, individual rights, limited government, and responsible and accountable governance.

Neal's personal philosophy may best be expressed in a prayer attributed to Sir Francis Drake in 1577:

"Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true because we have dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely because we sailed too close to the shore."