Steve Poizner
American businessman
Stephen Leo Poizner (born January 4, 1957) is an American businessman and politician who was the Insurance Commissioner of the state of California from 2007 to 2011. Formerly a Republican, Poizner ran unsuccessfully as an independent candidate in the 2018 California Insurance Commissioner election.
Poizner has also been a Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur, founding and selling SnapTrack, Inc., Strategic Mapping, Inc, and EmpoweredU, and he is currently the founder and CEO of next generation GPS startup OneNav Inc. In 2001, following privately held SnapTrack's sale for $1 billion to Qualcomm, Poizner served a year as a White House Fellow in the National Security Council. Starting one week before the September 11 attacks, Poizner held the position of Director of Critical Infrastructure Protection, and was involved in developing Homeland Security programs relating to cybersecurity and emergency response communication protocols. As of 2026, Poizner and Arnold Schwarzenegger are the last Republicans to win or hold statewide office in California, having both won their respective elections in 2006.
Background and early life
Poizner was born on January 4, 1957, in Corpus Christi, Texas. Poizner attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1978. He was a member of the prestigious Friar Society and Tejas Club, as well as president of the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity.
After graduating from UT, Poizner moved to California to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received his M.B.A. in 1980 and was named an Arjay Miller Scholar.
“Steve Poizner” enters the record as american businessman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Steve, Poizner and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Steve Poizner” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Steve, Poizner and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7613634. VIAF identifies the subject as 103455835. The Library of Congress control number is n2009076067. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 2007, 2011 and 2018.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Steve Poizner”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Steve Poizner primary sources, Steve Poizner archive and Steve research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Steve Poizner”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Steve Poizner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.