Background
The Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the Reinvest in San Francisco Ordinance on June 15th, 2021. The Ordinance creates a pathway to establish a public bank in San Francisco, which will reinvest millions of the City’s public revenues for economic recovery, affordable housing, small business loans, and green infrastructure. The Reinvest in SF Ordinance authorized the appointment of working group members, and in July 2021, President Shamann Walton nominated the slate of working group members seen below.
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Jennifer Finger
As Executive Vice President of Strategy and Development at Beneficial State Bancorp, Jennifer identifies and develops strategic business opportunities, and builds strong partnerships with mission-aligned fintech companies. She is currently building the Bank’s new credit card business, which includes consumer, business, and affinity products. Jennifer also manages the auto lending division, which provides direct and indirect financing. Jennifer joined Beneficial State in 2015 and, since that time, the Bank has grown its assets from just over $500mm to $1.4bn.
With extensive leadership in both the conventional and social impact banking sectors, Jennifer is recognized for her expertise and often asked to advise on broader business and mission impact efforts. Before joining Beneficial State, Jennifer was Treasurer of Westamerica Bancorporation, a publicly-traded bank with assets of $5.0 billion. As Treasurer, she managed the Bank’s $2.0 billion investment portfolio, interest rate risk, mergers and acquisitions, personal trust administration, operations and investments, as well as merchant bankcard operations. Jennifer also served as CFO of Westamerica for seven years. She has also held senior positions at Bank of America, Security Pacific, and Star Bank. In addition to her professional endeavors, Jennifer is committed to serving her community. She has previously served as a board member of several nonprofit organizations and is currently an audit committee member of Side-by-Side Youth Services. |
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Fernando Marti
Fernando Marti has served as co-director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO) from 2011-2022. CCHO is a nonprofit coalition of 21 community- and faith-based affordable housing developers and housing justice advocates. CCHO has been at the forefront of affordable housing policy advocacy in San Francisco since the group’s inception in 1978. CCHO’s mission is to foster the development of permanently affordable low-income housing in San Francisco, under community control and through non-speculative means of ownership, with adequate provisions for tenant services and empowerment. CCHO works to ensure adequate public funding and effective land use policies to Protect existing residents, Preserve housing affordability, and Produce new affordable housing for future generations. CCHO is a member of the SF Public Bank Coalition.
Fernando is a licensed CA architect, and prior to joining CCHO, worked at the nonprofit community design center, Asian Neighborhood Design. He holds a joint Masters degree in Architecture and City & Regional Planning from UC Berkeley, and has taught design and development classes at UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco. He was born in Ecuador, and has lived in San Francisco since the early 1990s. Fernando is also an exhibiting printmaker, and a member of the Justseeds artists collective. |
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Michelle Pierce
Michelle has 23 years of experience working in sustainability and social justice. While with the San Francisco Department of the Environment, she helped small to medium sized businesses design sustainability/responsibility programs while maintaining or improving business viability. Programs spanned water use reduction as well as water quality improvement, energy efficiency improvement, toxic use and/or waste reduction and/or recapitalization with. Some projects of note are the Custodial Green Cleaning Program and the Healthy Nail Salon Program. She is particularly adept at cultural competency and policy design, both of which were nurtured and polished while completing the Global Partners MBA Program. Michelle is currently stewarding the re-introduction of the Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates.
Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates is a grassroots organization founded by, governed by, and operated by long-term members of this vulnerable community. Our programs combine community organizing with education, advocacy, and direct services. We have taken an active role in mobilizing the Bayview Hunters Point community on issues of environmental and economic justice. We are currently focusing on the clean up at the Hunters Point Shipyard, preparing for sea level rise, reducing exposures to toxic air emissions, and the extreme housing pressures facing residents. |
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Rafael O. Morales
Rafael O. Morales joined Self-Help Federal Credit Union’s Development, Policy & Impact team in the Bay Area in a newly-created position of Senior Manager for Development Policy & Impact in June 2020. This position was created to build on Self-Help’s growing stature within California’s philanthropic networks and to raise visibility for the work that Self-Help and its CDFI and CDCU partners are doing to advance economic opportunity for working families and underserved communities.
Rafael is uniquely qualified to lead Self-Help’s DPI operations in the Golden State, and has a passion for understanding and improving the conditions faced by low-income/low-wealth families, making him an exceptionally strong fit with Self-Help’s mission. He comes to Self-Help directly from the James Irvine Foundation, where he has served as a Program Officer in their Fair Work Initiative since September of 2016. Prior to Irvine, Rafael managed the Economic Security portfolio at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) and before that he served at the San Francisco Foundation as a community development program fellow. Rafael spent nine years at the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, (now known as Inclusiv) which represents more than 250 community development credit unions nationwide. In a historical coincidence, Rafael relocated to San Francisco in 2008 to open Inclusiv’s West Coast regional office just as Self-Help FCU was opening its doors to serve California’s underserved communities. Rafael served as a Co-Chair of the Bay Area Asset Funders Network and was a founding board member of HomeownershipSF, an affordable housing nonprofit, where he served on the board for nine years including four years as Chairperson. He was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and graduated from Middlebury College with a degree in international studies with concentrations in political science and Spanish |
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Christin Evans
Christin Evans is owner of the Booksmith and the Alembic, two small businesses in San Francisco's historic Haight Ashbury neighborhood. She is a long-time board member of both the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association (HAMA) and the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council (HANC). Currently, Christin also serves on the Legislative Committee of the Council of District Merchants Association (CDMA) which represents the interests of district merchant associations. Prior to becoming a small business owner in 2007, Christin worked for a decade with larger firms in management consulting, technology and financial services.
Christin has an interest in sustainable communities and looks forward to serving as a member of the Public Bank working group to support reinvestments in our local community. In particular, Christin supports addressing the funding needs for local affordable housing projects and, in particular, those projects which would allow employees of small businesses to reduce their time to commute and live closer to their place of work. |
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Elizabeth Dwyer
For more than a decade, Liz Dwyer has helped nonprofit Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) develop strong operations and design and deliver microcredit programs that help small businesses start and grow.
Liz is Director of Fondo Adelante (Mission Community Loan Fund LLC), a $10M nonprofit certified CDFI working within Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA). Fondo Adelante provides training and low-interest loans from $5,000 to $100,000 microentrepreneurs and small business owners in the Mission District, San Francisco, and across the Bay Area. These loans and business development services fight displacement and promote equitable development: 96.5% of aspiring and current business owners Fondo Adelante serves are BIPOC and LMI. Prior to joining MEDA, Liz worked for more than a decade in the CDFI industry, including Accion, where she co-led a U.S. New Product Development Taskforce, and played roles in compliance, capitalization, and community engagement with the U.S. Small Business Administration and Working Solutions CDFI. Liz also helped launch and was of managing editor of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth's Inclusion Hub, a thought leadership site fostering cross-sector knowledge-sharing in data philanthropy and financial inclusion. At the start of her career, she worked in Kenya, Sri Lanka, Brazil and Peru doing community development program design and delivery with local nonprofits and the international development agency CRS. |