Ventures is committed to developing compassionate and local equitable economies that contribute to the region's well-being. Work focuses on the development of scalable models to address income and wealth gaps, especially those faced by communities of color and women. Programmatic efforts include:● Familias con Mas, an effort to provide skills, education, and civic engagement to ensure working class families use their economic power to create more equitable local economies.● The creation and launch of UndocuFund Monterey Bay, a collaborative focused on providing relief to undocumented workers impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. ● Development and launch of Santa Cruz County’s Semillitas, a program that provides a children's savings account for all Santa Cruz newborns. The goal is focused on improving child development, create a post-secondary education culture, and foster healthy financial habits. ● Development of a cooperative development model focused on developing worker-owned cooperatives as way to democratize business ownership and develop a community wealth building ecosystem.● Leading a youth-led low-cost/high impact intervention and education approaches for middle school girls and at risk high school students to increase financial capability and credit. ● Partnership with UC Santa Cruz Blum Center to lead research on financial assets, use of banking services, and cost of living barriers, with a special focus on Latina women with children.

Provide strategic advice, guidance, consulting, and project management to professionals, companies, and organizations, with a special focus on equity, strategy, program design, cultural competence, philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, and social justice issues.

We cannot keep hoping that the old ideas that got us here will fix the problems they caused. We must do better. For over 20 years, I’ve worked with governments, corporations, growers, farmworkers, nonprofits, and policy makers across the U.S., California, and in our region to thoughtfully develop practical solutions that actually work to improve people’s lives. I’m not a career politician. I get things done by focusing on what matters most – people and planet. I’m the only immigrant, only Latina, and only candidate in this race who will not accept corporate money. My personal commitment to service and my love of our communities is what compels me to run. Join me and let’s work together to create opportunity for all families and all people to thrive. www.maria2020.com

Directed Driscoll’s Community Involvement program for the Americas, including the US, Mexico, Chile, and other developing regions. This included employee volunteerism, product donations, and grant strategies focused on economic development of rural areas of production via an investment in farm-workers and their families. Efforts included an increased focus on indigenous communities. Work was aligned and informed global corporate social responsibility strategy. Served as a key corporate culture adviser to executive team and across business units, providing key thought and programmatic partnership on global issues including labor, talent development, and new areas of business development. This included working closely with Marketing, Supply Chain, Production, and Human Resources.Grantmaking portfolio and reach increased both in size and number of grantees significantly during tenure. To facilitate fast growth oversaw the implementation of a grants management database, employee volunteerism management software, and developed product donation platform to better allocate donation benefit to participating growers. All systems prior were paper based. In addition worked with food banks across the region to facilitate large-scale donation of berries to decrease food waste.

Oversaw organizational growth including a 700% growth in its endowment and three times its operational budget during tenure. Developed key partnerships with local funders to increase regional commitment to shared impact in Southeastern Wisconsin. This included the development and expansion of a donor-advised program, implementation of Grants Management Database, and volunteer and internship program. Key programmatic wins included: • Pivoted Cream City Foundation's strategic approach to social change including a racial equity analysis, setting the organization as a key voice in the sector.• Corporate Social Responsibility outreach secured support of national corporate partners headquartered or expanding in Milwaukee to regional LGBT causes and aided their changes to HR guidelines impacting LGBT employees. • Youth Homelessness initiative launched a documentary highlighting the issue facing youth and secured national funds for a collaborative housing model for LGBTQ youth in imminent danger of homelessness. • Led first bilingual media visibility campaign addressing LGBT visibility and issue engagement from an ally lens – GayNeighbor.org/MiVecinoGay.org. This also included a Spanish translation of the Foundation’s main webpage – a first for the U.S. LGBT public foundation sector.

Worked with Executive Team to align strategy with fund development, talent development, and operational plans to advance civil rights and civil liberties in the state of Wisconsin as the organization faced a fast pace growth period, tripling in size during tenure. Served as community relations and communications lead with a specific area of focus around the Patriot Act, immigrant rights, domestic partner health benefits, and environmental justice issues facing communities of color. Priority areas of work included upgrading organization processes, implementing a CRM and donor database solution and conducting organizational cultural competency around Latino and Spanish-speaking communities, including developing an internship program to align with growing youth work.

• Created Batch Architecture approach and flow documentation for PeopleSoft Financial Implementation.• Worked with team of consultants and managers to design thirty-seven conversion approach documents for the State of Connecticut’s PeopleSoft HRMS conversion effort.• Researched and wrote Extract Transfer and Load (ETL) tool comparison document that analyzed tool capabilities and identified their use within the State of Connecticut’s conversion effort.• Worked with client Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to provide support for PeopleSoft’s Payroll applications. • Established communication methodology between U.S and Philippines’ developers and consultants.• Monitored the progress of team members to ensure programming phase of merge and conversion effort remained on target.

• Mentored campus clubs and assisted with budget analysis, goal-setting, and organizational management.• Developed organizational training and leadership courses.• Developed and implemented communication efforts.

• Wrote, edited, and distributed Kemper Insurance Companies’ internal newsletters, correspondence, and presentation materials.• Co-developed and executed communication plan with Kemper’s Vice President of Communications. • Researched and analyzed the insurance market in Oregon and Washington for the Seattle’s office underwriting department.