Fiona Ma, California State Treasurer (Keynote Speaker)
 | Fiona Ma is California’s 34th State Treasurer. She was first elected on November 6, 2018, with more votes (7,825,587) than any other candidate for treasurer in the state’s history and reelected on November 8, 2022. She is the first woman of color and the first woman Certified Public Accountant (CPA) elected to the position. Presently, her office processes more than $3 trillion in banking transactions. She provides transparency and oversight for the government’s investment portfolio and accounts, as well as for the state’s surplus funds. Treasurer Ma oversees an investment portfolio that currently averages over $200 billion—a significant portion of which is beneficially owned by more than 2,200 local governments in California. |
Eduardo Garcia, California Assemblymember, District 36
 | Eduardo Garcia represents California’s 36th Assembly District, which includes Imperial County and cities and communities in Riverside County and San Bernardino County. During his tenure, Garcia has achieved success on legislation that would increase access to healthcare, create new parks, support small businesses, invest in broadband infrastructure, improve air and water quality, expand affordable housing, provide workforce training, and bring economic relief to underserved areas, like those in his district. He also secured historic investments for regional environmental priorities such as the Salton Sea and New River. |
Tim Grayson, California Assemblymember, District 15
 | Assemblymember Tim Grayson was first elected to serve in the California Assembly in November 2016 and represents the 15th Assembly District, which encompasses portions of Contra Costa county. Since being elected to the Assembly, Grayson has focused on issues related to addressing California’s housing and transportation crises, increasing our budget reserves and access to higher education, mitigating human trafficking, minimizing the risk of wildfires and helping individuals with special needs. Forty of the bills Grayson authored have been signed into law. |
Tara Lynn Gray, Director, California Office of the Small Business Advocate (Keynote Speaker)
 | Tara Lynn Gray was sworn in on April 26, 2021, as the 5th Director of the California Office of the Small Business Advocate. She serves as the voice for California’s 4.2 million small businesses in the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. Under Director Gray’s leadership, the California Office of the Small Business Advocate focuses on helping to bring about Governor Newsom’s California for All vision through further development of the state’s small business ecosystem and by ensuring that questions about equity and inclusion are the starting point for all of the state’s small business programs. |
Allison Kelly, CEO, ICA Fund
 | Allison Kelly is deeply committed to fighting economic inequality through innovation and out-of-the box partnerships at ICA, a venture capital-certified non-profit CDFI, where she has been serving in the role of CEO since June 2019. Under Kelly’s leadership, ICA has nearly tripled its net assets, quadrupled its number of investments, the number of companies served and more than tripled the organization’s revenues. For over 15 years, Ms. Kelly has been working within the CDFI industry supporting underrepresented small businesses. Before joining ICA, Kelly was head of strategy and innovation at CDC Small Business Finance where she led the effort to bring on over $40million in new impact investments to fund non-SBA small business loan products. |
Alyssa Lopez, Underwriting Associate, Inclusive Action for the City
 | Alyssa Lopez is the Underwriting Associate at Inclusive Action. She is a lifelong Northeast LA resident and has passions in urban planning, design, and community organizing. Alyssa has experience collaborating and leading teams in the nonprofit sphere on land use, popular education, and mutual aid initiatives. Her work focuses on the development of equitable programs in Los Angeles for those living in underserved communities with the intention to make civic participation more accessible and build power within gentrifying neighborhoods. Alyssa holds a B.A. in Growth and Structure of Cities from Bryn Mawr College with minors in Spanish Literature and Latinx Studies. |
Andrea Gonzalez, Program Manager for California Investment & Innovation Program, CPCFA
 | Andrea Gonzalez is the Program Manager for California Investment & Innovation Program (Cal IIP), at the California Pollution Control Financing Authority (CPCFA), under the State Treasurer’s Office. Andrea is a graduate of UC Davis with more than 10 years’ experience at CPCFA. |
Anthony Williams, Managing Director, Black Diamond Group
 | Prior to The Black Diamond Group, Anthony was the former President/CEO of a regional National Minority Supplier Diversity Council (NMSDC). In this role, he served as catalyst for minority business development, corporate supplier diversity partnership and community collaboration to spur economic development. During his tenure leading the council possessed 80+ corporate members and certified over 400 MBEs annually throughout the Missouri and Kansas region that employed 34,000+ employees and generated over $10B in annual revenue. As a community leader for over a decade, he has demonstrated an unwavering passion for education, entrepreneurship and economic development, particularly in urban communities. |
Derrick Tang, Deputy Director of Venture Capital, IBank’s Venture Capital Fund
 | Derrick Tang was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to lead California’s first public venture capital fund for underrepresented fund managers, entrepreneurs, and climate justice investments. Prior to his appointment, Derrick founded and led the Climate Investments team at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. He launched the agency’s first loan program and led initiatives to incorporate racial and social equity into strategic planning, operations, and decision-making. Derrick previously launched and managed the CalSEED initiative, an early-stage grant and economic development program for clean energy entrepreneurs. |
Elizabeth Schott, CEO, Accessity
 | As CEO, Ms. Schott is currently responsible for overall strategic developmental and operational areas of the organization, in addition to board development, human resources, and fundraising. She brings over 15 years of project and organizational development, strategic marketing and public relations experience to the organization. Ms. Schott has been at Accessity for 15 years. |
Gasper Magallanes, CFO, Working Solutions CDFI
 | Gasper Magallanes joined Working Solutions CDFI as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in 2021 with an extensive career supporting financial and strategic growth initiatives within social mission ventures. Prior to joining Working Solutions, Gasper was the inaugural Director of Due Diligence for CNote, a fintech impact investing firm headquartered in Oakland. There, he led underwriting and monitoring of CDFI borrowers, as well as supporting scale-up, construction, and management of its $100 million portfolio. Prior to this, Gasper spent over a decade at EdTec, a national boutique consulting firm for public charter schools headquartered in Emeryville, where he supported clients as an outsourced CFO and led the firm’s greenfield efforts across the United States. |
Jonathan Herrera, Director of Outreach and Education, CalSavers Retirement Savings Board
 | Jonathan Herrera is the Director of Outreach and Education for CalSavers, the State’s pioneering retirement savings program which will provide a path to retirement security for the millions of Californians who lack access to a retirement savings plan at work. Jonathan has over 20 years of experience working in personal, small business, and government finance. Prior to joining the CalSavers team, he spent 3 years at the State Treasurer’s Office helping California’s local agencies invest their idle funds in the Local Agency Investment Fund (LAIF), and 13 years at Citibank where he assisted with the organization’s business development and outreach strategies, and worked with a team of advisors to provide wealth management services and solutions for individuals, families, and small businesses. |
Marni Brook, Director of Funding, Women’s Economic Ventures
 | Marni serves as the Director of Funding for Women’s Economic Ventures (WEV), overseeing the funding program that serves businesses in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Prior to joining WEV in 2018, she spent 23 years in community banking in various positions including Community President- Ventura, Director of Commercial Services and Commercial Lending Officer. Her passion is working with small business owners, in particular women, to help them gain confidence and achieve success and sustainability. |
Pablo Solares, Director of Fondo Adelante CDFI, Mission Economic Development Agency
 | Mr. Solares is the Director of Fondo Adelante, Mission Economic Development Agency’s CDFI. He joined Fondo Adelante in 2019 and was appointed as the Director in August 2022. Solares had an instrumental role during the COVID-19pandemic when Fondo Adelante grew its portfolio 6x in less than 2 years, after deploying over $10M in emergency loans in San Francisco, Marin, Santa Cruz, and Monterey Counties. Similarly, he guided the team with partnerships that resulted in packaging an additional $7M+ in PPPs loans, and other local, State, and Federal grants for minority-owned businesses. Similarly, Solares had an investment banking practice focused on raising private capital for technology startups based in Latin America and other emerging markets. |