Investing in Innovations for Thriving Communities
and Healthy People
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
February 29, 2012
Speaker Bios
Jim Becker is Vice President of Community Investments at the Richmond Community Foundation. Jim attended Grinnell College for his BA and University of Minnesota for his MA in Anthropology. He served as a senior program director for the Minneapolis YMCA. He moved to California in 1990 to serve as the Executive Director of the new Delta Family YMCA in Oakley, CA.
In 1991, he joined Delta 2000 and served as its Executive Director until 1996. While at Delta 2000, he led several community initiatives including the establishment of the Village Drive Resource Center and the conversion of the old Antioch Police Station into a vibrant community services building.
In 1996, he joined the Center for Human Development as its CEO, and led the organization to significant growth and national recognition for its work in community health services. He chaired the Contra Costa Tobacco Prevention Task Force which wrote the first county smoke free work place ordinances in the United States. He led the Family Preservation and Support Collaborative in North Richmond, which resulted in successful integration of county and nonprofit services. At the request of Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, he served on a children's services panel with First Lady Hilary Clinton, and also served on the State Advisory Board for Child Development and Home Instruction with California First Lady Sharon Davis.
He joined Housing California, to serve as its Executive Director in 2001. The desire to work closer to home, and to truly engage community members in neighborhood transformation brought him to the Richmond Community Foundation.
Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, founded PolicyLink in 1999 and continues to drive its mission of advancing economic and social equity. Under Blackwell’s leadership, PolicyLink has become a leading voice in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, education, and infrastructure.
Prior to founding PolicyLink, Blackwell served as Senior Vice President at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she oversaw the foundation’s Domestic and Cultural divisions. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (CA) Urban Strategies Council, where she pioneered new approaches to neighborhood revitalization. From 1977 to 1987, Blackwell was a partner at Public Advocates, a nationally known public interest law firm.
As a leading voice in the movement for equity in America, Blackwell is a frequent commentator for some of the nation’s top news organizations, including the Washington Post, Salon, and the Huffington Post, and has appeared regularly on such shows as public radio’s “Marketplace,” “The Tavis Smiley Show,” “Nightline,” and PBS’s “Now."
Blackwell is the co-author of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), and contributed to Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream (The New Press, 2007) and The Covenant with Black America (Third World Press, 2006). Blackwell earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She serves on numerous boards and served as co-chair of the task force on poverty for the Center for American Progress.
Aimee Chitayat is an entrepreneurial project leader with 20 years’ experience in health, long-term care, post-secondary education, finance, and workforce development. She has a track record of managing large-scale, cross-sector collaborations in the public, non-profit and philanthropic sectors. She currently serves as Program Director at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a national research, consulting, advocacy and legal nonprofit agency dedicated to building economic health in disadvantaged communities.
Aimee is leading the Insight Center's exploration of the social determinants of health, a newly emerging field which demonstrates that inequality in income, education, assets and race causes health inequities. She also directs Insight’s New Orleans Building Child Care project, an effort to create a loan fund and website that support quality construction. She also directs the SNAP E&T Expansion Initiative, which leverages federal funds to increase the quality of workforce services.
Aimee served for five years as the founding Executive Director of the Community Clinic Consortium of Contra Costa and Solano Counties. The Consortium advocates for improved health access and quality of care for low-income populations, and provides technical assistance and training to community health centers. As a full-time Research Associate with RTZ Associates and with independent clients, Aimee led planning efforts to reorganize publicly funded health and long-term care systems. New models she helped to design or implement include Kaiser Permanente’s Labor-Management Partnership, the In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority, and countywide Acute and Long-Term Care Integration.
Dr. David J. Erickson directs the Center for Community Development Investments at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and edits the Federal Reserve journal Community Development Investment Review. His research areas in the Community Development Department of the Federal Reserve include community development finance, affordable housing, economic development, and institutional changes that benefit low-income communities. He recently served as an editor of a joint research project with the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program studying areas of concentrated poverty in the United States and was also an editor of a collection of research papers and essays on the Community Reinvestment Act, which was recently translated into Chinese by the People’s Bank of China. Dr. Erickson has a Ph.D. in history from UC Berkeley, with a focus on economic history and public policy. He also holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at Berkeley and an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College. His book on the history of community development, The Housing Policy Revolution: Networks and Neighborhoods, was published in 2009 by the Urban Institute Press.
Tracy Ericson is a Vice President and the Western Region Deal Team Manager for the Wells Fargo Community Lending and Investment (CLI) group where she originates, underwrites, and manages a portfolio of New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) investments. Tracy joined Wells Fargo in 2000, since that time has held positions in a range of departments including Capital Markets, Commercial Banking, and several positions within CLI including Low Income Housing Tax Credits investments, private equity, and equity-equivalent investments to non-profit organizations. She is a graduate of Wells Fargo’s Wholesale Banking Credit Management Training Program and a recipient of the Wells Fargo Golden Spoke award.
Tracy holds a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia University and University of California, Berkeley. She received a Bachelor of Science in International Business and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish at the University of Denver. Tracy is actively involved in her local community on the Board of Directors of Compass Family Services and a member of the Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership San Francisco program. She lives in San Francisco where she enjoys spending time with her family and friends.
Dana Harvey is executive director for Mandela MarketPlace. Mandela MarketPlace innovates food-based economic development in inner-city and rural areas. As Executive Director, Dana Harvey leads a concerted campaign resulting in the June 2009 opening of the for-profit, worker-owned Mandela Foods Cooperative grocery retail and nutrition education center as well as a dynamic youth leadership Healthy Neighborhood Store Alliance program, and a produce distribution center serving family farmers. Local entrepreneurship and nutrition education in tandem with access to healthy, fresh and affordable foods has injected over 200,000 lbs of fresh produce and over $1 Million into an urban center, and makes a difference in the health and wellbeing of hundreds of residents daily.
Mandela’s healthy food enterprise network is on the forefront of local and national efforts to address food security, nutrition education and economic development in urban centers and
Malo André Hutson is a nationally recognized scholar in the areas of community and economic development, urban policy and politics, and urban health. As an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Hutson’s research is concerned with how neighborhood, community, and metropolitan-level factors affect the health and quality of life for urban residents. Specifically, his research is at the intersection of urban planning and health disparities. He also researches how urban policies affect the development of urban space and health.
Dr. Hutson's current research includes an analysis of metropolitan fragmentation and racial residential segregation and their relationship to health. He is also conducting a meta-analysis study of the built environment and social context as predicators of physical activity and obesity with Dr. Gina S. Lovasi at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. This project is funded by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Active Living Research grant. Finally, Dr. Hutson is in the process of completing a book based on eight years of community development research.
Dr. Hutson earned both his bachelor’s of art in sociology and masters of city planning degree both from the University of California at Berkeley and his doctorate in urban and regional planning from the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the faculty at Berkeley, Professor Hutson was a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan.
Dr. Anthony B. Iton is the Senior Vice President of Healthy Communities at The California Endowment. Prior to his appointment at The Endowment, Iton served since 2003 as both the director and County Health Officer for the Alameda County Public Health Department. In that role, he oversaw the creation of an innovative public health practice designed to eliminate health disparities by tackling the root causes of poor health that limit quality of life and lifespan in many of California's low-income communities. Iton also served for three years as director of Health and Human Services and School Medical Advisor for the City of Stamford, Connecticut. Concurrent to that, he also served as a physician in internal medicine for Stamford Hospital's HIV Clinic. In addition, Iton served for five years as a primary care physician for the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Iton's varied career also includes past service as a staff attorney and Health Policy analyst for the West Coast regional office of Consumer's Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. Iton, who has been published in numerous public health and medical publications, is a regular public health lecturer and keynote speaker at conferences across the nation. He earned his B.S. in Neurophysiology, with honors, from McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, his J.D. at the University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, and his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Dr. Douglas Jutte is a physician and population health researcher. He is an assistant professor in the Division of Community Health and Human Development in UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health. He teaches in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program and is Associate Director of the Health and Medical Sciences Masters degree program. His research interests focus on health resilience and vulnerability in children, and the biological links through which social-contextual factors contribute to children’s long-term medical, psychosocial and cognitive outcomes. He has a long-standing collaboration with the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and utilizes their unique longitudinal population health database for child health research. He has published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Epidemiology and Academic Pediatrics. Jutte received his MD from Harvard Medical School; he also has a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley and a BA from Cornell University. His post-doctoral research training was through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program. He continues his clinical work as a neonatal hospitalist attending high-risk deliveries and caring for healthy and ill newborns at a local community hospital.
Jeremy Liu is a community builder, urban planner, real estate developer, organizer, and artist with a passion for civic, social, cultural and political entrepreneurship. In December 2009, he became the new executive director of the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) which works with neighborhoods to build long-term and sustainable community well-being for residents of Oakland and the East Bay Area.
For over a decade he led the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC) – a community-based, not-for-profit developer of affordable housing that works to build vibrant, healthy and just neighborhoods for all. For over 15 years he has worked for and with communities of color, seniors, and youth, to creatively confront issues of social and environmental equity, sustainable development, affordable housing, and community empowerment. He has written and lectured in the U.S. and abroad about participatory planning, technology, and the community development role for arts and culture; he has created arts-based community development projects in the U.S. and Asia. He is a co-founder of the National Bitter Melon Council.
He has received an Artadia Artist Prize, a Visible Republic Artist Grant, and several LEF Foundation Contemporary Work Fund grants. His work has been recognized by the MacArthur Foundation/HASTAC Digital Media and Learning Competition, The Ford Foundation, Neighborworks America, and The Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab. He is currently a 2009-2011 Barr Fellow. He serves on the boards of the New England Foundation for the Arts and the Interaction Institute for Social Change, and is a member of the PolicyLink Advocacy Results Project Advisory Committee.
Dr. Barbara McCullough has been the Executive Director of Brighter Beginnings since 1996. She has over 30 years of experience in non-profit management and has a deep love for parent and child health and community development. She has a Doctorate in Psychology from the Wright Institute and has considerable years of experience designing, funding and implementing programs that improve access through creating coordinated systems for families. She has expertise in the area of health promotion, mental health and family strengthening services. Dr. McCullough has been the Principal Investigator for multiple Federal research grants in the fields of Substance Abuse Prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention and Teen Pregnancy prevention.
Marc Rand is the loan director at Marin Community Foundation where he has invested more than $25mm to Marin-based nonprofits. Mr. Rand is currently the board chair for Opportunity Fund, a CDFI based in San Jose, CA. He has also served as the Co-Chair of Northern California Grantmaker’s Emergency Loan Fund; Co-Chair of the Marin Workforce Housing Trust Fund Program and Lending Committee; a Board Member for the Marin Workforce Housing Trust Fund; a steering committee member of Marin’s Housing Council; and a steering committee member of Marin’s 10-Year Homelessness Initiative.
Prior to arriving at the Foundation nearly three years ago, Mr. Rand worked in Romania with the Peace Corps. While serving two years in Timisoara, Mr. Rand was the project manager for a USAID funded program that developed five credit unions. Mr. Rand began working in finance with First Union in Philadelphia where he was a financial analyst for five years in the International Corporate Division concentrating on UK, Dutch, Japanese and Thai large corporations. Mr. Rand earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Marketing and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Delaware.
Lisa Richter is principal and co-founder of GPS Capital Partners, LLC, a consultancy that assists foundations, banks and institutional investors in the design and execution of profitable investment strategy that enhances public good. Her work spans asset classes, return expectations and issue areas, frequently incorporating place-based and sector focus to increase equitable access to opportunities, including health, education and sustainable community development. Lisa co-designed and serves as lead trainer for the PRI Institute sponsored by the PRI Makers Network, co-authored Equity Advancing Equity (an analysis of impact investing for community foundations) and recently published a guide to health-focused impact investing with Grantmakers In Health. She brings over two decades of fund management and development finance experience from the National Community Investment Fund and ShoreBank and has served as advisor to the Bank of America National Community Advisory Council, Wall Street Without Walls, 2009 Clinton Global Initiative, and New Frontiers in Philanthropy (a project of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University), vice-chair of the Community Development Financial Institutions Coalition, director of the Social Investment Forum, and steering committee member of the New Markets Tax Credit Coalition. She holds a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Lena Robinson is a regional manager in community development at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco covering the area of northern California. In this capacity she works to increase access to capital, credit and banking services for low-income communities and households in compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act. This objective is achieved in part by providing technical assistance and training on successful initiatives and programs, convening key stakeholders to identify community development needs, and facilitating partnerships between financial institutions and community-based organizations. Outcomes from such partnerships may result in increased affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization; loans and training for emerging small businesses; and services targeted to low-income individuals.
Lena serves as a board member for Neighborhood Housing Service East Bay and Operation Hope Northwest Region; and on the steering committee of the Alameda County Community Asset Network (ACCAN). Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Lena managed the housing program for international students at UC Davis Extension. She holds a master’s degree in international affairs with an emphasis on rural African development from Ohio University, and a bachelor’s in Japanese from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Scott Sporte is Chief Lending Officer at NCB Capital Impact. NCB Capital Impact is a certified Community Development Financial Institution that provides financing and technical assistance in underserved communities nationwide. Sporte oversees the team that provides $200 million in financing annually to community-based health care providers, nonprofit educational institutions, affordable housing cooperatives, community facilities and retail grocers. He is responsible for developing and implementing NCB Capital Impact’s financing programs, including the transit oriented Integration Initiative in Detroit and the California FreshWorks Fund, a program to finance access to healthy foods throughout the state.
Sporte has more than 18 years’ experience in community development finance. He holds degrees from Kenyon College and Yale Divinity School and serves on the boards of LifeLong Medical Care, the Berkeley Pilgrimage Foundation and ROC USA, and is a loan committee member for the Northern California Community Loan Fund.
Olis Simmons is a noted visionary executive known for advancing innovative systems change efforts and building comprehensive programs to transform people and place. Simmons has more than two decades of senior level experience in the public and nonprofit sectors where she has conceptualized and managed large-scale initiatives, policy campaigns, collaboratives, and multi-year ventures, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in diverse resources.
Simmons currently serves as the founding President & CEO of Youth UpRising (YU), a celebrated community transformation engine committed to making one of our nation's most disinvested communities healthy and economically robust. A key innovation is her work to gear public and private dollars towards wealth-building rather than service delivery. This move from spending to investment is designed to stimulate both individual and collective growth while fostering improvements is education, housing, community assets and career opportunities. Simmons’ goal of catalyzing change while ensuring the community preserves its cultural nuances and maintains control over its destiny is the new face of community economic development.
Her other work includes national public policy and program design work related to workforce development with Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), and leadership with County Health Care and Social Service Agencies.
Yolanda Ruiz is a Partner at Pacific Community Management, an affiliate of Pacific Community Ventures. She is involved in several aspects of the fund including analyzing and structuring transactions and helping manage the fund investments. She currently sits on the boards of PCV portfolio companies Freshology, New Leaf Paper, and on the board of Opportunity Fund.
Prior to joining PCM, Yolanda worked for an M&A advisory firm focusing on acquisitions and growth financings in the food and beauty sectors. Previously, Yolanda worked for Gap Inc. as Business Development Manager in the International Division. She was responsible for planning and coordinating the launch of new international business. Before joining Gap Inc., Yolanda was part of the founding team of Punto Com Holdings (PCH), a Mexican venture capital fund led by Cemex. Yolanda also worked for The Boston Consulting Group where she developed pricing and corporate strategies for a variety of consumer products clients.
Yolanda received an MBA degree from Stanford Business School and a BS degree in Industrial Engineering from ITESM (Monterrey, Mexico).
