Read more about Whiz Kids
In the picturesque town of San Luis Obispo, California, a small but mighty business named Whiz Kids has become the talk of the town. Founded and led by Lesa Smith, this women-owned business has not only captured the hearts of locals but has also conquered the challenges…
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Read more about Conchitas Bakery
Annie DeGrazia, a culinary entrepreneur and mastermind behind the popular Conchitas Truck, has taken her passion for Mexican cuisine to new heights with the opening of Conchitas Bakery. DeGrazia’s journey from a food truck owner to a successful bakery…
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Read more about Precision Construction Services
Central California, Construction, General Contracting, San Luis Obispo County
Small businesses are the backbone of the economy and are vital to the vibrancy of the Central Valley and Central Coast of California. These small businesses not only create jobs and provide essential services but also have a significant impact on…
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Read more about Sculpt
Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) are essential resources for entrepreneurs and small business owners in California. These centers provide a wide range of services, including one-on-one consulting, workshops and training programs, access to funding…
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Read more about Triassic Vinyards
One of the most important reasons to work with a Small Business Development Center (SBDC) is the ability to access and use their resources, networks, and expertise. SBDCs offer their members access to funding, market analysis, business consultation, and technical…
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Chair
Lenny Mendonca is the former chief economic and business advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom. He is also a senior partner emeritus of McKinsey & Company, a lecturer on inequality at the Stanford Business School, and chair and primary owner of the Coastside News Group.
He founded McKinsey's US state and local public sector consulting practice and led the firm's knowledge development efforts, overseeing the McKinsey Global Institute and the firm's communications including the McKinsey Quarterly. He served for a decade on the McKinsey Shareholder Council.
Over the course of his career, he has helped dozens of government, corporate, and nonprofit clients meet their most difficult management challenges. He was formerly the chair of New America and Children Now, co-chair of California Forward, and chair of Fuse Corps. He is chair emeritus of the Bay Area Council and their Economic Institute.
He also previously served as the vice chair of Common Cause, the vice chair of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council, and a trustee at the Committee for Economic Development. He served on the boards of Fidelity Charitable, Western Governors University, UC Merced, the Educational Results Partnership, the College Futures Foundation, California Competes, the Opportunity Institute, Commonwealth Club, the National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers, and theguardian.org.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the board of trustees for Junior Statesmen of America, and the advisory boards of Y Analytics, QB3 and the Haas Center at Stanford University.
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Vice Chair
Maria S. Salinas is the President & CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the largest business association in Los Angeles County representing member companies and serving the interests of more than 235,000 businesses across the Los Angeles region. Ms. Salinas took the helm of the organization in August of 2018 and became the first woman and Latina to lead the Chamber in its 132-year history. An accomplished business woman, entrepreneur and a determined community leader, Ms. Salinas' business acumen and financial expertise provides her with the right experience to lead the L.A. Area Chamber.
Ms. Salinas, a steward of the Chamber's new vision, A Thriving Region for All,has reimagined the role of the Chamber. The Chamber looks to the future with a vision to build an inclusive economy and lead in three pillar areas of focus: advocacy work, global engagement and through community collaboration for economic growth and mobility.
The Los Angeles region, which is the 14th largest economy in the world, and the Chamber membership represents a broad spectrum of industries, small businesses, corporations, academic institutions and nonprofits, all are examples that the Los Angeles economy is diverse, dynamic and that business is a force for good.
Ms. Salinas is an appointee to Governor Gavin Newsom's Commission on the Future of Work and named to his Business and Jobs Recovery Task Force. She was appointed to the US Chamber of Commerce's Committee of 100, a distinction reserved for the top 100 Chambers across the country.
Salinas represents the Los Angeles business community in state- wide policy initiatives with the Coalition of Regional Economic Association Leaders (R.E.A.L.), she is a member of the Board of Directors of Mobility 21, a regional transportation effort, and an appointee of Mayor Eric Garcetti to the MEXLA Commission, a foreign policy initiative between Mexico and Los Angeles. Salinas serves on the Board of Directors of The Music Center, Pacific Council, UnidosUS and Southern California Leadership Network among others.
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Vice Chair
Gurinder S Ahluwalia is an executive advisor to Thomas H. Lee Partners. Ahluwalia brings over twenty-five years of operating and financial services experience with a proven track record of building, fixing and growing businesses, most recently in wealth management. Ahluwalia has provided strong leadership in a number of different roles including Chief Operating Officer (COO), Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President, and Chief Risk Officer. Mr. Ahluwalia is currently a director of Hightower Advisors and was a co-founder of 280 CapMarkets, a fintech capital markets company.
Prior to joining Thomas H. Lee Partners, Gurinder S Ahluwalia was an advisor and COO at Ovo Cosmico, Inc., a VC-backed start-up with a mission of making credit affordable and accessible everywhere. He was also president and CEO of AssetMark, Inc., where he focused the company's strategy on growth through advisor engagement, improved execution, and product and service innovations.
As President and CEO of GE Private Asset Management and Genworth Wealth Management, Ahluwalia transformed the unit from a boutique business to one with industry-leading profitability. He previously served as a Senior Vice President at GE Insurance and Chief Risk Officer at GE Edison Life Insurance.
Gurinder S Ahluwalia holds an M.S. cum laude from New Jersey Institute of Technology in Electrical Engineering, a B.S. of Computer Science from New York University College of Arts and Sciences, and a B.E. of Electrical Engineering from Cooper Union.
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Allison Kelly
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 served as CEO since June 2019. Under Kelly’s leadership, ICA has nearly tripled its net assets, quadrupled its number of investments, grown the number of companies served through our programs and more than tripled the organization's revenues.
In 2018, Kelly started an initiative called The Wisdom Fund, conceived to create a new debt product around the needs and characteristics of women of color entrepreneurs. In 2019, CNote took leadership of the initiative; The Wisdom Fund now is a fixed income vehicle for investors that increases capital access and lending for women-owned businesses.
In 2022, Kelly led the launch of the ICA Impact Note, an innovative investment structure that helps entrepreneurs prioritize social impacts–like good jobs, workforce diversity, and employee wealth creation–as they grow their businesses. As companies meet these impact milestones, the investor returns equity ownership percentages back to the company. Through this structure, the investor and the company are able to work in long-term partnership to create social returns for the community by growing local businesses.
For more than 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 more than $40 million in new impact investments for non-SBA small business loan products. Prior to CDC, Allison spent seven years in various leadership positions at Pacific Community Ventures, a nonprofit social enterprise focused on helping small businesses thrive through affordable capital and free business coaching.
Ms. Kelly serves on the Board of Goal 5, a women’s apparel company dedicated to gender equity in sport, the CDFI Coalition. Mal Warwick Donor Digital and the Advisory Board of CNote.
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Brett Melone
Brett Melone is the Chief Business Strategies Officer at California FarmLink, a statewide nonprofit Certified Community Development Financial Institution with a mission to invest in the prosperity of farmers and ranchers through lending, education, and access to land. FarmLink also serves fishers throughout the state.
In his role, Melone oversees FarmLink’s education and lending activities serving hundreds of agricultural and fisheries businesses annually. He became a board member in 2004, served as a member of its Loan Committee, and eventually joined the staff as a loan officer in 2013.
Prior to that, Melone held numerous leadership positions at nonprofits serving farmers and rural communities in Latin America and California, with a particular focus on ensuring equitable access to resources, and supporting their business success and natural resource management.
Melone currently serves on the boards of several nonprofit organizations, including Sustainable Agriculture Education, MEarth, and Feed the Hunger Fund, and is an adjunct instructor of sustainable agriculture policy at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. He has a BA in International Relations, Business and Spanish from the University of San Diego and a MA in International Environmental Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
Brett Melone grew up in a rural community in South Florida, where his parents worked in agriculture. That experience has shaped his professional pursuits and his personal commitment to ensuring rural communities, and farmers and ranchers in particular, have access to economic opportunity and the tools they need to steward natural resources.
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Carolina Martinez
Carolina Martinez is the CEO of CAMEO - the California Association for Micro Enterprise Opportunity-, a statewide association representing more than 300 lenders, training programs, chambers of commerce, job creators, agencies and individuals dedicated to furthering Microbusiness development in the state. CAMEO advocates for its members and builds their capacity to support the more than 84,000 very small businesses they serve.
Martinez has more than 15 years of experience working in economic development and business consulting. Her vision has been defined by the variety of experiences she’s had with nonprofits and universities in South and North America. She has developed bilingual, culturally appropriate entrepreneurial training programs; trained and coached pre-venture and startups; developed international networks promoting partnerships among private corporations that boost industries; provided consulting services to vulnerable communities to explore entrepreneurship as a way to generate wealth; and owned her own business consulting firm.
Martinez served on the Pennsylvania Governor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs as well as on the boards of the Berks County Latino Chamber of Commerce and the Kutztown University Foundation. She serves on the Advisory Boards of two CDFI microlenders: Mission Economic Development Agency Adelante Fund in San Francisco and Accion Opportunity Fund, the largest national microlender. Carolina serves on the Community Advisory Boards of Comerica Bank and Cathay Bank and is a board member of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) and Pacific Community Ventures (PCV). She served on California Governor’s COVID-19 Small Business and Innovative Startup Recovery Subcommittee and is a Member of the Executive Committee and Chair of the Policy Committee of the California Coalition for Community Investment (CCCI) a statewide coalition of CDFIs. She has an MBA and BA in Industrial Engineering.
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Danetta Jackson
Statewide Supplier Diversity Program Manager
As Statewide Supplier Diversity Program Manager within the California Department of General Services (DGS) Procurement Division (PD), Danetta Jackson is a member of the PD executive team focused on developing and implementing statewide strategic objectives, supported by data to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in state contracting. In Jackson’s previous role as the state’s Business Outreach Program Manager for 13 years, she oversaw outreach engagement strategies, external partnerships, communications, state contracting goal compliance, as well as the department’s Small Business Advisory Council. Ms. Jackson has over 30 years of public service.
Jackson is a passionate leader committed to breaking down barriers in state contracting for California’s diverse small business sector and finding ways to create more opportunities for underrepresented, marginalized micro businesses. She has formed strategic collaborations with diverse business organizations throughout the state at the private, local, state, and federal levels and has led other government entities in the development of their respective supplier diversity programs. In September 2021, Jackson was influential in the University of California’s (UC) adoption of their 25 percent diverse business contracting goal and development of their Small Business First Program and certification reciprocity partnership with DGS.
Since Jackson has assumed her leadership role in supplier diversity, she is co-leading the development and implementation of a comprehensive technical assistance and training program to help diverse small and disabled veteran businesses navigate the state’s contracting process specific to procurement and bidding requirements that will launch in the Fall of 2023. In April 2022, she led the implementation of a voluntary supplier diversity data collection in the state’s Cal eProcure system aimed to capture the demographics of state bidders and suppliers that will help inform where outreach and support is needed among various communities.
Jackson serves on various collaborative workgroups, such as the UC Supplier Diversity Advisory Council, Governor’s Minority Small Business Procurement Task Force, California Statewide Coalition on Diversity Initiatives, and the Health in all Policies Task Force. Jackson’s education includes a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from CSU, Sacramento and certificate in their Management and Executive Leadership Programs. Jackson currently serves as a subject matter expert panelist on the Source Diverse Source Local Initiative administered by California Office of the Small Business Advocate.
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David Fazio
David Fazio is the Founder, and President, of Helix Opportunity LLC, a social enterprise that specializes in the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the workforce, as well as the consumer marketplace, through organizational development and inclusive design consulting, training, and staffing. He is also an Invited Expert to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative, where he develops global digital accessibility standards alongside multiple Working Groups.
Mr. Fazio is a person with cognitive, and mobility, disabilities, having survived a softball-size hemorrhagic stroke, at the age of 13, that left him completely paralyzed on the entire left half of his body, along with severe brain damage.
Through Helix Opportunity David has worked with major global corporations to “Unlock the Power of Human Inclusion” by achieving what he calls “Harmony at Work”, that perfect intersection between accessible and meaningful experience. It is his belief that all human beings are unique, each of us with differing functional, and sensory, strengths and weaknesses. Yet, there are ways in which all people are alike. The essential aspects of the human experience, such as birth, death, love, struggle, and emotion, unite us all.
Products, environments, services, and economies, can connect all people through their shared human experience by engaging each person's strongest combination of senses and abilities. This is the essence of what it means to achieve Harmony at Work. It is the core of who David is and what he does. All of Mr. Fazio’s work, from organizational development to product design, is driven by this vision.
To that end, Mr. Fazio has worked with major global corporations to staff and support qualified STEM candidates with disabilities around the world, design inclusive products, environments and services, and develop inclusive corporate cultures. He has also provided strategic advising, and product innovation mentoring to start-ups and entrepreneurs with disabilities. You can follow David’s work, on LinkedIn, here. and keep up to date with Helix Opportunity, on LinkedIn, here.
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Debra Gore-Mann
Debra Gore-Mann is the President & CEO of The Greenlining Institute. Debra has over 25+ years of leadership experience in nonprofit and private research universities and over twelve years of private sector business development expertise having worked in investment banking, international infrastructure development and engineering. She serves on multiple nonprofit and foundation boards that work to serve communities whose works include criminal justice, nonviolence, youth educational opportunities, supporting young adults in sports and economic opportunity. Debra received her B.S. in Management Sciences and MBA from Stanford University.
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