Elmy Bermejo has been a senior government official with more than 25 years of experience in executive level management, strategic planning, policy development and advocacy. She has an established successful record of collaboration with public and private stakeholders on a range of issues including workforce development, immigration, paid leave, minimum wage, discrimination in pay, disaster relief, small business and healthcare. She has deep relationships with Congress, the Executive Branch, federal, state and local government. Elmy has a passion for building and strengthening relationships while assisting people and organizations attain their goals.

On January 4, 2010 Elmy was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve at the US Department of Labor as the Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and in 2014 was appointed as the West Coast Regional Representative for former Labor Secretary Tom Perez.

Her public service includes working for several elected officials including Retired CA State Senators John Burton and Don Perata and former U.S.Rep. Lynn Woolsey and U.S. Rep. Mel Levine and the late U.S.Senator Alan Cranston.

Elmy is currently the President of the San Francisco Commission on the Environment, serves on the board of The Beneficial State Foundation and is an Advisory member of Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE). She is also a founding member of the Emily’s List Latina Advisory Council.

Elmy previously served on the CA Commission on the Status of Women and the Women’s Foundation of California. She is a founding member of EMERGE, an organization that trains democratic women to run for local office.

Elmy’s family owns Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant, a well-known and beloved restaurant recognized as a San Francisco institution for more than 50 years. There she gained valuable insights and sensitivity to the challenges faced by small business owners.

Kriss Deiglmeier, currently the CEO of Tides, has more than 20 years of senior executive experience that spans the business, social enterprise, nonprofit, academic and philanthropic sectors. She is recognized as a pioneer in the field of social innovation and has presented nationally and internationally on social innovation, social entrepreneurship, design thinking and public-private partnerships as well as guest-lectured at myriad universities around the world.

Before joining Tides, Kriss was the founding Executive Director for the Center for Social Innovation (CSI) at Stanford. She established CSI as a global leader in the emerging social innovation field. Kriss worked as an Advisor to the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies while living in Myanmar in 2013. In her previous role as Chief Operating Officer for Juma Ventures, Kriss helped raise the profile of the social entrepreneurship field from a niche market to mainstream.

Kriss has written and published leading thought pieces on social impact. Her most recent publication is a book chapter, “Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation: What’s New, and Why is it Important?” in The Real Problem Solvers. Kriss developed and taught the course, “Social Innovation through Corporate Social Responsibility” at Stanford. In Myanmar, Kriss conceived, created, and led an “Innovation in Action Lab” to equip organizations with design thinking methodologies and tools.

Kriss has served on a number of boards, and advisory groups. Kriss received her BA from the University of Washington, and her MBA from UC Berkeley.

Kriss resides in the Bay Area with her husband, two children and dog, Lucy. A favorite activity is traveling locally, nationally and internationally. She has visited over thirty-five countries with many more on her “wish to visit” list.

Cynthia A. Parker is the President and CEO of BRIDGE Housing Corporation. She is responsible for the overall direction of BRIDGE, as well as its major affiliates such as BUILD, an investment advisor to CalPERS under the California Urban Real Estate Program, and BASS, a licensed life care provider. She joined BRIDGE Housing as President and CEO in February 2010.

Ms. Parker brings over 30 years of diverse and relevant experience to BRIDGE, most recently as Regional President for Mercy Housing and President of Intercommunity Mercy Housing.

Prior to her tenure at Mercy, she served as Senior Vice President for Seattle-Northwest Securities, a public finance firm, where she oversaw affordable housing, commercial and public facility real estate financing in five Northwest states. Previously, Ms. Parker worked for the City of Seattle, where she established the new Office of Housing, doubled the agency’s housing production and managed a $61 million biannual budget. Earlier, she served as the Executive Director of Anchorage Neighborhood Housing Services and General Manager of Portland Student Services. A former President of the National Neighborhood Housing Network and a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, she has chaired the Sound Families Initiative for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She currently serves as a director of the National Affordable Housing Trust and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle. Ms. Parker is a graduate of Portland State University.

Robert A. Wilkins has led the YMCA of the East Bay since 1997. He has served the YMCA for 20 years, including leadership roles at YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles before joining the YMCA of the East Bay. Wilkins is an ordained minister and was previously Assistant Chaplain of American Baptists at the University of Southern California. He currently serves as an Associate Minister at Allen Temple Baptist Church and educator in contemporary religion and biblical literature.

Kat Taylor works in service of restoring social justice and environmental well-being to build a more equitable and inclusive world. Kat is active in a variety of social enterprises and philanthropic ventures on the West Coast focused on deep systems change. Currently, she serves as Co-Founder and CEO of Beneficial State Bank, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and certified B Corporation whose mission is to bring beneficial banking to low-income communities in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner – and to change the banking system for good. Kat believes it’s not enough to dream that philanthropic resources can clean up damage to our society after the fact; we must instead align fundamental institutions, including business, with the public interest in the first place.

Beneficial State Bank is the result of aligned mergers between OneCalifornia Bank, which Kat and her husband, Tom Steyer, founded in Oakland, CA, ShoreBank Pacific, Pan American Bank, and Albina Community Bank. Beneficial State Bank operates 17 locations throughout California, Oregon, and Washington. The bank’s revolutionary ownership structure mandates that any distributed profit be invested in the low-resourced communities it serves and the environment upon which we all depend. With strong organizational commitments to diversity, inclusion and environmental justice, Kat’s work focuses on advancing a fair, regenerative, and prosperous economy for all.

Kat is also a Founding Director of TomKat Ranch Educational Foundation (TKREF), dedicated to inspiring a sustainable food system through ranching best practices, training, educational tours, scientific research, and school food and garden programs. TKREF owns the social enterprise LeftCoast GrassFed, humanely raising cattle and other livestock for the benefit of healthy soils. Kat serves and has served on many non-profit boards including, Ecotrust, Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, ProPublica, the Community Development Bankers Association (CDBA), Forager, and CuriOdyssey. She graduated from Harvard College and earned a JD/MBA from Stanford University. She and Tom Steyer, Kat’s climate/energy/justice activist husband, have four grown children, each pursuing their one wild and precious life too.

Tom Steyer stepped down as head of his investment firm in 2012 to ded¬icate all his time to philanthropy and political action focused on making America more just by putting the people, not the corporations, in charge of our democracy.
Tom, a self-made billionaire, and his wife, Kathryn Taylor, known as “Kat,” were among the first to sign the Giving Pledge — a commitment to give away the bulk of their personal fortune during their lifetimes.
In 2013, he founded NextGen America, a nonprofit group that combats climate change, promotes social justice and increases participation in our democracy through voter registration and grassroots organizing. In 2017, Tom became the first major Democrat to rally millions of Americans with a public call to impeach Donald Trump.
In the recent midterms, Tom led the nation’s largest voter-turnout effort. NextGen organizers worked hundreds of college campuses and city neighborhoods to increase voting by youth, people of color, workers and other underrepresented groups. Need to Impeach mobilized millions of its petition signers. All these voters contributed to Democratic wins that took back the House, won Senate seats and governorships, and captured state legislatures and local races.
“We need the broadest democracy possible,” Tom says, “to take back our government from the corporations that now control it and have stolen the rights of everyday Americans.” Only a broad-based grassroots move¬ment can restore power, fairness and prosperity to the people,” he says. Tom has laid out his vision for putting the people in charge of our democracy with a “21st century bill of rights” — a new set of 5 Rights — that every American must have.
Across the country and in his home state of California, Tom has shown repeatedly that going directly to the people and raising their voices is the way to beat entrenched corporate interests and win fights for fairness. He helped beat big oil to protect California’s landmark clean-air laws and he followed that up with wins for clean energy in Michigan and Nevada. He helped close a massive corporate tax loophole to generate at least $1.7 billion for public schools. He helped beat big tobacco companies and forced them to pay their share of healthcare costs for the harm their products have caused.
Tom and his wife have devoted hours of their time and donated tens of millions of dollars to charitable projects that advance education, renew¬able energy, clean air and water, healthy food, sustainable agriculture, self-sustaining communities and more.
Their charitable foundation powered the birth of “California Food for California Kids,” a program that now serves more than 300 million healthy meals yearly to the state’s school kids using natural food from California farms.
Another charitable project is Beneficial State Bank, which since 2007 has loaned money affordably to working people, small businesses and nonprofit community projects shut out by regular banks. Tom and Kat have given more than $120 million to building the bank, which reinvests any profits back into the communities it serves. Their support of the bank is ongoing.
Tom grew up in New York City, the youngest of three brothers. His father, Roy, interrupted his law career to join the Navy and serve on the legal team that prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. His mother, Marnie, was a journalist and teacher who taught in the city schools and volunteered to tutor prisoners in a large city jail. Tom’s parents taught him that action always speaks louder than words.
Tom graduated from Yale and earned his MBA at Stanford. Working on Wall St. was not for him, so he moved to San Francisco in 1986 and started his own small investment firm. Backed by two seasoned inves¬tors, Tom started managing the new fund, which began with $9 million in investments. Over the years, Tom achieved double-digit returns for his investors — mostly universities, foundations and individuals. His success built the firm to $36 billion in investments at the fund’s peak.
Tom is 62. He and Kat have four grown children. San Francisco has been their home since 1986.