Board of Directors

Elizabeth Luna, AIF® is a Director of Wealth Management at ARIA Wealth Management, Inc.  Elizabeth has always had a deep passion for empowering women around finance. She knows firsthand the meaningful victories that both men and women can experience when taking charge of their financial life.  Elizabeth provides her clients expert guidance in wealth management, estate planning and customized portfolio management.  A Bay Area native, Elizabeth is a graduate of Santa Clara University and resides in the Rose Garden area of San Jose with her husband and 3 children.

Marcelo Iwasaki is Vice President and Senior Relationship Manager for Manufacturers Bank, a Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation subsidiary, and has more than 20 years of international experience in the banking industry.   He held leadership roles at the Banco do Brasil S.A. in Tokyo, Brazil, London, New York, and Miami prior to joining Manufacturers Bank in 2014. Marcelo has degrees from the Universidade de São Paulo (Economic Science), Pontifícia Universidade Católica (Social Science), Universidade de Brasilia (Philosophy), and a MSc Finance from the London School of Economics.

Kim is a Community Organizer with Showing Up for Racial Justice, a group of South Bay people who organize, mobilize, and educate White folks and other folks with privilege for racial justice. She is the former Grants Manager at the Leo M. Shortino Family Foundation, which makes grants to organizations that support at-risk youth in education and the arts, and she spent 15 years consulting with Hewlett-Packard, helping them market their servers and PCs. Her passion exactly matches GFS’s: to launch low-income, first-generation students on a trajectory to success.  Kim holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Arizona, a Master’s of International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, and an M.A. in Organizational Communication from Purdue.

Sohyla is the Enrollment Manager for San Francisco Unified School District’s Early Education Department. She is profoundly committed to serving underserved and unserved families and their children to promote access and equity for all children. Sohyla holds an M.P.H. in Public Health from San Jose State University.

Karla Alvarez (pronouns: she/ella) is the Equity and Inclusion Services Manager for San José Public Library, steering projects to better serve San José’s historically underrepresented and underserved communities. She is a seasoned nonprofit executive, with more than fifteen years of experience leading domestic and international projects to strengthen youth leadership, gender equity, immigrant justice and human rights. She served as Executive Director of Mixteca Organization in Brooklyn, New York and in other leadership positions for projects in Mexico, Guatemala and other countries. She proudly supports Latinx community-building initiatives in Silicon Valley, also serving on the board of directors for Latino Leadership Alliance. Karla received her Master’s degree in international Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame and Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the University of San Diego.