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.

DJ Wheeler is a Director in PwC’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Trust Solutions Practice based in San Jose, California. DJ has more than 12 years of experience and is a Certified Public Accountant. DJ primarily serves public multinational corporations and venture capital-backed start-ups in the software and FinTech industries. Previously, DJ was a member of the Firm’s National Quality Organization assisting engagement teams with complex auditing matters. DJ is a San Jose native and graduated from Santa Clara University with a BS in Accounting and a minor in Spanish.

Tom is a Senior Director at FTI Consulting and is based in San Francisco. He is a member of the Dispute Advisory Services practice and uses his experience and background in accounting and economics to provide litigation consulting and business advisory services. Tom is a graduate of the University of California at Davis, where he received a B.S. in Managerial Economics. He is a licensed CPA in the state of California.

A San Jose native who spent much of her life on the East Side, Sandra is a proud graduate of San Jose State University. She is deeply committed to community service and strives to unite people through purposeful engagement. Sandra believes that small, strategically placed improvements can lead to meaningful and lasting change.

An is a Vietnamese American. She and her family settled in San Jose in 1995. After receiving her BA at UC Berkeley and MD at Howard University School of Medicine, she came back to the Bay Area to do her residency training at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. It is here she found her connection and roots, and has the desire to help those who struggle with homelessness, mental health and addiction. She currently works for Valley Homeless Healthcare Program in providing health care to those who are homeless in the Bay Area. Her desire to give back to the community that has given her the opportunities to be where she is today is a reason she joined GFS, to contribute to the growth of the community.

Karla Alvarez (pronouns: she/ella) is the Chief of Staff and Program Manager for Equity and Systemwide Initiatives at San José Public Library (SJPL). In addition to supporting the Office of the City Librarian, she collaborates with colleagues to steer projects to better serve San José’s historically underrepresented and underserved communities. Prior to joining the Library, she was 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. Her work has spanned projects in San Diego and New York, as well as Mexico, Guatemala and other countries. Committed to giving back to her community, she serves as a board member for Grail Family Services and was formerly Vice Chair for the Latino Leadership Alliance. Alvarez 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.

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.

Smitha is COO & Co-founder of Ounce of Care, which provides support to residents of affordable housing with the mission of improving community health and wellbeing. Prior to that, she spent over 10 years in consulting, most recently as a Senior Manager at Bain & Company. She also has experience in IT & technology from her time at the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and as a Senior Product Manager at Amazon. Smitha holds a B.S. and M.S. in Bioengineering from UPenn and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Zulma Maciel (she/ella) is a seasoned local government leader with expertise in public policy development, grant making and community engagement. Currently, Zulma serves as Director of the City of San José’s Office of Racial and Social Equity leading the organization in centering equity practices that ultimately eliminate disparities, particularly among underserved and underrepresented communities who have historically experienced worse life outcomes. In her spare time, Zulma volunteers on local non-profit boards and regularly enjoys hiking and Pilates. Zulma is binational (México and US citizen), bilingual, and bicultural. She earned a B.A in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.