Smart Growth California

SJVFC Members

Meet the San Joaquin Valley Funders’ Collaborative

The SJV Funders’ Collaborative works to support funder learning and collaboration to promote healthy, equitable communities and sustainable natural systems in the San Joaquin Valley.

Members

Reyna Villalobos (Co-Chair)

the center at Sierra Health Foundation

Reyna brings close to 30 years of public health experience to her role as Managing Director of Regional Programs at The Center at Sierra Health Foundation. She has deep and broad skills and knowledge, particularly in the social determinants of health, health equity, program development and implementation, grants management, data analysis and coalition building, leadership, and policy development. Prior to joining Sierra Health Foundation in 2022, Reyna was an Adjunct Professor at Fresno City College where she taught Foundations of Public Health to Allied Health students.

Reyna is bilingual and biliterate in Spanish with cultural and linguistic competency. She holds a master’s in public health with an emphasis in Health Services Administration from San Diego State University and a Bachelor of Science in health science with an emphasis in Health Services Administration from California State University, Fresno.

Reyna’s public health passion and drive is inspired by her retired farmworking parents who toiled the San Joaquin Valley fields for nearly six decades.

Reyna enjoys outdoor activities and lives in Fresno with her spouse Salvador Villalobos and her two children Christopher and Kathryn Lucia.

Janaki Anagha

11th Hour Project

Janaki Anagha is a Grantee Liaison with the 11th Hour Project and the Director of Community Advocacy at Community Water Center. She has worked at California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. in Fresno enforcing environmental justice and worker protections such as access to clean drinking water for unincorporated communities and assisted in the creation of Community Alliance for Agroecology based in Delano. Janaki holds a J.D. from UC Davis School of Law and a B.S. in International Agricultural Development from UC Davis.

Maria Aquino

The James Irvine Foundation

Maria Aquino is a Senior Program Officer at The James Irvine Foundation, focusing on place-based grantmaking for initiatives aimed at empowering low-income workers and fostering collective action for an inclusive economy. Prior experience includes a tenure at First 5 LA, where Maria held both Senior Program Officer and Program Officer roles, and at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services as an Outreach Liaison/Eligibility Worker, collaborating on projects to improve access to social services for underserved communities. Maria holds a Master of Public Administration from California State University, Northridge, a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies from UCLA, and an Associate of Arts in Women’s Studies from Southwestern College.

Emily Duma

Common Counsel Foundation

Emily is the Director of Housing Justice at the Common Counsel Foundation, where she oversees the work of the Fund for an Inclusive California and the Community Ownership for Community Power Fund, two pooled funds that support housing and land justice in California. She has a background in community organizing and resource mobilization, and over the past 15 years has: supported field development around catalytic capital to create a more just and inclusive world at the Catalytic Capital Consortium; managed participatory grantmaking processes at the Crossroads Fund; co-created frameworks for transformative investment strategies with Resource Generation; supported immigrant parent leadership in fighting for better schools in Chicago; drafted national policy resources around economic justice and community reinvestment at Community Change; and co-founded an intentional community that practiced radical resource sharing in Minneapolis. She has a Masters in Urban Planning with distinction from Harvard University and a BA in political science and international studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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John Heywood

People, Food and Land Foundation

Bio coming soon.

Artie Padilla

Central Valley Community Foundation

Artie was born and raised in Fresno California. After earning a degree in Business Administration from CSU Northridge, he returned home where he has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 28 years. Over the last 15 years, he’s been working closely in Fresno’s 92 public elementary school neighborhoods serving both youth and families. This work led him to create Every Neighborhood Partnership, a community-based organization that mobilizes and equips neighborhood building teams that actively serve on school campuses and in their surrounding community. Recently, Artie transitioned over to the Central Valley Community Foundation where he is overseeing the Neighborhood Development portfolio of their DRIVE Initiative.

As part of his community-wide work, Artie helped to create the Fresno County Trauma & Resilience Network in 2017. This growing collective of 120+ individuals have been learning and strategizing on how to develop a more “trauma informed” Fresno County. He also helped create the Fresno Community & Economic Development Partnership which is a cluster of 15 place-based organizations that serve the felt needs of the families in their geographical footprint.

All this work helps Artie in leveraging the overall collective impact work DRIVE is focused on in the Fresno region.

 

Marni Rosen

Tao Rising

Marni Rosen is a philanthropic and non-profit consultant with nearly 30 years of experience in philanthropy, non-profit and inter-governmental work.  Marni served for over 16 years as the Executive Director of the Jenifer Altman Foundation (JAF), a private foundation supporting creative work in health, education, the environment and justice. In 2005, in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Marni co-founded the Gulf Coast Fund, to support the sustainable and just recovery of the region. In partnership with the Global Greengrants Fund and four international NGO networks, she initiated the Global South + Program to support environmental health and justice work globally. Marni has co-founded numerous initiatives at the intersection of health, environment and justice, and continues to play a leadership role in the field.

Marni is co-founder of the Health and Environmental Funders Network (and a past co-chair) and of the Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (now EDGE Funders Alliance).

Juan Reynoso

The California Wellness foundation

Juan Reynoso is a program officer at The California Wellness Foundation supporting the foundation’s civic engagement and environmental justice grantmaking. For over a decade, Juan has worked in healthy communities planning across the public, private, and non-profit sectors. He received a Master of Public Health and Master in Urban Planning from Harvard University, and a B.A. in Human Biology with honors from Stanford University.

Elizabeth Söderström

The Water Foundation

Elizabeth Söderström is a senior program officer at the Water Foundation. She has spent the last several decades working at the nexus of program strategy and philanthropy delivering resources to address environmental issues in the water sector. Previously, as part of the Strategic Partnerships team at the Water Foundation, Elizabeth helped develop and deliver on fundraising strategies.Before joining the Water Foundation, Elizabeth was senior director of conservation and development at American Rivers. Prior to that she was director of the Sierra and Africa Rivers Program at the Natural Heritage Institute. Elizabeth serves on the boards of the Consensus Building Institute, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and CHIRP, a non-profit is guided by the Nevada City Rancheria Tribal Council. She also sits on the advisory board of the South Yuba Citizens League. Elizabeth received a BA in English Literature, a BS in Biological Sciences, and an MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, as well as a PhD in Wildlands Resource Science and River Science from UC Berkeley.

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Mark Valentine

ReFrame It Consulting

Mark Valentine is the founder and principal of ReFrame It Consulting, which works with foundations and individual donors on grantmaking program design, implementation, and evaluation across a diverse array of issues, including: smart growth and sustainable land use, environmental health, energy and climate, marine and coastal conservation, and conservation finance. Amongst his clients is a private donor advisory service for which he manages a portfolio of grants focused on advancing sustainable land use policy in key regions of California.

Prior to founding ReFrame It, Mark was a program director with the Packard Foundation where he helped establish the nation’s largest conservation grantmaking program with initiatives across the western United States, Mexico, China, and the Western Pacific. In addition, he created an innovative interdisciplinary grantmaking initiative that highlighted the opportunities for strategic synergy between reproductive health, environment, and community development initiatives in select geographies within the Foundation’s global portfolio.

Katie Van Dussen

Kresge Foundation

Katie Van Dusen (she/they) is a program officer with the American Cities Program at The Kresge Foundation. Katie supports partners and stewards grants that align with the practice’s focus on expanding opportunity by promoting effective and inclusive community development practices in American cities. They joined the foundation in 2025.  

In addition to being a recording and performing artist, Katie previously served as a grantmaker with the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, and as a consultant at McKinsey & Co., where they worked with clients to develop strategies to drive inclusive economic growth. 

A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, they earned a B.A. in organizational theory and a B.M.A in violin performance from the University of Michigan, and earned an MBA with a concentration in finance and design from Case Western Reserve University.