Jamie Allison leads the Fund in partnership with trustees, ensuring our work expresses our values, resonates with community, and catalyzes the field. She focuses on organizational leadership, strategy, and governance. Her top priorities are to ensure that the Fund’s staff thrive in their roles and that our practices and grantmaking advance liberation and community transformation. Jamie’s 20 plus years in philanthropy combined with experience in the public sector and local government enables her to understand how these systems can be leveraged to make real change. Every day, she is inspired by the community leaders who endeavor to dream and make real a more just society by widening the circle of care to include all of us.

Jamie was born and raised in Chattanooga, TN but has called San Francisco home for more than 20 years. She is always ready for adventure. When she is not working, you can find her at music and film festivals, soccer matches, or awaiting a flight at the airport. It’s not a surprise then, that her favorite word in the English language is peripatetic, which means traveling from place to place, because she likes to travel, and also because p is her favorite letter.

Anna Hernandez leads the Fund’s equity, learning, and justice work, guiding organizational development, grantmaking, and values-aligned strategies. Reach out to Anna to talk about equitable grantmaking practices or about creating a culture of learning. Anna has over a decade of experience working in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, working in communications, project management, operational process improvement, grants management processes and systems, and grant impact analysis.

Anna was born and raised in the Bay Area and does not plan on ever straying far from home. She loves reading grantee annual reports and watching videos where puppies fall asleep at the groomers.

Marcel Marania invites you to ask questions. As Grants Manager for the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, he takes charge of processing grants and grant requests. Those duties might seem complicated to prospective grantees but that’s why Marcel — and his colleagues at the Fund — encourage inquiry. Knowledge is the kind of power he wants you to have.

Marcel was raised in San Francisco and educated through the city’s public schools. This is his second tour at the Haas Fund, having worked at a couple of nonprofit organizations in between. When not at the office, Marcel enjoys fishing, reading science-fiction, and driving his very slow car fast.

Christine Metropoulos is responsible for managing all projects at the Fund, coordinating our work and collaboration. A project manager and event producer with over 20 years of service to Bay Area nonprofits and communities. Christine brings approaches and practices firmly rooted in the nonprofit sector. Opportunities to develop progressive philanthropic leadership and equitable grantmaking practices are what inspires her work in philanthropy, and at the Fund.

A longstanding advocate for the Bay Area’s experimental media and music communities, she was once Executive Director at San Francisco Cinematheque and has worked with the California College of the Arts, Pacific Film Archive, Other Cinema, the Lab, and the Canyon Cinema Foundation. She holds a BA in Film Studies from UC Berkeley.

Melissa Nop is responsible for community engagement, grantmaking, research, accountability, and learning in the Fund’s Social Well-being strategy. This includes the WE Initiative, policy grantmaking, participatory grantmaking work, fostering trust-based collaborative action and relationships among grantees, and working with our youth advisors the BAY Fellows, in Fund’s grantmaking.

Mel holds a passion for collective community healing and started her career in philanthropy in 2017. As the proud daughter of Khmer refugees, she is deeply committed to addressing the challenges of immigrant and refugee communities and intergenerational healing. In 2020, she co-founded API Giving Project, aiming to resource and strengthen the AAPI community across the Bay Area.

Most recently Mel worked at Northern California Grantmakers supporting work around culture and community, racial equity, and social justice– helping to develop networks, training cohorts, and programming. Prior to NCG, Mel worked with Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees as a Program Associate, and served as a board member for the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants and youth-serving organization Summer Search.

Mel calls Oakland home. At her best, she’s traveling abroad learning about regional herbal medicine and healing modalities, meditating in a redwood grove or at the ocean, or reading in a luxurious/medicinal bath.

Suki O’Kane is responsible for Fund finance, investment, technology, human resources and systems that support Fund learning and impact. An advocate for social entrepreneurship, hybrid enterprise, and progressive partnerships that encourage the growth of sustainable communities, Suki strives to shift perspective on where solutions come from, and why they succeed.

Prior to joining the Fund, Suki worked with regional associations of philanthropy, Bay Area based youth and arts education nonprofits, and local and state governments. This work includes acting as Director of Operations for Northern California Grantmakers and currently serving as Treasurer for Artists’ Television Access. She is a classically trained mallet percussionist, composer, and curator working with artists across a wide array of music, movement, expanded cinema, and public art genres. Her music has received the support of the California Arts Council, the Creative Work Fund, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Oakland Stock, and New Music USA.

Anthem Salgado is responsible for communications and story-telling, amplifying the Fund’s work to foster community well-being and advancing our values and ways of working to our community.

Anthem brings a rich history in cultural work and arts administration to his role. He focuses on crafting narratives that illuminate the intersection of community and social impact.

Salgado was born in the Philippines, raised in New York, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, drawing inspiration from the vibrancy of the local arts landscape. He started his career as a multidisciplinary artist, having shown work in venues such as the Oakland Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Brava Theater. Anthem has run a five-star consultancy for nearly 15 years, developing hundreds of creative entrepreneurs and providing seminars for organizations like Intersection for the Arts and Center for Cultural Power. Additionally, he holds a certificate in Evidence-Based Coaching, supporting the agency and effectiveness of leaders within their roles.

When not immersed in his professional endeavors, Anthem dives into nonfiction books exploring topics like evolution, determinism, and consciousness. He’s also a Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner, having trained in the martial art for over a decade.