About Sonia

Throughout my career I have been drawn to organizations and positions focused on creating lasting and impactful community change; this is what engages and energizes me and what brings me joy in each workday. I most recently served as the Chief Community Impact Officer for Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) where I led the development and implementation of the foundation’s impact strategies. In this role I led the teams responsible for initiatives spanning education, the arts, economic vitality, housing, health, the environment, and community engagement. I held several other roles at OCF over twelve years including Vice President of Strategy and Research and Research Director. Prior to my tenure at OCF I led program evaluations and other social policy research teams at several human services research and evaluation firms and started my career in the nonprofit youth services field.

I have extensive experience with organizational, strategy, and program development. I have led organization-wide strategic planning efforts and I have overseen strategy development, implementation, and evaluation across multiple impact areas. I strive to create a learning culture in which curiosity is encouraged and reflection and learning inform strategy and programs. I enjoy helping leaders and teams foster collaborative exploration, design, and decision-making and I believe that this collaborative approach to community impact work results in better strategies and stronger teams.

Creating lasting and systemic change involves deploying multiple tools including coalition-building, research and evaluation, public policy engagement, community engagement, traditional grantmaking, alternative funding strategies such as impact investing, and organizational capacity building and technical assistance. I have experience utilizing and integrating all of these tools into comprehensive impact strategies.