Lynn Alvarez
Vice President, Programs and Strategy
As ECMC Foundation’s vice president of programs and strategy, Lynn Alvarez is responsible for directing strategy across the Foundation’s portfolios. She works directly with the Foundation president and all team members to implement the Foundation’s goals, grantmaking, investments and initiatives.
Before joining ECMC Foundation, Lynn operated her own philanthropic advising firm for 15 years, where she helped private and community foundations develop and manage initiatives, refine their grantmaking systems, evaluate their impact, train their grantmaking staff and manage funding portfolios.
Before starting her own consulting firm, Lynn oversaw a large grantmaking portfolio at The California Endowment. She contributed to programmatic and process improvements throughout that foundation, including a comprehensive program officer training program. One of her grantmaking programs involved managing a $30 million grant portfolio that encompassed two strategic initiatives: Native American health and a health grantmaking partnership involving 25 community foundations.
Lynn’s foundation experience also includes working at the California Community Foundation and the Peninsula Community Foundation (now known as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation). As a program officer at those foundations, she worked extensively in the areas of postsecondary education, child development, human services, affordable housing and the arts. As part of the training faculty of The Grantmaking School at Grand Valley State University in Michigan for five years, Lynn trained more than 400 foundation professionals (program officers, trustees and executives) from foundations around the country.
Lynn also had a career in the legal field, starting in the litigation department of a major New York law firm, but soon changing her focus to public interest law. She was the legal director of a community-based organization representing Central American refugees and subsequently worked on a national level in major class-action lawsuits representing the rights of immigrants. As a professor at UCLA, she taught courses on immigration law and professional ethics. She is fluent in three languages—English, Spanish and French.
Lynn has served on multiple boards including Para Los Ninos, Los Angeles Education Partnership, Human Rights Watch and the Central American Refugee Center. In 2011, she was appointed to the Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks Commission where she continues to provide oversight to one of the oldest municipal park agencies in the country with nearly 450 parks and 7,400 full- and part-time employees.
Lynn holds a J.D. and a BA in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Learn More About Our Staff
Peter J. Taylor
President
Sarah Belnick
Senior Program Director, College Success
Emily Bestwick
Program & Investment Officer, Education Innovation Ventures
Patrick Bourke
Program Officer, Career Readiness
Cielestia Calbay
Communications Manager
Danielle Carrillo
Grants Manager
Jessica Haselton
Director, Program-Related Investments
Linea Koehler
Program Officer, College Success
Loraine Park
Manager, Learning and Impact
Angela Sanchez
Program Officer, College Success
Alissa Santoro
Office Manager & Executive Assistant to the President
Rosario Torres
Program Officer, Career Readiness
Saúl Valdez
Program Officer, College Success
Jennifer Zeisler
Senior Program Director, Career Readiness