FWSF Scholarship Fund Board of Directors (501c3)
The Financial Women of San Francisco Scholarship Fund is governed by a Board of Directors that consists of the Executive Board along with Committee Chair Persons.
Please click on the board member's photo to read her biography.
Scholarship Fund Executive Board
Susan English Mazzetti
FWSF President
As one of the co-founders of Quorum Private Wealth, Sue brings a decade of wealth management experience at Merrill Lynch and a decade of public accounting experience at Ernst & Young to her team and clients. Sue serves as a client relationship manager focused on developing financial strategies and advice for individuals, their families, and their businesses. She has a particular passion for working with women, to empower them with financial literacy. She works closely with her clients’ full team of advisors, including attorneys and accountants, to provide a coordinated approach to wealth management, including wealth transfer, tax minimization and estate planning.
She holds a BS in Accounting from Boston College and an MBA in Finance from Columbia University.
Mona Ahmadi
Vice President (2025 President-Elect)
Mona Ahmadi is a finance professional with 10 years of experience in financial planning and analysis. She became involved with FWSF after receiving one of the 2014 FWSF scholarships while pursuing her MBA at the University of San Francisco. Mona also serves as a board member at Project ARTogether, using art as an element to bring awareness to the refugee community of the Bay Area.
Denise Rigli
Immediate Past President
Denise Rigli is director in the PwC risk assurance practice in San Francisco with over 18 years of experience. Within PwC's risk assurance practice she focuses on working with financial services, fintech and technology companies to enhance their governance, risk and compliance activities. Experience covers business transformation, IT, financial reporting and operational risks, with a unique view of how these areas intersect. She has focused on assisting clients examine new perspectives, focus on identifying the most critical risk, mitigation of risk through controls that are right for their organization and ensuring that identified weaknesses are remediated timely. She has leveraged her years in the external audit practice to bring a financial statement/financial reporting perspective to both the IT and the operational side of the business for a holistic approach to risk mitigation. She is effective at building and sustaining effective and trusted relationships with senior management and is seen as a trusted business advisor.
Kim Scala
Secretary
Kim Scala is an attorney with an MBA who represents privately held companies, individuals, and investors in real estate, financing, and business transactions. She serves as strategic general counsel to emerging growth and middle-market companies, as well as pro-bono counsel to Rockwood Leadership Institute. An entrepreneur with previous start-up experience, Kim left a large firm, where she was a partner, to start her own law firm, Scala Law, in 2014.
Kim was the Industry Impact Award Honorable Mention winner at the three-chapter Commercial Real Estate Women’s 2016 ELEVATE event. In 2014, she was honored as one of the “Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business” by the San Francisco Business Times and has been on the “Forever Influential Honor Roll” since 2015.
Kim has served on the FWSF board since 2015 and is currently president of the board of CREW East Bay since 2014. She is also on the Advisory Board of Alliance for Girls, which champions the leaders and voices that support young women and girls. Kim spearheaded the Archer Norris “Women in Business Roundtable” series, a moderated quarterly program featuring C-level business leaders.
Kim is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University. She received an MBA (Beta Gamma Sigma honors) from UCLA and a JD from UC Davis, where she received Order of the Coif, Law Review, and Phi Kappa Phi honors. Following law school, Kim clerked for the Honorable Justice Joseph R. Grodin of the California Supreme Court.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimscala
Ashley Crawford
Treasurer
At Inheritance Funding Company, Inc., the industry leader for cash advances during the probate process, I love turning financial data into business insight. As the Controller, I actively work to leverage our accounting data to inform business strategy in addition to ensuring the smooth operation of our financial functions.
As a CPA, before my current position, I worked in public accounting for five years at RINA Accountants & Advisors. My focus was primarily on partnership and individual taxation.
My first love is reading. I share that passion at FWSF through faciliating the FWSF Book Club.
Tracy Teale
VP Scholarship
Tracy Teale is an audit stockholder with RINA Accountancy Corporation, a regional public accounting firm with 60 years of experience serving clients in the Greater East Bay, San Francisco, and the Sacramento/Roseville markets. RINA's focus is primarily on small and medium-sized privately held businesses and their owners and serves a variety of industries, including not-for-profit organizations. Tracy has extensive experience providing audit and attest services to both for-profit and non-profit businesses in a variety of industries. Tracy assists many of her clients with accounting issues and the design of processes and systems. Tracy also has extensive experience in setting up or modifying accounting systems. Prior to joining RINA in 1997, Tracy worked in private industry as a CFO for 10 years.
Tracy holds a Master’s in taxation and an MBA from Golden Gate University. She earned a BA in Economics from University of California at Santa Cruz and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from University of California at Berkeley.
Tracy is a licensed certified public accountant and her professional affiliations include memberships with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the California Society of Certified Public Accountants.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyteale/
Seema Jain
VP Fundraising
Over sixteen years of experience assisting some of the world’s foremost companies during transformative events with tax planning including mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, and pricing of intercompany transactions. Creative and team-oriented, with proven ability to think strategically and manage large complex projects with competing deadlines successfully. Industry experience includes financial services, commercial real estate, technology services and fintechs.
Completed Chartered Accountancy and Master of Commerce from India.
Scholarship Fund Committee Chairs
Kathleen Nielsen
Endowment/Leadership Circle Chair
Kathleen Nielsen is the president of Equilibrium Services Group, Inc. She is a governance, compliance, risk, and HR professional with 20 years of experience working on corporate compliance matters with management and boards of national and international companies.
Kathleen works in all aspects of a company's life cycle — including start-up and formation, mergers and acquisitions, work outs, restructuring, IPO, securitization, and debt refinancing. She develops risk and corporate compliance policy for companies in a wide array of industries and works extensively with a client's shareholders, lenders, audit firms, legal counsel, and tax advisors to support the client's growth and success.
Kathleen is an experienced facilitator and trained mediator who is adept at working with teams of diverse individuals. She is also experienced in FCPA, OFAC, and ITAR compliance matters.
Kathleen has a BA, Pre-Law, from the University of California, Berkeley and an MPA from the University of San Francisco. She is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and an SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP). Kathleen is also the board chair of a non-profit providing nutrition, educational support, and tuition to impoverished children around the world.
Sonja Velez
Individual Fundraising Chair
Sonja Velez is CFO of The San Francisco Foundation, a community foundation working to ensure that everyone in the Bay Area can thrive. Sonja oversees the investment, planning and analysis, and accounting teams and chairs the 401(k) Committee. One of the most rewarding aspects of this role has been the opportunity to expand impact investing strategies in support of the foundations efforts to advance racial equity and economic inclusion.
Sonja previously worked in Myanmar and Thailand while serving as CFO of The Democratic Voice of Burma, a courageous independent media organization.
Prior to that, she held a variety of finance roles during her 13 year tenure at Charles Schwab, including VP of Treasury, VP of Individual Investor Finance, and VP of Corporate Planning and Analysis.
She holds an MBA from UC Berkeley, an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco, and a bachelor's degree in International Relations from UC Davis.
Sonja first joined FWSF in 2007 and rejoined upon her return from Asia, and has served on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee since 2017.
Sandra Camacho
Financial Woman of the Year Co-Chair
Sandra is a Director, Finance/Controller at BTIG, LLC a global financial services firm specializing in institutional trading, investment banking, research and related brokerage services. Given over 20 years in experience in the finance industry and in the accounting field, she is well placed to provide senior level accounting guidance and expertise.
Prior to BTIG, LLC she was the Controller of an affiliated entity, Pacific View Asset Management, LLC, and prior to that she worked at Babcock & Brown LP, a global investment and advisory firm, where she held various roles culminating in the Assistant Controller of the U.S. Corporate and Structured Finance division.
She holds an MBA with a focus in international business and a BS in finance from California State University.
Sandra served in the U.S. Army Reserve for 21 years where she was an Adjutant General branch officer. She graduated from various leadership development training courses.
Sandra has been actively involved in Financial Women of San Francisco since 2012. Her prior board roles were as Marketing and Communications Co-Chair and Scholarship Co-Chair. She was also a Financial Woman of the Year and International Women's Day committee member.
Ruoyi (Roi) Fang
Financial Woman of the Year Co-Chair
Roi Fang, CPA, is the Controller at Brightloom, a Bay area SaaS company that builds customer growth platform. Roi is also an adjacent Accounting Processor at Golden Gate University.
Roi received her bachelor degree in Economics from UC Berkeley and Master degree in Accounting from Golden Gate University. She started her career in the Audit function at Deloitte SF. During her time at Deloitte, she specialized in SaaS and renewable energy industry. She then joined Arkose Labs, a Cybersecurity SaaS company, as the Assistant Controller.
Roi was a FWSF scholarship recipient in 2015, and has been helping out with FWSF since then. She has been a team lead for scholarship since 2015 and served on the board of FWSF on the Membership Committee and Fundraise Committee.
Ami Arroyo
Corporate Sponsorship Co-Chair
A Strategic Recruiter on a mission - to build and power Sales, Finance and Tech teams for success
Tom Byrne
Corporate Sponsorship Co-Chair
Vice President, Insurance and Benefits, Lockton
A former High School Teacher, I became an insurance broker in 2003. After successfully investing my first 9-years focusing on the California Residential Real Estate industry, with expertise in comprehensive Errors & Omissions / Professional Liability risk management and brokerage, I wanted a new challenge. So, in 2011, I left the real estate world, and shifted focus towards the Technology sector, including expanding into the world of Employee Benefits and Total Rewards.
Today, my experiences, relationships, resources, knowledge and overall perspective of the insurance, benefits, and retirement landscape have shaped my skillset into becoming a comprehensive strategic advisor and advocate for my clients’ corporate and human capital risks.
Anne Chambers
Director-at-Large
In 2004, Anne Chambers launched a consulting practice, Chambers & McAlpine Associates, Inc.,specializing in developing innovative financial technology strategies for the financial services industry. Prior to that, Anne was COO/CFO of Advisor Software, Inc., a provider of web-based asset-allocation and investment-analysis applications for financial institutions. Anne also has worked in a variety of roles at Bank of America — including SVP for Finance Change Management, where she managed major company-wide merger transitions, systems conversions, and process redesign projects. She began her career at Deloitte and Touche and has a BA and MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. Anne is active as a past president of the Haas Business School Alumni Council and a member of the Haas Business School Development Council. Anne is also a CPA.
Vineetha Mummadi
Scholarship Co-Chair
Vineetha Mummadi is a model governance risk management analyst at Bank of the West since 2017. She analyzes model risk processes and metrics for significant trends and possible areas of risk. Previously, Vineetha has experience in supply chain management with Renault-Nissan Automotive in India where she was leading risk management in areas of importing raw materials from Spain and Turkey. She has an educational background in chemical engineering, energy engineering. She also holds an MBA in finance from Mills College in Oakland, CA, and a certification in Mastering Business Excellency (MBE)from CEDEP, Fontainebleau. She is very interested in women’s empowerment causes and was a former Lela Jahn Grant recipient awarded by Financial Women of San Francisco for improving lives of women through education. She was a 2016 FWSF Scholarship recipient and has been actively involved with the organization since then. She currently is a board member as well as a 2019 FWSF scholarship co-chair.
Karen Crowley
Scholarship Co-Chair
Karen Crowley is a Salesforce solutions engineer for ICONIQ Capital. She has designed and implemented Salesforce solutions for private equity and family office firms. She has 15 years of experience leading systems projects through their full development life cycle — requirements gathering, design, development, testing, training, implementation, ongoing enhancements and user support.
Karen also worked in regulatory and systems (SAP) roles at Pacific Gas and Electric Company. She has provided written and oral testimony before the California Public Utilities Commission. She started her career assisting businesses and outside counsel to resolve complex business and litigation challenges.
Karen holds a BA in economics from Pomona College. She is a Certified Salesforce Administrator.
Karen joined FWSF in 2014 and began serving on the board in 2017.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenjcrowley/
Robyn Rogin
Mentorship Chair
Director of LendingDirector of Lending, Pacific Community Ventures (PCV)
Impact Lender | Startup Advisor | Former Bank Executive | Social Justice Advocate