Cohort 6 (2022-2023)

Kim is a financial advisor and impact consultant. She serves as Chief Investment Officer at Money Positive Cooperative, where she helps clients harness their money as a tool for personal and planetary wellbeing. She also executes impact strategy at Pluralize Capital, an impact investor working to advance climate justice and close the racial wealth gap through ownership-lens investing. Additionally, Kim conducts impact investing research for Stakeholders Capital. 

Previous positions were with Toniic (a global network of impact investors), The Nature Conservancy, Austin Habitat for Humanity, St. Edward’s University, and Agua Dulce Farm.

Kim is an alumni member of Resource Generation, a social justice organization for young people with class privilege. She holds an MBA and a BA in Environmental Studies and Spanish.

She enjoys backpacking, biking, cooking, crossstitch, live music, and reading. She grew up in Texas and lives in Richmond, VA with her husband.

Katherine Hayes is an owner/director of HRK Group, Inc., a comprehensive wealth management business comprised of an investment partnership, a private trust company, and a private foundation in St. Paul, MN. Katherine served as the HRK Investments, LLC Portfolio Manager from 1998 until 2011 and HRK Trust Company Board chair from 2015 until January 2022.  

Katherine graduated from Carleton College in 1992 with a B.A. in Studio Art and received her MBA from the University of St. Thomas in 2010. She received mediator training in 2010 and volunteered for the Conflict Resolution Center in Minneapolis from 2010-2014. Katherine started a repair business called Fixity in 2011 and has worked as a metalsmith and jewelry designer. Katherine has served as a Board member on the HRK Foundation Board since 1996, Artspace Projects Board from 2002-2007 and 2011-2016, The Cowles Center for Dance and Performing Arts from 2011-2016, and the Merce Cunningham Dance Foundation Board from 2008-2012. She currently serves as treasurer for the Apostle Islands Historic Preservation Conservation Board. She lives in St. Paul with her two children, Sevona, 18, and Tysen, 16, and two dogs, Olaf and Moe. 

Marlena Sonn, CFP(r), is Solidaire’s Director of Finance & Investments. A veteran finance professional with 14 years of experience in wealth management, Marlena leads Solidaire’s Integrated Capital strategies, collaborating with members, Board, staff, and movement partners to build community wealth via reparative, non-extractive investments. Marlena also provides strategic development and management of Solidaire’s financial and budgetary goals, as outlined in their Theory of Liberation.   

As the President and Founder of Amazonia Wealth Management, a New York City-based financial planning firm where she specialized in working with progressive, Ultra High Net Worth millennials, women, and family offices, Marlena provided the leadership in decarbonizing over $ 1 billion in investments, flanking the movement demands from Standing Rock and the Divest/Invest campaign.   

Marlena is a widely cited expert on personal financial planning, having been featured on PBS’s Nightly Business Report, Crain’s, and guest lectures at institutions including New York University, New School of Social Research, SOCAP, and the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment (US-SIF). In 2015, she was a recipient of the etsy.org Regenerative Entrepreneur fellowship, supporting her work piloting the first drawdown/GHG-negative portfolios offered to individual investors.   

Her personal mission is to plant 10 million trees in the Amazon rainforest in her lifetime. 

Esperanza Pallana is a culture change leader working with people, data, strategy, capital, and storytelling. Her passions are community-centered economic development, equitable and sustainable food systems, and racial justice.

She has worked with nonprofits for over 20 years, emphasizing leadership, systemic change, and policy advocacy. She has led several successful campaigns that have resulted in institutional change and innovative policy and capital/grantmaking programs that advance economic and racial equity.