Margarita Luna

Plenary Lunch Panel – Funding Social Innovation

Social innovation has great potential to create a more equitable and sustainable planet. As more people align their gifts, passion, and purpose–and “doing good while doing well” emerges as a career pathway– the funding landscape must also innovate to drive this progress forward. What strategies are investors, philanthropists, and companies using to catalyze opportunity and support visionary emerging leaders? Hear from our panel about funding risky ideas, innovative strategies to make the funding landscape more inclusive, and what is required to help emerging innovators create significant positive social change.

 

Margarita Luna joined The California Endowment in June 2007. As Senior Program Manager for communities in the Eastern Coachella Valley under The Endowment’s 10-year Building Healthy Communities initiative, Luna manages a grant portfolio focused on improving community health through community engagement in policy/advocacy and systems change.

Prior to joining The Endowment, Luna served as a Keck-Vivian Weinstein Child Advocacy Fellow and Senior Social Worker for Public Counsel – the largest pro bono public interest law firm in the U.S. – where she managed the Special Needs Advocacy Project, a client advocacy program. During her tenure, Luna advocated for the rights of low income children and families, while pursuing systemic changes in educational, health and social service policies that would improve the well-being of disenfranchised communities.

Luna also served as a Pedro Zamora Fellow in government affairs for AIDS Action in Washington, DC, for which she assisted in lobbying efforts to reauthorize the Ryan White CARE Act.

She earned her B.A. in Sociology and Chicano/a Studies, M.P.H. in Community Health Sciences, and M.S.W. in Health Services from UCLA.  Luna is also a Certified Professional Coach and lives in San Dimas with her husband and two young sons.