Dana K. Bezerra is the president of Heron. Bezerra began her career in agriculture in California. Her family owned a dairy farm in the San Joaquin Valley where she bore witness to the bankruptcy of a local creamery the formation of an independent milk producers’ cooperative and the provision of a local tax abatement package to a multinational food company. Those experiences left Bezerra with a lasting impression about the importance of social cohesion within a community — and the complicated relationship between communities and capital markets. Bezerra proceeded to work at Merrill Lynch in the Private Banking & Investment Group where she specialized in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Management. For the next decade, Bezerra managed client money where she earned an appreciation for the nuances of intergenerational wealth and learned to navigate complex financial transactions and markets. In 2006 Bezerra joined Heron. As a program officer Bezerra engaged with nonprofit and community leaders who were operationalizing Over the next 10 years, Bezerra played a key role in rotating Heron’s entire portfolio (including debt-equity and grants) to better reflect Heron’s mission. Bezerra became responsible for sourcing deals identifying and developing relationships across a spectrum of investors, syndicating capital when possible, and cultivating opportunities to deploy the full range of Heron’s philanthropic and market-rate toolkit.