Fernando joined the board of Green Foothills because he saw a critical need for his community to assume a more prominent role in environmental equity, food system management, and land conservation policy initiatives. He brings to Green Foothills his life experiences, including over a decade of expertise in leadership development and power building, as well as his connections with historically underserved community leaders in East San Jose.
In May 2026, Fernando began a new role at The Health Trust as Associate Director of Food System Policy. From 2023 to 2025, he served as the Policy Director at the local nonprofit Veggielution, where his work focused on supporting community leaders and strengthening power-building capacities among participants in Veggielution programs. Before joining Veggielution, he worked at Sacred Heart Community Service as the Manager of La Mesa Verde, an urban growers and food justice community program, from 2019 to 2023. You can learn more about his work on LinkedIn.
Fernando was born and raised in Valparaiso, Chile. Between 2013-2015 he lived in Cochabamba, Bolivia as an international volunteer working with Indigenous communities on agriculture and cultural practices. He has lived in San Jose, California, since 2019.
He enjoys gardening and growing flowers in small spaces, spending time at the beach (which reminds him of his country), playing tennis, practicing restorative yoga, reading about philosophy, history, and economics, keeping up with the news about politics in Chile and the U.S., and spending time with his dog Pacha. Pacha is a word that Indigenous people in South America use for our planet Earth.