Meet the Team
Jason Friedman, Co-Founder & CEO
For over 25 years, the unifying theme of Jason’s professional life has been creating opportunities for equitable access to capital in underserved communities. He has advised hundreds of public, private, and nonprofit organizations on initiatives supporting small businesses, affordable housing, and job creation in underserved markets. Today, he leads the most experienced consulting firm for CDFI loan funds.
From 1987 to 1994, he served as an economic development advisor under NYS Governor Mario Cuomo. Jason contributed to establishing programs for MWBEs, regional revolving loan funds, and financial incentives for banks to finance small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. He also helped develop the NYS Economic Opportunity Zones Program.
From 1995 to 2002, he was Vice President of Economic Development at ISED, a statewide CDC in Iowa, expanding services for immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs and rural communities. He launched an SBA Women’s Business Center, matched savings programs, created a CDFI, and built private-sector partnerships.
From 2002 to 2005, he was the Director of Training and Education at the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, managing national and regional conferences, redesigning training programs, leading a national effort to establish industry performance standards, and co-authoring several manuals on high-performance programs.
Amy Szabo, Chief Client Services Officer
Amy is nationally regarded as a preeminent expert in fund development, certification, and compliance for Community Development Financial Institutions. Amy directs our team of eighteen industry veterans and has been responsible for overseeing and preparing over $75M in successful grant proposals for our clients in the last ten years. Amy created MyFund, our proprietary ‘quality control’ software for CDFI certification and program applications. Amy also has expertise in program development, technology solutions, and organizational effectiveness for nonprofits. Previously, Amy was the Development Director for the Economic and Community Development Institute in Columbus, Ohio. Amy holds a BA from Oklahoma State University and an MA from The Ohio State University.
Melanie Friedman, Co-Founder & COO
Melanie embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of F|A, having founded The Iowa Children’s Museum in 1999 from her kitchen table. She later founded F|A, initially focusing on organizational development and fundraising for non-profits and political campaigns. Melanie served as Campaign Manager for former four-term Congressman Dave Loebsack (D-IA), and managed other state and local campaigns. Today, Melanie now oversees our administrative and fiscal operations.
Nadia Doubiany, Client Coordinator
Nadia joined F|A in 2020 to help manage our rapidly growing client base. As Client Coordinator, she works to ensure that clients receive the highest level of service and satisfaction. Nadia coordinates interactions with our clients to assure our client's needs are met, and helps design and implement our systems to improve the client experience. Nadia helps manage our CDFI Certification and Compliance Program. Nadia has experience in domestic violence programs, and has a B.A. from the University of Iowa.
Senior Associates
Jessica Sotelo
Jessica has spent the last 20 years dedicated to developing and leading initiatives for financial well-being in low income communities. As the Founding Director of a community based organization in Idaho, Jessica set an ambitious agenda in support of small business development in Native American and Latino communities. Today, Jessica has amassed an impressive track record in preparing CDFI Fund and OCS CED grants. She is licensed with the National Standards for Excellence in Nonprofits and specializes in coaching Nonprofit EDs and CEOs. Jessica holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Cristina Valverde
Cristina joined F|A in 2015 with extensive experience in credit analysis, small business operations, nonprofit fundraising, CDFIs, and international development. To date, she has served as a contracted reviewer of grant applications for the CDFI Fund, and at F|A, she has guided dozens of CDFIs through preparing comprehensive and accurate certification and funding applications.
Cristina has held small business credit analysis roles in public, private, and nonprofit institutions including ACCION USA, Viamericas Corporation, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), and has management experience in a family-owned small business that imports agricultural products from Latin America.
Most recently, she was Development Manager at Yamba Malawi in New York City, where she secured over $2M in grant awards from diverse institutional funders, and a Consultant at Summit Consulting, LLC, in Washington, D.C., where she supported the credit modeling and federal budget management of some of the nation’s largest Federal credit programs, including the CDFI Fund and USDA - Rural Development.
Cristina has degrees from Harvard University and Tufts University.
Joanna Winchester
Joanna co-founded North 4th, LLC a consulting firm for community-driven organizations, nonprofits, and social impact companies. The firm's services include grant writing, strategy development, project management, stakeholder engagement, and organizational strategy. Before founding North 4th, LLC, Joanna was the Director of Strategic Initiatives and the Director of Economic Development for the New Kensington Community Development Corporation in Philadelphia, leading the organization to new levels of growth and program diversification. She has a Master's in City Planning at the University of Pennsylvania.
Shanta Schachter
As a co-founder of North 4th LLC, Shanta supports community-driven companies and nonprofits to develop comprehensive strategies to connect with the communities they work in and advance their missions. She spent 11 years in Philadelphia as Deputy Director of New Kensington Community Development Corporation of Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization focused on sustainable development and community building. Her expertise includes fundraising, program development, branding and identity, organizational restructuring, and fiscal management. She holds an MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Geography, Urban Planning, and Community Development.
Niki Wanner
Niki has built an impressive career over the past twenty years as a Development professional for high-performance nonprofits, securing over $75 million in funding. As the founder of Niki Wanner Grant Solutions, Niki excels in building sustainable fund development programs to ensure the organization's financial stability and growth. This includes fundraising strategy development, grants and donor relationship management, compliance, and board and staff training. Niki was previously the Director of Fundraising at Affordable Homes & Communities (AHC) in Arlington, VA. Significant accomplishments include institutionalizing capacity in fund development, capitalization planning, program development, and federal grants compliance. Niki also expanded AHC’s grants portfolio from Resident Services to Community Building and Engagement, Real Estate Development, and Construction Management. At F|A, Niki works with our clients on fund development strategy and programs, federal grant writing, and CDFI Certification. Multi-lingual, Niki has a B.A. English, Spanish, Latin American Studies from Augustana College, and an M.A. in Nonprofit Management, Concentration in Fundraising.
Celina Peña
F|A is proud to partner with Celina, a leading expert in the design, implementation, and scaling of CDFIs. Celina’s experience over two decades includes fundraising, policy and advocacy, strategic and business planning, budgeting, performance management, and community economic development. She started in the CDFI field as the Women’s Business Center Director with the City of San Antonio. In her twelve years at LiftFund, Celina served as Chief Growth Officer, Chief Advancement Officer, Chief Program Officer, and Vice-President for Business Support. During the pandemic, Celina drove strategic initiatives across capital management, product development, and production teams that deployed $100M+ in small business grants and $74M in capital to underbanked, majority BIPOC-owned small businesses in just two years. She led a budget of $45 million and raised over $10 million. Celina has a B.A. and M.A. from The University of Texas at San Antonio. She is a Lean Six Sigma and a Ph.D. candidate in Community Engagement. She has her consulting firm in/tend LLC.
Rachael Dubin
Rachel joins F|A with over 20 years of broad-based experience in community development finance for community-based lenders and state government. As the SVP of Lending and Chief Credit Officer at Community Capital New York, Inc., Rachel partnered with numerous county governments to deploy over $20 million to small businesses during the pandemic. As Senior Director at Empire State Development, Rachel designed and managed innovative capital access programs for New York’s small businesses unable to secure financing from traditional sources. She served as NY’s chief compliance officer for the state’s $90 MM SSBCI program. She managed an $8 million access to capital program that leveraged more than $25 million of small business lending in LMI communities. Rachel has an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University and a BA from Washington University in St. Louis.
Nick Epifano
Nick Epifano has over thirteen years of experience in the industry, with domain expertise in preparing financial forecasts for new markets tax credit (NMTC) and historic tax credit transactions. From 2014 to 2024, Nick was a manager in the Cleveland office of Novogradac & Company. Nick consulted on and prepared financial models for over 130 tax credit transactions, including twinning tax credit programs and utilizing other complex tax credit financing tools. His experience includes audit, tax, compliance consulting, and various attestation services within the tax credit financing industry. At F|A, Nick is a Certification, Compliance, and Capital Access Team member, and builds financial forecasts and applications for our clients. Nick received a Bachelor’s in Business Administration, Finance from Kent State University and is licensed in Ohio as a Certified Public Accountant.
Kavita R. Gobburi
Kavita is passionate about investing in communities that support diverse populations. She has over 20 years of experience partnering with community-based organizations, CDFIs, philanthropies, and impact investors to make capital investments, create affordable housing, and revitalize communities. Specialties include lending, credit analysis, financial analysis and modeling, underwriting, capital budgeting & planning, and grant and loan applications. Kavita previously served as Director of Affordable Housing Program (AHP) Compliance for the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. She also served as a Senior Loan Officer for the Northern California Community Loan Fund and a Senior Financial Analyst for Bank of America, Capital Markets Group.
Deborah Momsen-Hudson
Deborah Momsen-Hudson has devoted her career to addressing society’s economic and climate inequities by developing domain expertise in affordable housing finance, green lending, and innovations in the secondary market for traditional financial institutions and CDFI loans. Deborah has held executive-level positions at Self-Help Credit Union, Fannie Mae, and First Citizens Bank, specializing in single-family mortgage loans made to low-income borrowers, secondary market sales, and purchases of single-family loans. Unique in the industry, Deborah possesses technical expertise in loan fund operations and demonstrated leadership in business development and relationship management. CEO of Momsen-Hudson Consulting, LLC, Deborah partners with F|A to help our clients increase financial stability through creating diversified capitalization strategies, including secondary market sales and purchases, and social impact investment. Deborah applies her in-depth knowledge and industry-specific insights to analyze internal operations, identify and resolve issues hindering growth in deployment and performance. She received her BA in International Studies & Russian from Allegheny College and a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.
Anne Chaney
Anne is one of the premier Development professionals in the industry. As the Principal of Impetus Consulting, Inc., Anne provides strategic guidance, financial structuring and grant/loan application preparation to CDFIs and other nonprofits nationally. She has a 90%+ success rate in funding application approvals, having raised more than $56 million in government grants since 2013, as well as $100 million in New Markets Tax Credit allocation authority. Anne previously served as Director of Program Development for Community Ventures, a statewide CDFI in Kentucky, with capitalization of multiple lines of business sourced from SBA, HUD, USDA, and CDFI.
Barbara Kueny
Barbara is a seasoned CDFI Development and Communications professional. In her previous capacity as the Director of Development for Wisconsin Women's Business Initiative Corporation, she raised over $50 million in operations and investments. She excels in relationship building, writing & editing, fundraising and loan fund capitalization, and private funder communications. Barbara has a Masters in Communication from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee; Bachelors in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Stuart Schneider
Stuart is a leading fund development professional, having written successful proposals that secured more than $100 million in awarded grants or contracts. His content expertise includes affordable homeownership, cooperative ownership, and workforce and economic development. As the Chief Revenue Officer for Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City, Inc., he raised an average of $2 million annually, with outstanding results in securing funding from major financial institutions. Stuart holds a BA in Economics and Urban Studies from Rutgers College.
Bethany Goldzer
Bethany is a results-driven and entrepreneurial nonprofit executive with experience in site operations, program design, fundraising, staff coaching, performance management, financial counseling, and economic and workforce development. She recently served as the Director of Site Growth for Thrive Scholars, which helps high-achieving, low-income, underrepresented students get into and graduate from top colleges equipped to achieve their full career potential. Bethany also served as the Director of Development & Partnerships for the Bronx Charter School for Children, where she expanded the donor base by 23% in just one year. She has a BA in History from the University of Chicago, an MS in Education from Pace University, and an MS in Nonprofit Management from the New School.