Veronica Carrizales is managing director of programs at The California Wellness Foundation. In her role, Carrizales helps integrate grantmaking strategies across the Advancing Wellness portfolios, enhances the grant review process, and pilots potential solutions in collaboration with grantees and other community partners.
Carrizales spent the past 15 years with California Calls, a powerful statewide alliance of community-based organizations spanning urban, rural, and suburban counties across the state. As a widely respected social justice leader, she has led efforts tied to California Call’s policy priorities of funding public services, improving government effectiveness, reforming the tax system to improve equity, and investing in economic development that results in good jobs that bring dollars into all communities. Prior to her work at California Calls, she served as a labor specialist at the UC Berkeley Labor Center advocating for low-wage workers. Her lived experience growing up in the Coachella Valley in a migrant farmworker family has fueled her passion as a social justice advocate.
She serves as chair of the board of California Budget and Policy Center, board secretary for Human Impact Partners, and is a member of the board of Alliance for a Better California.