Sara Razavi is CEO of Working Solutions CDFI, a role she assumed in 2017 when she succeeded the organization’s founder. Sara joined Working Solutions in 2013 and served as COO prior to becoming CEO. She brings over 20 years of experience in the social sector to the role, with expertise in strategy, finance, and partnership management.
Most recently, under Sara’s leadership, Working Solutions developed an ambitious five-year strategic plan to double all-time deployment to reach $100 million in small-dollar financing for businesses throughout California by FYE29.
As a member of the Working Solutions Executive Team, Sara has led significant growth in the organization’s capital deployment, asset size, and impact. Over the past 5 years, Working Solutions has tripled its all-time deployment from $20 million to $60 million while maintaining a focus on small-dollar loans and grants, with 99% of capital deployed to low-income and other historically marginalized entrepreneurs. Additionally, Working Solutions has quadrupled its assets from $5 million to $20 million since 2013. Working Solutions recently expanded both its geographic footprint and loan size, now providing small business loans of up to $100,000 throughout the entire state of California.
Sara serves on the Board of Directors of the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN), the national CDFI industry association; the Board of Directors of Scale Link, a financial intermediary for CDFI microlenders; the Board of Trustees of Community Reinvestment Fund, USA (CRF); and the Advisory Board of the Center for Impact Finance at the UNH Carsey School of Public Policy. Previously she was a founding Executive Committee member of the California Coalition for Community Investment (CCCI), a statewide coalition of CDFIs.
Prior to joining Working Solutions, Sara was Executive Director of Honoring Emancipated Youth, a subsidiary of United Way of the Bay Area focused on advocacy for former foster youth. Over the years, Sara has worked at multiple social sector entities specifically focused on under-resourced communities, including immigrant and low-income children, youth, and families.
Sara has a BA in Sociology and Theatre from UC Davis and an MBA from the University of San Francisco, where she focused on the intersection of social impact and finance. She is also active in her other passion, the arts, through the San Francisco Bay Area theatre community, primarily as a past board member and current advisor to Golden Thread Productions. Sara lives in Oakland with her wife and two young children.