Tina Castro, CFA
Co-Founder and Managing Partner
Email: tcastro[at]avivarcapital.com

Tina is a Managing Partner and co-founder of Avivar Capital, bringing over 20 years of experience in the fields of finance and investment management. Tina co-leads the firm’s overall business activities and serves as an impact investment advisor to Avivar’s clients providing guidance on the development and execution of impact investing portfolios and funds.

Prior to founding Avivar, Tina was the Director of Impact Investing for The California Endowment (TCE) and prior to that worked in the Investment Management Division of Goldman, Sachs & Co. At TCE, a health-focused private foundation with over $3 billion in assets, Tina developed financing vehicles and strategies that delivered solid financial returns, leveraged significant additional investment capital and supported TCE’s Building Healthy Communities goals. This included the California FreshWorks Fund, a $272 million public-private partnership loan fund to finance supermarkets and other forms of healthy food retail in underserved communities throughout the state as well as TCE’s $101 million Program-Related Investment portfolio focused on healthy food retail, community health centers, affordable housing and community lending.

Tina has designed and built impact investing portfolios for a range of institutional clients – from developing strategy, policy and processes, including designing social and financial portfolio monitoring and reporting systems, to sourcing, diligencing and structuring transactions across a range of asset classes and return expectations.

Tina is a CFA Charterholder, has an MBA in Finance from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and an MA in International Affairs with a focus in International Business from the University of Miami. She earned a BA Cum Laude in International Relations with a focus in Latin America from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She currently sits on the Governance Board for the Center for Good Food Purchasing, National Advisory Council for the Building Healthy Places Network and is an Advisory Committee Member for the National Healthy Food Financing Fund Manager. She was also formerly a board member of Aeris Insight, the Dignity Health Community Economic Initiatives Subcommittee, the Mission Investors Exchange Steering Committee and an Adjunct Instructor for a graduate course on impact investing at USC as well as a Faculty Advisor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.