Masha Chernyak, Senior Vice President of Programs and Brand Strategy
Email: mchernyak@latinocf.org
Twitter: @MashaChernyak
Masha is a strategic visionary, passionate storyteller, and an experienced advocate for the Latino immigrant community.
Since joining the Latino Community Foundation in 2012, Masha has envisioned and led groundbreaking programs and campaigns to build lasting people power. In her current position as Senior Vice President of Programs and Brand Strategy, Masha oversees key LCF programs, supports staff development, and storytelling efforts to shape a new narrative about the talents and contributions of Latino immigrants in California. She is integral in helping to create and sustain LCF’s culture focused on love, trust, and change, not charity.
Masha was instrumental in launching our Latino Giving Circle Network, now the largest network of Latino donors in the country, our Just Recovery Wildfire Relief model focused on investing in community organizing, and the California Latino Agenda— a pillar of our advocacy work. She also created the first ever Latino Nonprofit Accelerator in 2017 to build the fundraising and branding muscle of grassroots Latino-led nonprofits with groundbreaking results. Masha is passionate about putting love back into philanthropy and centering the voices and experiences of those closest to the issues that LCF addresses.
An immigrant from Russia, Masha served in the Peace Corps in rural Guatemala and worked as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side. While working at UNO, Chicago’s largest Latino education and advocacy organization, Masha led the creation of a parent university for Latino immigrants and graduated over 1,000 students a year. In this same role, Masha organized hundreds of Latino parents and diverse cross-sector leaders during an advocacy campaign that brought UNO $98 million in funding from the State of Illinois.
Masha holds a Bachelor’s in Marketing from University of Cincinnati and a Master’s in Public Affairs and Politics from the University of San Francisco. She is a marketing guru, a talented photographer, and is trilingual. Masha is driven by a deep sense of urgency to elevate the voices of immigrants and their contributions to this country. In her free time, Masha makes art, goes on travel adventures with her husband and toddler, and is happiest when laughing with her two amazing parents: Vladimir and Svetlana Chernyak.