Marisa Castuera Hayase

Marisa Hayase leads the Foundation’s grantmaking strategy and programs, with a focus on community-based collaborations that help people achieve economic stability and thrive. In this role, Hayase oversees a team responsible for $150 million in annual grants and related efforts that address poverty by improving housing stability, employment and educational opportunities, and community health and well-being.

Hayase has worked with nonprofit, philanthropic, and government organizations for over 25 years to increase the well-being of communities. Before joining the Weinberg Foundation as a program director in 2019, she was a public-sector consultant for 12 years. Her company, Storyline Consulting, supported statewide collaborations and strategic planning in the areas of community health, public education, workforce development, affordable housing, and culture-based programs. Hayase also helped a diverse range of public-serving organizations expand their work through data analysis, community input, and storytelling.

Prior to her consulting work, Hayase’s leadership roles included serving as executive director of a Bay Area nonprofit dedicated to asset building in low-income families and communities; leading Spanish-language programs at a Los Angeles domestic violence agency; working at a place-based foundation in Hawaiʻi to advance public education and community development outcomes; and helping to found and chairing the board of a Native Hawaiian culture-based charter school that now serves students from kindergarten through grade eight in Waimānalo, Hawaiʻi.

Hayase received a Bachelor of Arts from Williams College, where she was a Ford-Mellon research fellow, and master’s in public policy from Harvard University. She was selected for a one-year Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for global leadership, enabling her to live in South America and Asia. She is currently an Omidyar fellow, joining an ongoing forum of leaders dedicated to creating positive and lasting change in Hawaiʻi, a Change Leaders in Philanthropy fellow with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, and a board member of the Stupski Foundation.