Barbara Finnin

she/her

Finance and Operations Director

Oakland, CA

Barbara Finnin manages the internal business side of the organization. She is a part of the Leadership Team and leads our financial planning and management, business operations and systems, human resources, and supervises our fundraising team.

Barbara wasn’t always clear that her passion would be running the business side of things. As a young person she dreamed of being a DJ at a cutting-edge radio station, but she kept getting the management jobs in college radio — she should have known!

Barbara has over two decades of experience working with a range of nonprofits, from fiscal sponsorship to health to environment to economic development. After six years of being the Executive Director of City Slicker Farms, where she grew revenues by 400% and won a competitive $4m government grant to build a new farm and park, creating land security for the organization’s urban agriculture programs, she moved to specializing in nonprofit operations. Before coming to PowerSwitch Action, she worked as a consultant with startup and growing organizations to strengthen all aspects of organizational and financial management. In addition, she provided technical advice and consulting for urban agriculture and food programming and policies. Barbara is a board member of Schox Philanthropy and a Certified Nonprofit Account Professional (CNAP).

Barbara is extremely proud to work alongside a brilliant group of people that have doubled the budget since she started in 2016 so that we can realize our Long Term Agenda.

She lives in Oakland, CA with her husband, Will, and a backyard full of chickens, two dogs, fruits and vegetables, and lots of woodworking projects that will for sure get done (one day).