Team Members
Marlon Marshall
Chief Executive Officer, City Fund
Marlon Marshall is the Chief Executive Officer of City Fund, where he leads the organization’s efforts to ensure all students have access to high-quality public schools. In his role, Marlon brings a wealth of leadership experience from the highest levels of government, campaign strategy, and organizational development to advance City Fund’s mission of driving transformative change in public education.
Before joining City Fund, Marlon was a founding partner at 270 Strategies, where he helped organizations build impactful campaigns to mobilize communities and achieve meaningful change. He previously served as Special Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy Director in the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, where he worked to connect everyday Americans to the policymaking process. Marlon served in leadership roles in the 2016 Hillary for America campaign and the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, overseeing grassroots operations that engaged millions of volunteers across the country.
Marlon serves on the board of the Equitable Facilities Fund, an organization dedicated to improving access to affordable facilities financing for public charter schools. Marlon earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas and his Master’s degree in Policy Management from Georgetown University. A passionate fan of all things Kansas Jayhawks, where he serves on the Alumni Association Board, he now resides in Denver, Colorado, with his wife Stacy and their two daughters.
Anand Kesavan
Founder & Chief Executive Officer
As a seasoned investment banker, charter school executive, and senior leader of a large philanthropic organization, Anand is passionate about solving educational inequalities, creating efficient financial markets, optimizing school financial models to send more resources to classrooms, and using philanthropy to do so in a scalable and sustainable manner.
Prior to founding Equitable Facilities Fund, Anand led the Structured Finance Group and ran the Facility Fund for the Charter School Growth Fund, where he helped identify the nation’s best schools and invest in them. Prior to CSGF, he served as Chief Financial Officer of KIPP Austin Public Schools. Prior to KIPP, Anand spent more than a decade in senior investment banking roles, financing more than $10 billion in public projects including state revolving funds and K-12 schools with a specialty in credit ratings & quantitative structuring.
Anand is a graduate of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and the Education Pioneers Fellowship.
Michelle Getz
Partner & Chief Credit Officer
Michelle is charged with building Equitable Facilities Fund’s credit platform and leading a thorough credit diligence and approval process for each charter school loan. Additionally, she leads the loan closing, loan servicing and portfolio management processes.
She brings with her nearly 30 years of professional experience, including 18 years at Nuveen Asset Management. During her time at Nuveen, Michelle developed and refined their charter school investment methodology and implemented it via analysis of over 300 charter school organizations to determine viability and credit worthiness for investment. Michelle has also served as an Internal Auditor for the Coca-Cola Company and an External Financial Auditor with Deloitte & Touche.
Michelle earned a BS from Auburn University and an MS from the University of Houston. She is also a CPA in the states of Illinois and North Carolina.
Aarthi Sowrirajan
Director, Senior Portfolio Manager, BlackRock
Aarthi Sowrirajan is a Senior Portfolio Manager for BlackRock’s Alternative Solutions Group (ASG) within BlackRock Alternative Investors (BAI). An experienced impact investor, Aarthi manages the implementation of the BlackRock Impact Opportunities (BIO) Fund – a private markets, multi-alternatives fund focused on investing through a racial equity lens. Previously, she worked for Turner Impact Capital, a real estate investor and developer, managing the charter school development process from start to finish.
Aarthi is an active board member of the Equitas Charter School. She has a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Wharton School.
Sam Alnagar
Director, Investor Relations
Sam supports EFF’s efforts to to underwrite and originate loans to high-impact charter schools throughout the US. He is a member of the inaugural cohort of the Education Finance Analyst (EFA) Program sponsored by EFF and Civic Builders.
Prior to joining EFF, Sam was an Associate at Magellan Research Group, a primary research firm that connects institutional investors with leading experts across various industries. Prior to joining Magellan Research Group, Sam held internships across wealth management, media, and clean energy. Sam holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a primary concentration in Finance from Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business.
Rachel Baldini
Director of School Investments
Rachel is charged with managing investment processes and recommendations which contribute to a high-impact portfolio of school loans at Equitable Facilities Fund. Her role also includes supporting and optimizing the performance of junior members of the underwriting team.
She brings over 15 years of diverse lending experience to EFF. Previously, Rachel was Senior Vice President, Director of SBA Lending, at a community Bank. At the Bank, she developed and managed the Bank’s in-house Small Business Administration (SBA) department, which included oversight of the entire SBA lending process.
Experienced in various Federal loan programs, as well as community development lending, she has held positions with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) as well as the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Rachel holds a BS from the University of Delaware in Finance and Business Administration.
Wendy Berry
Investment Principal - Lending & Research
Wendy is a facility financing specialist with deep credit expertise. At EFF she conducts bond market research, builds and leads our internal underwriting process, and works closely with our Chief Credit Officer on greenlighting transactions and due diligence efforts. For the past decade, Wendy has focused on the evolving charter school sector, where she has been a thought leader in improving credit standards for the burgeoning market.
She has authored or co-authored several comprehensive publications on the sector, including the LISC Charter School Bond Issuance: A Complete History Volumes I, II, and III along with numerous articles on the ever-changing charter school facility finance landscape.
Wendy has consulted with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the New York State Housing Finance Agency, the Local Support Initiatives Corporation, the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute, and the Arizona State Board of Education. She was also a senior credit analyst at Moody’s Investors Service.
Wendy received a BA and MPA from the Rockefeller College of Public Administration at the University of Albany. During her career, Wendy has held Series 7, Series 53, and Series 63 licenses.
Julio Castillo
Investment Analyst
Julio supports EFF’s efforts to underwrite and originate loans to high-impact charter schools throughout the US. He is a member of the third cohort of the Education Finance Analyst (EFA) Program sponsored by EFF, Civic Builders, Afton Partners, Self-Help Credit Union, and Charter Schools Development Corporation. Notably, as a charter school alum, Julio has a personal connection to EFF’s mission, having completed his high school education in a facility financed by the organization.
Prior to joining EFF, Julio began his career as a Teach for America corps member in Miami-Dade. He spent two years teaching Algebra 1 in a bilingual classroom at a Title I public high school, where his students’ proficiency levels more than doubled year over year. During this time, Julio also interned at Indelible Capital Partners, an impact-driven real estate investment & advisory firm based in Miami. Julio holds a BA in Economics and Philosophy from Boston College.
Arielle Dorvilus
Investment Analyst
Arielle supports EFF’s efforts to underwrite and originate loans to high-impact charter schools throughout the US. She is a member of the second cohort of the Education Finance Analyst (EFA) Program sponsored by EFF, Civic Builders, and Afton Partners.
Prior to joining EFF, Arielle was in the Accounting Department at WellLife Network, a health and human services provider for those with disabilities. She also worked for Jovia Financial Credit Union. Arielle holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from SUNY College at Old Westbury.
Allison Fansler
Senior Advisor
Allison Fansler is an executive and organizational leader with deep expertise in management, growth and scale. Allison spent 16 years as the President of KIPP DC, where she led strategy, operations, talent, finance, governance, and external affairs for the network of schools. After joining KIPP DC in 2006, she led KIPP DC expansion efforts from 575 students to over 7,300 students and from 2 to 21 schools, scaling the organization from a startup to a mature organization over multiple phases of growth.
After graduating from the University of Virginia, Allison served as the Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff and White House Liaison for the United States Department of Treasury under Secretary Robert E. Rubin. She joined the KIPP Foundation in 2001 and helped to start many of the first KIPP schools across the United States, before earning an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and returning to KIPP in D.C. Allison has completed both the Broad Residency and the Pahara-Aspen Fellowship. She serves on the board of the DC Charter School Alliance, Connected DMV, and was a member of the Federal City Council in Washington, D.C.
Allison is an alumnus of the University of Virginia and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. In 2018, she was awarded Fuqua’s “Leader of Consequence” alumni award, which recognizes alumni whose exemplary professional accomplishments are matched by the significant positive social or environmental change they have created.
Allison lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and three children.