Senior Associate

Luis Vergara is a Senior Associate with La Piana Consulting and the Director of Marketing and Communications for the firm. He brings more than 15 years of nonprofit management and consulting experience to the firm, with a special emphasis on organizations serving youth and communities of color. His consulting experience includes organizational and program development, branding and marketing, market research, and strategy development.

Prior to joining La Piana Consulting, Luis was a Senior Research Manager with Cheskin, a national research and strategy consulting firm where he provided clients with strategic recommendations on brand positioning, identity, program and product development. His clients at Cheskin included national nonprofits, Fortune 500 companies, such as Fed Ex and Unilever, and national advertising agencies.

Luis also has extensive experience in nonprofit management from program coordination to overall organizational management. He served as Executive Director of Youth Radio, a media and youth development organization. At Youth Radio, he played a key role in developing the organization from a start-up to being one of the most influential youth media organizations in the nation. Luis also served as a Senior Policy Associate with Safe Passages, an intermediary organization of the East Bay Community Foundation, where he assisted public and private partners in creating working partnerships to address community needs.

Luis is bi-cultural and bilingual in Spanish, and has spent considerable amount of time working in the Latino community. He is a graduate of San Jose State University.

When not working, Luis keeps busy with his family which includes two young children. He is an avid sports fan who follows the local sports scene, and enjoys playing basketball when time allows. And, he is on a continual quest to find the best Latin Food in the Bay Area.