Dennis Santiago
Chief Executive Officer
Dennis Santiago is a financial innovation strategist, business architect, and executive leader with more than four decades of experience spanning banking, technology, public policy, risk analytics, economic development, and nonprofit leadership. He serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Pacific Community Fund.
Throughout his career, Dennis has built a reputation for identifying emerging economic and policy trends and designing practical solutions that improve capital access, institutional resilience, operational efficiency, and transaction productivity. His work bridges the public and private sectors, combining strategic vision with hands-on operational execution.
Dennis has advised financial institutions, community development organizations, nonprofit lenders, and mission-driven enterprises on initiatives involving affordable housing finance, Community Reinvestment Act strategies, capital deployment, financial product design, organizational turnaround, and regulatory compliance. His work has included the development of innovative shared-equity homeownership affordability concepts connected to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Project REACH initiative. Elements of this work were later reflected in the California Housing Finance Agency’s “Dream for All” program.
Dennis has also contributed to the design of Special Purpose Credit Program (SPCP) concepts focused on expanding access to capital for pre-bankable small businesses and underserved communities. Additional initiatives have included strategies supporting residential solar accessibility through nonprofit and private-sector partnerships tied to the federal Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), as well as disaster-response financing concepts utilizing accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to preserve homeownership and neighborhood continuity in fire-affected communities.
His non-profit organization executive leadership portfolio includes roles for organizations such as Vermont-Slauson Economic Development Corporation, and NEW Community Investments. Dennis previously served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of the National Diversity Coalition, where he oversaw day-to-day operations, financial management, information technology, program administration, and external audit coordination for a national nonprofit advocacy organization.
Prior to his nonprofit leadership work, Dennis served as Senior Managing Director at Total Financial Solutions LLC, where he led the Compliance and Risk business unit supporting fiduciary safety oversight for approximately $70 billion in insured brokered deposits. During this period, he directed initiatives involving financial data security modernization and blockchain-enabled infrastructure concepts while serving as a principal safety and soundness analyst for participating banking institutions.
Earlier in his career, Dennis founded Institutional Risk Analytics, where he created the IRA Bank Monitor, an analytics platform designed to assess the safety and soundness of U.S. depository institutions. The system became recognized for its ability to track institutional viability through the 2008 financial crisis and was utilized by both public agencies and private-sector organizations, including PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Dennis earned a Master of Business Administration through the Executive MBA Program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine.