Sally J. Petersen

Treasurer

Sally is Chief Financial Officer, Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. She joined the Food Bank team as Chief Financial Officer in the fall of 2007 bringing to the Food Bank over 20 years of non-profit and for-profit experience and a proven track record of leading and growing businesses. As a direct report to the Chief Executive Officer, and a member of the Leadership Team, Sally is responsible for the leadership and management of all aspects affecting financial performance and compliance.

For the past year and a half, Sally has served on the Technology Governance Board (TGB), an oversight committee of the national body, Feeding America. She also works at the national level with other enterprise food banks to develop financial best practice standards. Sally was a presenter at the Feeding America annual conference “Summit 2010” and will present in October, 2010 at the “Feather” annual conference for food bank Finance, Technology and HR professionals.

Prior to joining the Food Bank, Sally served as Chief Financial Officer for Catholic Charities of San Jose where she managed a 50% one-year growth for the agency. Additionally, she worked with the Brenner Group consulting to hi-tech startups, was a partner in Layman and Petersen CPAs, and worked with Cummins Public Accountancy and Martin, Stavolone & Arterburn in a variety of accountant-based capacities.

Sally graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a BA in Mathematics and earned a Master in Business Administration with an emphasis in Accounting and Finance from UC Berkeley. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

For the past 10 years Sally has served on the Board of Directors of Schmahl Science Workshops (SSW) as Vice-Chair of the Board and Chair of the Finance Committee. During those years SSW grew to about $1 million in revenue with two foundations recently requesting the opportunity to finance national syndication. She resides in San Jose, CA, is married and has four children. In her spare time she enjoys gardening, tennis and reading.