First Generation (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781492965329)

David La Piana was born in New York state in 1954. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was five years old. He attended public schools in Pico Rivera, a largely Chicano community east of the City of LA. In 1972 he enrolled at the University of California, San Diego. After two years at UCSD he spent a semester at the University of Madrid in Spain, and then completed a BA and MA in Comparative Literature at UC Berkeley, studying English, Spanish, and Italian literature with an emphasis on the Middle Ages and Renaissance. He is a lifelong reader and fiction writer. Beginning in 1980, David served as a VISTA volunteer, a community organizer, and a manager with food security and refugee organizations. As a CEO he led a children's mental health nonprofit through an extended period of unprecedented growth, while getting an evening MPA in Nonprofit Management from the University of San Francisco. He founded La Piana Consulting www.lapiana.org in 1998 and with his colleagues has built it into a respected national resource for the social sector. He has taught graduate level courses at both the University of San Francisco's Institute for Nonprofit Management and the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is the author of six well-respected books on nonprofit management as well as numerous papers, monographs and journal articles. He is a popular speaker and an innovative thought leader who regularly contributes to the national dialogue on organizational effectiveness and the future of the social sector. As a consultant David draws on his personal experience growing up to inform the commitment to social justice that his firm embodies. With his wife of 35 years, Mary McFarland, he has two adult daughters. Mary is a social worker and Marisa, their oldest daughter, is a social work graduate student. Tessa, their younger daughter, also eyes a career in social change or social services.