Spirit Matters Trustees
Current Trustees
Karen Nani Apana, Member-at-large
John Bloom, Secretary, RSF Social Finance appointee
Mark Finser, RSF Social Finance appointee
Siegfried Finser, President, RSF Social Finance appointee
Meggan Gill, Association of Waldorf Schools in North America appointee
Stephanie Rynas, Treasurer, RSF Social Finance appointee
Laura Scappaticci, Anthroposophical Society in America [US] appointee
Karen Nani Apana, Ph.D.
Karen has been involved with Anthroposophy and Waldorf Education for over 40 years and was one of the founders of the San Francisco Waldorf School. She was the High School Counselor and an art teacher at the San Francisco Waldorf High School for over 16 years and continues to mentor and consult with Waldorf Schools throughout the Bay Area. Karen taught anthroposophy and biography in the Rudolf Steiner College Teacher Training program for over 20 years. She currently has a private practice as a Biography Counselor in San Francisco and continues to lead Biography workshops. Karen has also been the San Francisco Class Holder for the School of Spiritual Science since 1998. She practices “Kitchen Table Anthroposophy” with her husband and runs study groups through listening to people’s questions and engaging in conversations rather than through lectures and books. She loves traveling the world with her birdwatching partner and is also a practicing artist working with clay and urban sketching.
John Bloom, Secretary
John Bloom launched John Bloom Advisory LLC in 2021 just prior to helping start Spirit Matters. Prior to that he served as vice-president for organizational culture at RSF Social Finance for 23 years. As part of his work at RSF he developed and facilitated conversations, programs, and workshops that address the intersection of money and spirit in personal and social transformation. He also developed a leadership intensive program to cultivate and encourage organizational leaders in new ways of being and practicing. He writes extensively about governance and led many workshops on that topic for numerous non-profits. He has published books on money and culture and has fostered collaborative dialogues on the challenging social aspects of economic life. He continues research and writing on aspects of threefold consciousness as precondition for restructuring our cultural, agreements, and economic lives. That work has served numerous non-profits in transforming aspects of governance, culture, and developing organizational capacities for meeting the future as learning organizations.
He is a founding trustee of Living Lands Trust, a US agricultural land trust committed to supporting healing agriculture and land-based regional economies. He has led numerous workshops and written about issues of land preservation and community supported agriculture. He has published two books, The Genius of Money, and Inhabiting Interdependence, and writes regularly for other publications. He lives in San Francisco.
Mark Finser
Mark Finser serves as an advisor and close confidant to wealth holders and those running family offices. He has worked with dozens of multi-generational inheritors and wealth creators over his 30+ year career to help make strategic, tactical, and personal decisions in support of clients' long-term objectives. His role has taken many forms, from informal advisor on discrete issues to Trustee for family trusts. Mark has worked with most of his clients for decades, helping to guide them through events like generational wealth transfers and family office restructurings. His approach is to be a friend and colleague to his clients, while serving as a sounding board and a trusted third party to help them make important life decisions. In addition to working with well-known families in the US and abroad, Mark has also built, run, and invested in organizations for the last 40+ years. This experience understanding healthy organizational systems, effective operations, and strong cultures helps to influence his work with families today.
Mark started his career in social finance in 1984 as a founder of RSF Social Finance. Along with leading the field of social finance, RSF has been responsible for funding the expansion of Waldorf schools in the North America. Mark served as President and CEO until 2007, then transitioned to Chairman of the Board of Trustees until 2018. Mark also ran an impact venture fund, served on the boards of organizations like Gaia Herbs, B Lab, and on non-for-profit boards like Living Lands Trust. Mark was a founding member of New Resource Bank, a dedicated green bank acquired by Amalgamated Bank in 2018. Mark became an independent director of Amalgamated. He remains an Independent Director, Chair of the Compensation Committee, and member of the Governance and Executive Committees for Amalgamated. He also serves on the Bank's Trust Committee, which oversees $52 billion in assets of the trust department. Mark lives in Mill Valley, California.
Siegfried E. Finser, President
Siegfried E. Finser has had three different career paths. He was a line manager heading up a division of Xerox. He then became Director, Executive Resource Development Worldwide, for International Telephone & Telegraph while the company expanded from $1 billion to $10 billion in sales. He had a two-year assignment in Brussels, Belgium managing the development and advancement of all executives in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East for ITT.
Before this, he served as a management consultant and division head for Barrington & Company and Harbridge House. He also developed a specialty in career transition counseling that took him into many major U. S. corporations.
Included in his career are seven years of teaching at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City. He also became President of the Threefold Educational Foundation in Spring Valley, NY and Treasurer of the Anthroposophical Society in America. He has a BA from Rutgers University, an MA in educational psychology from New York University, and a Graduate Certificate from Das Goetheanum, Switzerland. He is especially grateful for his Waldorf Education. In 1984, Siegfried co-founded RSF Social Finance and served as trustee and lead consultant for many years.
Meggan Gill
Meggan Gill (she/her) is director of education & organizational culture at Sunbridge Institute in New York and a founding member of Alma Partners. An experienced Waldorf early childhood educator, she holds a BA in health sciences from Evergreen State College, a diploma in Waldorf Early Childhood Teacher Education from Sunbridge, and is completing her MEd in Curriculum & Instruction at SUNY Empire.
Embracing dichotomy has been an ongoing motif in Meggan’s life. She enjoys drawing connections, bridging gaps, and illuminating the potential for communities to be places where people feel they truly belong. As a multi-racial, black, queer cis-femme, Meggan is dedicated to the presence of intersectionality in self and community and to developing skills and opportunities to ally and advocate. She is passionate about the phrase: "None of us are free until all of us are free." In conversations and throughout her work as an educator, themes of interconnectedness resound. She believes that a healing education for educators and caregivers can create the foundations for children who know how to regard one another with empathy and respect, understand how these relationships impact the future, the earth, and the climate, and how our daily lives are woven together with those of our ancestors and the children arriving as the next generations. She holds these tenets as guideposts to a future where liberation and harmony with nature can be achieved.
Stephanie Rynas, Treasurer
Stephanie Rynas is the Executive Director, Operations & Member Resources for the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA). In this role she works with the board to steward the association, shepherds the strategic plan and develops and supports members resources.
Stephanie received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan; M.B.A from Santa Clara University, and Waldorf Teacher Education Certificate from Rudolf Steiner College. Prior to her current role with AWSNA, Stephanie was the School Administrator at the Waldorf School of the Peninsula for 10 years, supporting its growth to full PreK-12 on two campuses. Before finding Waldorf education, Stephanie worked for many years in marketing and management in Silicon Valley companies, where she studied the art of collaboration and meeting facilitation. During her off hours, she is either working on one or more endless house projects or walking in nature.
Laura Scappaticci
Through her podcast, That Good May Become, Laura brings anthroposophy into the here-and-now, connecting it with contemporary cultural concerns and innovations. She invites listeners to "disrupt materialism" by understanding their spiritual biographies and connecting to the natural and spiritual world. Through her workshop offerings and individual coaching, Laura focuses on personal practices and exercises for self-knowledge and transformation, with the understanding that inner work is the pathway to the positive evolution of humanity. You can find out more about Laura's offerings at laurascappaticci.com.
Laura is currently a High School Counselor at the Sacramento Waldorf School and previously served as the Director of Programs for the Anthroposophical Society in America. She holds an M.Ed in School Counseling and has worked in adult education for over 20 years. She lives with her partner, three children, and a flock of five chickens in Northern California.