Fred "Horacio" Mendez

President and CEO, Woodstock Institute

Horacio Mendez is President and CEO of the Woodstock Institute, a nationally recognized non-profit research and policy organization focusing on the areas of economic justice, fair lending, wealth creation and financial systems reform. Horacio was most recently the Managing Director for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for the Americas at MUFG Union Bank, where he was responsible for developing and implementing the bank’s outreach, government affairs and environmental sustainability strategy. Horacio was also: Chief Sustainability Officer for Rabobank NA, where he oversaw the institutions’ CSR and Community Reinvestment programs with an emphasis on food, agriculture and rural economic development; a Senior Fellow at the Aspen Institute, where he published research on the scale and sustainability of non-profit financial service providers; the Director of Community Development at Silicon Valley Bank; and Senior Investment Specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, where he assisted in re-writing the implementing regulation for the Community Reinvestment Act. He worked on the equity options floor of the Pacific Stock Exchange, ran the fixed income desk for Continental Savings of America, and was a financial industry specialist for Dow Jones / Telerate. He has degrees in Economics from San Jose State and Santa Clara Universities, and resides in Oak Park, IL with his wife, Nicole, and two boys, Alejandro (11) and Santiago (8).