Paul Velaski

Paul Velaski is a finance and operations executive who has spent his career in nonprofit and philanthropic organizations rather than in venture capital or startup investing. He holds a BSBA in Accounting from the University of North Dakota and is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in California. He began his career at the public accounting firm Arthur Andersen, and over more than 25 years has built deep expertise in nonprofit accounting, development (fundraising) operations, and investment management for large national and international organizations, including earlier roles connected to Special Olympics and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

From 2007, Velaski served as Chief Financial Officer of the Arizona Community Foundation in Phoenix, one of the larger community foundations in the U.S. In 2017 he was recruited to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) in Mountain View, California — at the time the largest community foundation in the country by assets — where he served as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. (Per SVCF's 2017 IRS Form 990, he held the COO/CFO role; when he arrived, predecessor Vera Bennett shifted to focus solely on the COO function.) This SVCF role is the one reflected in the source stub's contact details and titles.

Velaski subsequently became Chief Financial Officer of the UCSF Foundation, where he also serves as Executive Director of Gift Policy and Accounting and as Secretary of the Foundation. In that capacity he oversees the acceptance, accounting, and reporting of all gifts made to UCSF through the Foundation, ensures gift-related policies remain compliant, and acts as a staff liaison to the Foundation's audit committee. The UCSF Foundation manages philanthropic support for the University of California, San Francisco's health, research, and education mission.

• No documented angel/venture investment thesis exists. Velaski's professional focus is institutional financial stewardship — gift accounting, endowment and investment management oversight, audit, and operations for large foundations — not early-stage startup investing.
• His "investment" work is on the institutional asset-management and endowment side of a foundation, governing how charitable and endowed funds are accounted for and reported, rather than deploying personal capital into companies.
• Founders treating the source-data "Seed Round / Angel Investors" tags as actionable should treat them with caution: they are not corroborated by any primary or reputable secondary source.