Pablo and Cora Tellez

What attracted you to The San Francisco Foundation?

Although we are familiar with the various foundations in the Bay Area, we felt it important to perform our own due diligence and interview other organizations. We wanted to make a very informed choice. We ultimately chose The San Francisco Foundation because of the confidence we had with its management and its financial performance. We were impressed with the returns that the Investment Committee was delivering for the Foundation, and we wanted to make certain that our fund, although modest in its beginnings, would have every chance to grow. 

We understand how tough it is to struggle, and have learned that a helping hand at an opportune moment can make a great difference in one's life.

What motivates your giving?

We have always believed in building capacity, both within communities and within families. The well known proverb that states, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime” has always resonated with us. If you enable people, through education, to learn how to build their personal capacity, then they can become self-sufficient and independent.

What are the goals of the Pablo Tellez Scholarship Fund? 

We want to identify young Latino men and women in public high schools who with some help, can realize latent leadership skills. We are focusing on students with potential, who wouldn’t normally rise to the surface because they wouldn’t be recognized through the usual standard levels of measurement, such as a high grade point average. Yet they are diamonds in the rough. Consequently we believe that in many minority communities, such young people fall through the cracks. We see this scholarship as one way to help some of these young men and women move towards accomplishing self-sufficiency, independence, and control of their lives – lives based more on their capabilities and potential as opposed to their material possessions. Many individuals unfortunately define accomplishment as having possessions as opposed to having the freedom to make informed choices.

How will the recipients be selected?

We will be working with the Spanish Speaking Citizens Foundation (SSCF), a neighborhood organization in Oakland that will assist us in identifying candidates based on a two-tiered approach. The first is based on the outreach, recruitment, and assessment of interested applicants. The second tier will be an interview, in which we hope to identify certain characteristics and traits within the candidate that only come through on a personal level. We want to identify individuals with an enormous amount of curiosity and motivation to learn about the world beyond Oakland. 

Tell us about your other charitable giving activities.

We have two other endowed scholarship funds. One is with the San Diego Community Foundation in honor of Cora’s parents. The other is with the Asian Pacific Fund to honor the memory of Soledad Fernandez who started taking care of our eldest son when she was 74. She was a very sharp, intelligent immigrant woman whom we honor with this fund currently administered by our son, which has awarded three scholarships thus far.

How did your upbringing influence your philanthropy?

Both of us come from very poor families. We understand how tough it is to struggle, and have learned that a helping hand at an opportune moment can make a great difference in one's life. We have been very fortunate in our lives, and now it is our turn to give back.