Marlena Sonn, CFP(r), is Solidaire’s Director of Finance & Investments. A veteran finance professional with 14 years of experience in wealth management, Marlena leads Solidaire’s Integrated Capital strategies, collaborating with members, Board, staff, and movement partners to build community wealth via reparative, non-extractive investments. Marlena also provides strategic development and management of Solidaire’s financial and budgetary goals, as outlined in our Theory of Liberation.

As the President and Founder of Amazonia Wealth Management, a New York City-based financial planning firm where she specialized in working with progressive, Ultra High Net Worth millennials, women, and family offices, Marlena provided the leadership in decarbonizing over $1Billion in investments, flanking the movement demands from Standing Rock and the Divest/Invest campaign.

Marlena is a widely cited expert on personal financial planning, having been featured on PBS’s Nightly Business Report, Crain’s, and guest lectures at institutions including New York University, New School of Social Research, SOCAP, and the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment (US-SIF). In 2015, she was a recipient of the etsy.org Regenerative Entrepreneur fellowship, supporting her work piloting the first drawdown/GHG-negative portfolios offered to individual investors.

Her personal mission is to plant 10 million trees in the Amazon rainforest in her lifetime.

What Liberation Means to Marlena

Tell us why you do what you do.

I have strong convictions around fairness and equality that has forced me off the sidelines in this uniquely unjust and unfair time in our society. I know what it means to be on the right side of history, and because of that knowledge, I cannot remain silent. Joining Solidaire represents the culmination of my efforts (so far) to be a better ally to the Black community.

What’s most important to you about being part of Solidaire?

Spending time with members and movement allies is the antidote to the PsyOps of constant bad news that poisons my mind against people. When I keep the focus on my Solidaire community, I remember the goodness, ingenuity, brilliance, strength and kindness of people, and that truth keeps me in my power.

What does liberation mean to you?

To be free of fear, and also to be free of projections placed on me by others. The ability to feel, express, to make choices and live a life true to one’s own authentic self. And I know that my liberation is bound to the fate of others; therefore, we must all be free, if I am to hope to be free.