Senior Staff

Malia Faleafine
Chief Strategy and Business Development Office
Connect on LinkedIn

Malia Faleafine is the Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer at Catholic Guardian Services, where she leads the agency’s strategic direction and drives initiatives that strengthen programs, deepen community partnerships, and expand access to services for children, families, and individuals. With more than twenty years of experience across the human services sector, she is a seasoned systems strategist known for bringing clarity, collaboration, and innovation to complex organizational environments.

Ms. Faleafine’s leadership focuses on strengthening operational infrastructure, aligning strategy with service delivery, and building collaborative systems that improve outcomes for underserved populations. Her experience spans foster care, developmental disabilities, mental health, and food security.

She previously served as Deputy Director of SKIP of New York, supporting medically fragile and developmentally disabled children and their families. She joined Catholic Guardian in 2016 as Senior Director of Performance Management and Measurement, where she enhanced operations within the Developmental Disabilities Services Program (DDSP), implemented critical technology solutions, and helped establish foundational infrastructure for the agency’s Article 31 mental health clinics.

As Head of Programs Strategy & Operations for the San Francisco–Marin Food Bank, Ms. Faleafine helped pioneer one of the first CRM implementations of its kind for a U.S. food bank, modernizing operations, integrating data systems, and informing strategic planning and reporting practices serving thousands of households.

Returning to Catholic Guardian in 2024, Ms. Faleafine now oversees long-term planning and enterprise-level initiatives that enhance organizational performance, expand service reach, and support sustainable growth. Her work is grounded in mission alignment, operational excellence, and equity-centered systems design.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and a Master of Public Administration with a concentration in nonprofit management and policy.