Business Briefing: Lesbian leader oversees SF workforce programs

Tasked with overseeing San Francisco’s city-funded programs that train unemployed, underemployed, and hard-to-employ residents and connect them to sustainable job opportunities in myriad fields is Iowayna Peña. Since January, the well-known lesbian leader has served as director of San Francisco Workforce Development.

The division is within the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, at which Peña years ago had worked as a development project manager. She had left in 2020 when the San Francisco Giants baseball team hired her as its director of government affairs and real estate development.

In that high-profile position, Peña played a critical role in the Giants’ Mission Rock mixed-used development built on a former parking lot across from its Mission Bay ballpark. Two years ago, she landed among the San Francisco Business Times’ "Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business."

One issue she tackled with the project was helping more women and other underrepresented groups enter the construction trades, as the Bay Area Reporter noted in a 2022 story. She did so via an apprenticeship program dubbed the Mission Rock Academy.

Leaving her job with the team “was one of the hardest decisions I had to make,” said Peña, 43, a former co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBTQ Democratic Club.

The B.A.R. met up with Peña in early June at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Southeast Community Center in the Bayview to talk about her new role. Returning to the city office had been “heartwarming,” she said, since so many of the people she previously worked with are still employed there.

“This is an interesting time to be leading an office that does the work we do,” said Peña. 

One reason she pointed to is her office’s involvement with the California Jobs First initiative. The Bay Area is one of 13 regions across the Golden State that Governor Gavin Newsom and state leaders are supporting with financial investments and other resources to ensure they have good-paying jobs for the residents of those areas.

Via a $20 million grant from the state for the nine-county Bay Area, the various workforce development offices in each jurisdiction are collaborating on what kinds of projects to support in the region. It is enabling her division to “play a regional role,” noted Peña, in bolstering the local workforce development system.

The aim, she explained, is to assist people as “they enter the workforce and ensure they are successful once they land a job that is part of their career journey.”

According to the city division, it annually serves between 7,000 and 8,000 job seekers and, in 2024, helped place more than 4,300 people in jobs. It supports 28 job centers located in different neighborhoods around the city, such as the employment services offered at the SF LGBT Community Center on upper Market Street.

“We have partners and orgs that provide specialized support for LGBTQ+ jobseekers and understand the unique needs and challenges of our community,” Peña told the B.A.R. “Our specialized job centers also offer tailored support for other groups to find employment, including veterans, people with disabilities, seniors, young adults (ages 16-24), and people who are justice-involved.”

OEWD maintains a database with thousands of job seekers that employers can tap into, noted Peña. Her division puts special focus on crucial sectors like health care, with an 85% placement rate for individuals it helps get training in such jobs. With the local tourism industry another economic driver, it also offers hospitality programs with an 88% placement rate for those who complete the training.

“Oftentimes, we are people’s saving grace,” noted Peña. “People are often at their wit’s end when they seek out our programs.”

A person needs to be a San Francisco resident in order to access the workforce development division’s programs. But it can refer people to programs they are eligible for in other counties.

“We don’t turn folks away because they don’t have work experience and don’t have the education,” noted Peña. “Wherever you are in life, we want to help you.”

Earning a salary of $205,000, Peña saw her division’s budget cut by roughly $8 million in the fiscal year that started July 1 amid the city’s need to address a deficit. It was set at $38,031,028 for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 and set to increase to $44,584,150 in Fiscal Year 2026-2027.

“The vision I have is strengthening the work we do to create pathways for careers for folks,” said Peña of her focus in the coming months. “We are not just here to get people a job. We are here to get you on a path to be economically stable.”

While the headlines of late have reported on downsizing of jobs at various technology firms and other Silicon Valley employers, impacting many San Francisco residents, other fields are growing – like crypto currency and AI – and hiring, with other sectors like travel and tourism beginning to bounce back to pre-COVID levels. According to the most recent federal data, the city’s unemployment rate stood at 4.2% in June, which marked a significant drop from the 14.1% it saw in April of 2020 at the start of the COVID pandemic.

The city controller’s “Status of the San Francisco Economy” report covering July and released August 8 had an air of caution about the city’s job market, noting that most of the job gains since April have been “seasonal,” with the leisure and hospitality sector the biggest driver of job growth this spring. It also found “softer” job listings in the San Francisco metro market, similar to other metro markets in the U.S.

“San Francisco’s downtown recovery has continued throughout the summer, even as the macroeconomic context becomes more challenging, and there are few signs of sustained growth in hiring in the labor market,” wrote the city’s Chief Economist Ted Egan, Ph.D., and senior economist Asim Khan, Ph.D.

Peña had noted to the B.A.R. that the city hasn’t seen any “rapid increase” in unemployment this year. She sounded positive about the strength of the local workforce and job opportunities for those looking for work.

“We have a wealth of industries in the Bay Area we can tap into,” she said. “San Francisco is a resilient city. People say it will come back, but we can say it is coming back.”

Sarah Dennis Phillips had hired Peña when she served as executive director of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Prior to her being named the city’s new planning director by Mayor Daniel Lurie, Dennis Phillips had told the B.A.R. in June that she was “incredibly proud of the significant progress” Peña had made during her first six months leading the division, adding she was “even more excited for the future, as her work is critical to San Francisco’s comeback."

Dennis Phillips said she had appointed Peña as its director “because I knew she possessed the vision, diverse experience, and collaborative spirit to truly transform our city’s workforce development efforts. She has not only met but exceeded every expectation, setting a clear vision and laying the groundwork to ensure our programs are more innovative, impactful, and responsive to the needs of our communities.”

Peña, who is Black and Native American, has other previous experience navigating the halls of City Hall. She also served as a former legislative aide and district director for former District 10 supervisor Malia Cohen, who's now the state's elected controller.

In 2013, Peña had moved from Long Beach in Southern California to San Francisco for a teaching position. She lived in Noe Valley with a lesbian couple she was friends with then found a place in Glen Park.

Ten years ago, she met her now-wife, Naomi Fierro Peña, who owns That Art Party that puts on art and play events for Black, Indigenous, and people of color adults. The couple resides in West Oakland.

Peña returned to the Mission Rock project for the first time this year on Mother’s Day, as her mom wanted to see its China Basin Park along the shores of the bay facing Oracle Park. They picked up sandwiches at Ike’s, one of the local businesses that have moved into the development’s ground-floor commercial spaces, with Peña ordering her go-to menu item the No. 34 Hunter Pence made with turkey, bacon, avocado, BBQ sauce, and three cheeses. (It’s named in honor of the Giant’s former right fielder who was part of the World Series championship teams in 2012 and 2014.)

“It was a real nostalgic moment,” recalled Peña.

To learn more about the career trainings and job assistance programs that the Workforce Development Division offers, visit its website.

Got a tip on LGBTQ business news? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 829-8836 or email [email protected].