Marlys Boehm
Marlys Boehm started her career as an interior designer, spending a good part of that career in Dallas doing commercial space planning and interior design, including many years as head of her own firm. Marriage to her husband, Ron, in 1985 brought her to Santa Barbara where he was running his family’s publishing company, ABC-CLIO.
She continued practicing space planning and design in Santa Barbara while participating on ABC-CLIO’s management team. In 1988, children came into the picture and the reality of juggling a busy career, corporate life and parenting encouraged a different choice. The following 20 years were spent honing multiple skills of multi-tasking, working with teams of people, project management, communication and financial management skills — as a parent, volunteer, part-time worker and wife.
Since 2009, Marlys has worked almost entirely in the social impact space. Co-founder and principal of BOMA Investments alongside her husband Ron, she has invested and worked with more than 40 social entrepreneurs in multiple countries on five continents. All of the investee organizations are early stage companies with a social mission, operating as for-profit businesses. They are a wide range of businesses from agriculture and solar/ water/ biogas energy to artisan products to water treatment to cyber security. BOMA has a primary focus on job creation, in sustainable businesses that, if successful, scale up their positive impacts on people and the planet. Marlys receives a great deal of enjoyment mentoring and learning from passionate people around the world who want to make a difference.
The Boehm Gladen Foundation, of which she is an officer, sponsors its Media Fellows, an international group of journalists, videographers, bloggers, and authors focusing on social improvement.
Ron Boehm
Ron is passionate about improving systems and processes for organizations involved in creating a better world. He believes strongly in the breakthrough capabilities and the potential of collaboration.
He has been married to his wife Marlys for 32 years, and they have three grown children. He and Marlys live in Santa Barbara, California.
Ron is the founder with Marlys of BOMA. Ron works primarily with the investment and financial advisory aspects of the organization, sharing with both social entrepreneurs and fellow impact investors what he learns from his failures and successes. He was a catalyst for development of a revenue sharing approach for compensating impact investors for longer term, high risk investments, as an alternative to equity.
Ron has been at the center of bringing complementary organizations together for mutual benefit, including Young Presidents Organization, Ashoka, World Merit, Synergos, and Nexus. He is comfortable working internationally, having co-founded companies in Haiti and India, and through BOMA has provided strategic advisory services and financing to over 50 social and environmental impact companies on five continents.
Before starting BOMA, Ron ran ABC-CLIO, an international publishing company founded by his parents, for 27 years.
Ron studied law at Hastings (University of California San Francisco), is a member of California Bar and has MBA from University of California Berkeley.
Ron loves being on the ocean, having raced his International 14 in over 8 countries at 17 World Championships. He also enjoys cruising catamarans in the Atlantic and the Caribbean.
Kristi Ferrel
Kristi Ferrel was the Investment Manager and Media and Communication Program Coordinator for BOMA Investments from 2011-2019. In 2020, she transitioned to focus entirely on the Media and Communications Program at Opportunity Collaboration.
With a background in nutrition and cultural anthropology, Kristi worked for over a decade with medical nonprofits both in the U.S. and South Africa. She focused predominately on HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health programs and provided grant and program management, monitoring and evaluation, and supplied health facilities with medicine and medical supplies and equipment.
In 2011, Kristi transitioned to a career in impact investing with the hopes of helping entrepreneurs reimagine what is possible. In April 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, Kristi moved to Bend, OR with her family. She is enthusiastic about all the adventures to be had and new possibilities to discover.
Rhett Godfrey
Rhett Godfrey is a founding member of the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition which was initiated by Consensus and BOMA in 2018, and is the Senior Programs Director for the collaborative social impact firm, Boma Investments LLC.
Rhett specializes in multi-stakeholder social impact initiatives and has founded and/or led coalitions in supply chains, ethical fashion, and tech platforms for global youth engagement in the SDGs. He is a celebrated public speaker, published author, educator, and thought leader for collaborative social impact.
Rhett holds a B.A. in Philosophy & Comparative Religion and studied the Environmental Science of Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
Kristin Nielsen
Kristin Nielsen has over a decade of experience working with entrepreneurs and startups, and as Ron and Marlys’ daughter, it is inevitable that she is passionate about social impact. Kristin has worked with the Media and Communication Program periodically for several years, and is now on board to coordinate the expansion of the Media + Commumnications Program.
Kristin previously worked at an impact-driven coworking space, where her accomplishments include the development and execution of capacity building programs, operational procedures, and administrative tasks relevant to running a multi-million dollar business with a small team. She also focused on building community and making connections within the startup ecosystem.