I was born at Memorial Hospital in Long Beach, CA and was raised in Belmont Shore where I grew up playing on the beach most days. However, this is Long Beach, notorious for beach pollution as the LA river dumps right into the LB Port, which is one of the busiest ports in the US. Additionally, LB has a breakwater that traps pollution from the many ships parked in our harbor for days.

I spent many childhood weekends doing beach cleanups. They were mostly for mandatory school volunteer hours and sometimes out of necessity when we, annoyingly and humiliatingly, needed to scrape washed up trash (boots, boxes, plungers, you name it) out of the way for our makeshift beach football field.

When I was thirteen, I was walking my dog barefoot on the beach and we, horrifically, almost stepped on a used syringe. This could have been life ending. I had had enough. I was at the end of my rope.

More beach cleanups clearly were not the solution because they occur after the pollution occurs. Local businesses have no financial incentive to help especially after being hit hard by COVID. I knew I was just a teen, but I didn’t care; those in charge of our community were not succeeding. I started voicing my concerns to anyone that would listen, but kept getting blown off. I had to act.

I needed to find a way to give local businesses financial incentives to improve our community’s sustainability.

First, I educated myself. I obtained six ESG (Environment, Social, & Governance) certificates online from Duke University. I then partnered with a PhD mentor to research my first publication “The Social Side of Alpha: Sustainability, Profitability, and Community Impact in Private Equity.” I wanted to know all there was to know about profiting off of sustainability. Was it even possible? In short, I concluded, it was.

Second, I went to work. I wanted to prove out these academic theories in the real world. I got a part-time position as a scrap steel and sustainability analyst for Interstate Steel Center, located in South Central LA with waste yards near the LA river. I reconciled 120,000 lbs. of scrap steel each month in the warehouse. I then collaborated with crane operators, truck drivers, and machinists and authored my first Sustainability Value Creation Plan that I submitted to Senior Management. My recommendations to shift our outbound scrap from truck to rail lowered the company’s pollution and carbon footprint while lowering the scrap freight budget by 17%. I was on to something.

Next, I tested my ideas in my community’s small business environment by volunteering with retired executives who mentor struggling business owners. I received more real world feedback on how ESG/sustainability can not just save money but turn around a business financially.

At this point, I had checked boxes next to “Ready” and “Aim”. It was time to “Fire” by launching Sustainable Alpha Partners. I am on a mission to provide a free Sustainability Value Creation Plan to every business in Long Beach. I assembled and lead a small team to achieve our mission of profitable sustainability to improve our communities. Our success is not limited to Long Beach and will soon expand to other cities (Nashville, Chicago, New York, and Boston) where we have relationships with small businesses as well as Private Equity executives that will mentor us on our value creation plans.

In June 2026, I will launch Playa Verde Capital Group, a micro-private equity firm that enables community members to take stakes in their local businesses that have demonstrated they can generate alpha returns via the sustainable/ESG practices recommended by Sustainable Alpha Partners. Playa Verde will prove its concept in my Long Beach community to its Limited Partners and then expand to each SAP city and then beyond to international communities around the world.

William’s Bio

William is a student-athlete, dually enrolled at St. John Bosco High School (Salesian College Preparatory) and Cerritos College in the Entrepreneurship Pathway. He is a top ranked SoCal junior golfer in SoCal (10th out of 686 on Players Tour) where he competes in 40+ tourneys/year on the PGA Jr. Tour, Future Champions Tour, and was selected to be an AJGA Leadership Links Member. When he is not running Sustainable Alpha Partners, he is further impacting his community as a golf instructor to youngsters at TGA Golf Academy. William is also a part-time scrap steel and sustainability analyst at Interstate Steel Center, California’s largest privately held steel toll processor, located in South Central LA. William holds six ESG certifications from Duke University and is a Private Equity/Sustainability researcher with his work to be published in 2026.

William is passionate about international travel, having already visited six continents with the seventh planned for 2026. Along the way, he has played golf on every continent, using the sport as a bridge to connect across cultures. Yet his favorite way to experience the world is through food tours, which he sees as the most authentic window into a community’s traditions, values, and daily life. For William, each journey is not only about seeing new places but about understanding people, one round of golf and one shared meal at a time.

William hopes to attend a top Undergraduate Program and then a top JD/MBA program to further explore his passions at the intersection of Social Entrepreneurship, Environmental Studies (ESG), Community Impact, and Finance. His goal is to have a life-long symbiotic relationship with his alma mater(s) that support the continuation of research and private equity investments into sustainable businesses to change the world one community at a time.