District 9 supervisor-elect Jackie Fielder has chosen the team of four who will serve as her closest aides in the coming year; some experienced hands, others newcomers.
Fielder’s picks for legislative aides include two members from current Supervisor Hillary Ronen’s team, and two from the campaign team that catapulted Fielder to a 19-point victory over her closest challenger, Trevor Chandler.
Fielder’s team will be composed of Jennifer Ferrigno, Ana Herrera — both current aides to Ronen — and political outsiders Sasha Gaona and Feng Han.
“I’m so excited to work with these four amazing folks who are stars in their own right and are ready to fight for our communities,” Fielder said.
Fielder praised the work both Han and Gaona did in the campaign that delivered her a victory with “stunning margins.”
The supervisor-elect also celebrated the experience both Herrera and Ferrigno bring to her team, “Ana and Jennifer have been serving in Supervisor Ronen’s office on some of the district’s most pressing issues, and both have a really solid background in immigrant rights advocacy.”
For Gaona and Han, these are their first government jobs. Responsible for a multitude of responsibilities, legislative aides serve many roles, including talking to the community, writing legislation, scheduling, press communication and advising.
“You’re really a Jack of all trades and, most importantly, you’re also a representative and a proxy for your boss,” said Sunny Angulo, longtime legislative aide and chief of staff for District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin.
Angulo, who has 13 years of experience as a legislative aide, said served as a policy writer, scheduler, social worker, mentor to interns, and sometimes as a proxy for Peskin when the supervisor could not attend a meeting.
Ronen recalled her years as a legislative aide to David Campos as the best job she’s ever had.
“The legislative aides write the laws. They do all the organizing, and talk to the people in the community,” said Ronen. “That was my favorite time in City Hall.”
Political consultants said Fielder’s team strikes a balance of City Hall experience and outsider perspectives, one some say could be beneficial to Fielder’s tenure.
“In a lot of ways, it’s actually really helpful to be a little bit of an outsider in city government, because it gives you fresh perspectives,” said longtime Bay Area political consultant Jim Ross. “It gives you a little bit more willingness to push, because you don’t have long relationships with somebody.”
Sheila Chung Hagen, a legislative aide for Ronen last year, who handled issues such as the Mission vending ban, agreed.
“Sasha and Feng have gotten a chance to go door-to-door and talk to constituents in the district, to know what things they feel are going well and where they could see improvements,” she said. “They’ve got the freshest information of how people are feeling, that really good temperature gauge that is going to be so helpful in knowing where she should prioritize her attention.”
The information Han and Gaona have, combined with Herrera and Ferrigno’s experience, is a winning formula, Chung Hagen added.
“There’s a real advantage to having that be married with, in this case, two other legislative aides who have now had experience working in City Hall,” Chung Hagen said.
For District 9 residents, this team of four will serve as the point people for constituent concerns. Here’s more information on Fielder’s team:
Sasha Gaona
Residency: District 9.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in kinesiology and exercise science, Indiana University.
Languages: English.
Email: Coming next month.
Gaona worked as the campaign manager in Fielder’s supervisorial contest. In 2020, the new legislative aide volunteered for the supervisor-elect’s race for state senate against Sen. Scott Wiener.
Gaona previously worked in the service industry at Donkey & Goat Winery in Berkeley, and as a general manager at The Riddler, Hayes Valley’s champagne bar that closed during the pandemic. She also held a corporate general manager position at the clothing retailer Wasteland, and later co-founded Bisou! Bisou! Wines, an importer of French natural wine.
Fielder has repeatedly praised Gaona’s collaboration, and called her addition to the team in December last year a turning point in her campaign.
“She just exploded onto the scene and completely exceeded all expectations,” Fielder said during an interview last month. “I’m just so proud of her for stepping into something completely unknown.”
Fielder described San Francisco’s political scene as intense and competitive, two qualities necessary to navigate the field.
“There’s no other way about it,” Fielder said. “She rose to that level of intensity that I also have, because that’s what our city deserves. That’s what District 9 deserves.”
Gaona is also a member of the board of directors of the Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts.
Jennifer Ferrigno
Residency: District 9.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies, University of Vermont. Master’s degree in education with a focus on adult education and curriculum, San Francisco State University.
Languages: Spanish and English.
Email: Jennifer.Ferrigno@sfgov.org
Ferrigno has been a legislative aide for supervisor Hillary Ronen since March 2022. Previously, she worked at the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, an Oakland-based nonprofit working to defend and expand the rights of immigrant and refugee communities. In more than two decades with the organization, she served as co-director and associate director before she left to join City Hall.
Ferrigno has worked closely with the Salvadoran community since the early to mid-’90s, both in El Salvador and in the United States. She co-founded a nonprofit in El Salvador after the civil war ended to help foreigners learn Spanish and Salvadorans learn English. She also served as the west coast regional director for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, a Washington, D.C-based grassroots organization supporting the country’s struggle for social and economic justice.
Ferrigno worked as a consultant both in the nonprofit sector and the public sector starting in the late ’90s; for 11 years at CAMINOS, a Mission-based nonprofit providing technological education for women, and for a year and a half as an adult learning and teacher trainer for the Vermont Department of Education.
Ana Herrera
Residency: Oakland.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in sociology, history and women’s studies, University of Florida. Juris doctor degree, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
Languages: Spanish and English.
Email: Ana.Herrera@sfgov.org
Herrera has been a legislative aide to supervisor Hillary Ronen since January 2022, where she focused on land use, immigration, transportation, business and workers-rights policy. Previously, she worked for nine years at Dolores Street Community Services, now Mission Action, as an immigration attorney at its Deportation Defense & Legal Advocacy Program.
A native of Colombia, Herrera was admitted to the State Bar of California in 2012.
Feng Han
Residency: District 9.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in computer science, University of Michigan.
Languages: English and Cantonese.
Email: Coming next month.
Han worked as the field director for Fielder’s campaign, managing volunteers and the operations that knocked on thousands of doors throughout District 9.
Until November 2023, Han had worked as a software engineer at companies such as Zillow, Postmates and Uber. Han joined Fielder’s team in May 2024.
In an interview last month, Fielder described Han as “extremely smart,” “extremely principled” and as an “effective organizer.”
“He’s just got this amazing brain, and was able to crunch all the different numbers and dispatch us to all the different places that we needed to go,” said Fielder. “We were data-driven, and it was largely thanks to Feng.”
Reporting from the Mission District and other District 9 neighborhoods. Some of his personal interests are bicycles, film, and both Latin American literature and punk. Oscar's work has previously appeared in KQED, The Frisc, El Tecolote, and Golden Gate Xpress.
This looks like Ronen (weakly) playing the succession game for her staff, as she learned it from her predecessors. With Santiago Lerma bowing out of the supervisor candidacy due to a poor incumbent state of affairs left by Roman, she is likely congratulating herself on setting her staff up for future success.
Roberto Hernandez voters are going to regret breaking for Fielder and perpetuating the status quo, but they fell for the Chandler = Trump messaging.
It is almost like D9 has not had a supervisor for 20 years now, since the deal was cut that sent Ammiano to the Assembly and he called it for his final years as supe. All we’ve had are back benchers, technicians who stood down politically in order to keep the nonprofit cartel hooked up with city money.
Fielder carrying over Ronen’s legislative assistants does not augur well for a clean break from that disengagement. When was the last time that a D9 supe sponsored an interesting ballot measure that required any kind of heavy lift because it drew opposition?
In order to move a proactive progressive agenda, public bank, social housing, replacing most of the decrepit SFPD with an unarmed public safety function, there needs to be repair work done on the connection between the politicos and residents to build confidence that government can solve problems.
And that’s going to require rooting corruption out at the source, both criminal and the softer version, any time that the moneyed interests eclipse the interests of residents. Combined, that is depriving San Franciscans and D9 residents of political self determination, the core progressive value.
Don’t mistake a strong aversion to AIPAC/HRC Chandler as a mandate. A mandate in RCV is winning a majority on the first round. Progressives will be weaker legislatively than they’ve been since district elections was reinstated come January.
I respect the supervisor’s right to hire who she sees fit, but I think it’s BEYOND bizarre that ML is writing up a glowing puff piece about it. Political staffers are mostly private people going about their lives and doing a civil service job.
Not one of these people have a law degree! They probably don’t even know how Ronan flouted the law on her planning restrictions and got caught for it. She’s cost SF tax payers dearly. What a waste.
As someone with a non-binary relative, I just wanted to mention that your preferred salutation, “Sir or madam — “, while very classy, is not very inclusive. Elsewhere it’d probably just be considered old fashioned, but in San Francisco it almost comes across as an intentional exclusion. Hope this is well taken.
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Great – leftovers from Ronen’s staff — I give up. I didn’t vote for Fielder and now I never will.
Marcos makes astute observations…
This looks like Ronen (weakly) playing the succession game for her staff, as she learned it from her predecessors. With Santiago Lerma bowing out of the supervisor candidacy due to a poor incumbent state of affairs left by Roman, she is likely congratulating herself on setting her staff up for future success.
Roberto Hernandez voters are going to regret breaking for Fielder and perpetuating the status quo, but they fell for the Chandler = Trump messaging.
Great. We elected Hillary Ronen 2.0. Here’s to another 4 years of tents, trash, and no change.
It is almost like D9 has not had a supervisor for 20 years now, since the deal was cut that sent Ammiano to the Assembly and he called it for his final years as supe. All we’ve had are back benchers, technicians who stood down politically in order to keep the nonprofit cartel hooked up with city money.
Fielder carrying over Ronen’s legislative assistants does not augur well for a clean break from that disengagement. When was the last time that a D9 supe sponsored an interesting ballot measure that required any kind of heavy lift because it drew opposition?
In order to move a proactive progressive agenda, public bank, social housing, replacing most of the decrepit SFPD with an unarmed public safety function, there needs to be repair work done on the connection between the politicos and residents to build confidence that government can solve problems.
And that’s going to require rooting corruption out at the source, both criminal and the softer version, any time that the moneyed interests eclipse the interests of residents. Combined, that is depriving San Franciscans and D9 residents of political self determination, the core progressive value.
Don’t mistake a strong aversion to AIPAC/HRC Chandler as a mandate. A mandate in RCV is winning a majority on the first round. Progressives will be weaker legislatively than they’ve been since district elections was reinstated come January.
I respect the supervisor’s right to hire who she sees fit, but I think it’s BEYOND bizarre that ML is writing up a glowing puff piece about it. Political staffers are mostly private people going about their lives and doing a civil service job.
Sir or madam —
These are, by definition, not private people. They work for you and this is who to contact regarding issues in District 9.
Yours,
JE
Any word on where Chung Hagen will end up? She struck as very level headed in that office.
Not one of these people have a law degree! They probably don’t even know how Ronan flouted the law on her planning restrictions and got caught for it. She’s cost SF tax payers dearly. What a waste.
Sir or madam —
As stated in the story, Ana Herrera is an attorney.
JE
Hi Joe,
As someone with a non-binary relative, I just wanted to mention that your preferred salutation, “Sir or madam — “, while very classy, is not very inclusive. Elsewhere it’d probably just be considered old fashioned, but in San Francisco it almost comes across as an intentional exclusion. Hope this is well taken.
Best,
E