Silas Amaral serves as Director of Strategy, Partnerships, and Impact at the Sunday Friends Foundation in San José, where he is launching an entrepreneurship accelerator for family businesses run by Latin and Vietnamese immigrants. A lawyer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who changed careers when he moved to San Francisco, Silas feels a deep connection to newcomers forging their path in the Bay Area. We talked with him about the role of entrepreneurship in community transformation.
What inspired you to become a SPUR member?
When I moved to San Francisco in 2019, one major challenge was that I had to pivot my career. I had a lot of help from friends, mentors, and organizations through that transition. A mentor of mine suggested attending a SPUR public program could be a good way to build my network. After attending just a couple of events, I knew I wanted to be a part of SPUR.
Although I’m not an architect, an engineer, or in real estate, I saw how SPUR was creating space for innovative thinking and facilitating connections across different industries in a really compelling way. I was immediately drawn to the organization’s mission, and I quickly found a community in SPUR that was thinking about big problems in a very collaborative, holistic, cross-sector way.
Being part of SPUR aligns perfectly with my passion for partnership building. In my work, I like to say I “play Lego” with organizations and ideas. For any professional thinking about strategy, the conversations happening at SPUR are valuable in shaping how you think about complex challenges.
Can you tell us a bit about your work and organization?
Since 2023, I have had the pleasure of serving a fantastic nonprofit called the Sunday Friends Foundation, where I support strategy, partnership building, and impact. As we approach 30 years of service to San José and Santa Clara County, I am helping build the vision for the next phase of our organization under the leadership of our executive director Tatiana Colón Rivera. I’m particularly excited about implementing our first accelerator program for family businesses. This initiative aims to support entrepreneurship within the communities we serve, many of whom are immigrants or from mixed-status families.
Why do you believe entrepreneurship is important for these communities?
How do you see this approach impacting the Bay Area? Entrepreneurship can be a powerful vehicle for inclusive economic mobility and community transformation. For many low-income families, starting a small business can provide the basic support needed for stability and growth. Entrepreneurship is not just about creating the next tech unicorn — it’s about creating a sense of agency, empowering individuals to take control of their economic destinies and contribute to their local economies. An approach that considers both economic and social impact through entrepreneurship could be absolutely transformative for the region. While the impact might start small, the ripple effects of enabling entrepreneurship can be significant: preventing homelessness, increasing economic activity in historically underinvested neighborhoods, and improving various social indicators from health to safety.
What challenges do you see in implementing these ideas?
One major challenge is the need for more cross-sector collaboration. We need to bring together expertise from nonprofits, who understand these communities, with resources and innovation from the business and tech sectors. We need to embrace a mindset of experimentation and learning. The Bay Area is known for innovation in tech, and we should apply that same spirit to societal issues.
Coming from a developing country, I have a different perspective on issues like extreme poverty and social innovation. I’ve seen how even small interventions and modest investments in for-profit and nonprofit initiatives can have outsized impact. It’s also made me appreciate the importance of understanding local contexts and bringing diverse voices to the table when crafting solutions — an area where SPUR excels in its role as a cross-sector convener.
What’s your vision for the future of the Bay Area?
I envision a Bay Area where we leverage our incredible resources and innovation capabilities to address social issues as seriously as we approach tech challenges. I see a future where entrepreneurial solutions are a viable path for economic mobility for all communities, where cross-sector collaboration is the norm, and where we’re not afraid to experiment with new solutions to long-standing problems. It’s an ambitious vision, but I believe it’s achievable once we realize how interconnected we and our organizations are in this vast ecosystem of challenges and opportunities. ✹