Danielle Villaseñor is a native of the Santa Clara Valley, leaving only for college and a short while on the Central Coast. She has more than 20 years of experience in management accounting, working for both public corporations and, this past decade, as a consulting controller to start-ups at various stages and in a variety of industries. She has also been a board member and Treasurer at several charities up and down the West Bay. Danielle started with CFI in August of 2022.

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Memorable Family Tradition:

Bouillabaisse! Every Christmas my mother prepared a giant cauldron of that succulent seafood stew to

serve as centerpiece of our annual Christmas party of extended family and friends. I never did ask where

she had gotten the recipe, but I know the idea had its genesis in our Pacific Islander tastebuds. As an

islander, she had been raised on seafood, a class of food too costly to feed our large family on the

mainland with any regularity. But at Christmas, she went all out and gifted us, and particularly her mother,

our matriarch, a memorable end-of-year feast. At some point in my teens, I realized how she patiently

watched her pennies for several months ahead of Christmas in order to serve such a delicacy on top of a table already laden with the usual Yuletide fare of ham and trimmings. Reflecting on her life, I think that she insisted on the costly dish because the ham fed our stomachs but the bouillabaisse fed our hearts.