Kim Arnone - managing partner
Kim specializes in developing community capital raising strategies for social enterprises, cooperatives and nonprofits. She works primarily on investment offerings that can be publicly offered and that are open broadly to community members. Kim has assisted a wide range of enterprises in successfully raising capital; from a worker-owned green waste recycling company to an organic farm, from a rural community development fund to an urban food coop. Kim has been with Cutting Edge for 6 years and has been practicing law for 20+ years. She has her Juris Doctorate from Hastings College of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the Women’s Law Journal. Kim lives, works, and plays in Oakland.
BRIAN BECKON - managing partner
Brian is an attorney with over twenty-five years of experience working for nonprofits, start-ups, and publicly-traded companies. As a principal of Cutting Edge Counsel, Brian’s work is now focused on direct public offerings, corporate structuring, and strategies for community capital to help build a more equitable economy. Brian has served as General Counsel for RSF Social Finance, Clean Power Finance, and LendZoan; and before that as Corporate Counsel for Sybase and Catellus Development Corporation. He earned his J.D. from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law and started his legal career with the North Bay law firm of Gaw Van Male. Brian is a member of the California Bar and serves on the board of the Neto Community Network.
NICOLE MOTTER - ATTORNEY
Nicole Motter is one of the country’s leading experts on program-related investments (PRIs) and innovative finance for foundations. A lifelong change maker, Nicole spent nearly a decade working directly with underserved youth and communities before going to law school to pursue social impact on a larger scale. She has since cultivated a career that combines her wide-ranging knowledge and expertise in ground level program development and implementation, research and education, and corporate and impact investing law. With an eye toward scalable, sustainable change, Nicole loves nothing more than helping foundations design exciting new ways to use their grant money. She specializes in working with private foundations to mobilize PRI capital, providing all legal and integrative services to make the process as easy and accessible as possible. She has worked with a number of foundations to facilitate PRI transactions, design PRI funds, create internal PRI policies and procedures, and assist boards and staff in integrating PRIs and other innovative financial vehicles into their existing framework. She also works with social enterprises on business model design, entity choice and formation, and funding strategy.
Sarah Kaplan - Attorney
Sarah’s mission as a lawyer is to support local economies that are equitable and ecologically sustainable. Since 2012 she has served numerous cooperatives, including consumer, worker, producer, and platform cooperatives. She has handled formations, equity and debt financing, and contract issues for these cooperatives. Sarah enjoys drafting creative organizational documents that implement cooperatives principles and cooperative tax advantages. Sarah also focuses on services for capital-raising. She has supported both cooperative and privately owned businesses in “family-and-friends,” registered public, and exempt public offerings.
Sarah previously served as an Assistant Illinois Attorney General, handling hundreds of complaints from citizens seeking to hold their governments accountable under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act and Open Meetings Act. Sarah graduated magna cum laude from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 2010.
After living in Chicago for 12 years and the Bay Area for three years, Sarah moved with her spouse and two kids to the St. Louis, Missouri area, where she is renovating a home, growing a garden, and getting involved in local solidarity economy efforts. She is licensed to practice law in Illinois and California.
jennifer duenke - Operations Manager
Jennifer joined Cutting Edge Capital in January of 2022. Upon graduating with her Master’s Degree in Nonprofit Management, Jennifer provided freelance services in the nonprofit sector in grant writing, copywriting, strategic planning and development. She is also owner/operator for her own photography business where she continues to capture family and newborn photography.
Growing up, Jennifer was heavily involved in the Marching Arts and Drum Corps International as a member of the Phantom Regiment Drum & Bugle Corps and continues that passion today as a member of their Board of Directors.
Jennifer is originally from Northern California but has called St. Louis, Missouri home for much of her life. She is married with a young son and daughter.
ERINN BROOKS - MARKETING & Communications ASSOCIATE
For the past decade, Erinn has worked in the communications and marketing field in an array of industries spanning fashion and education, but has a special admiration and passion for organizations with a mission for implementing positive change. Erinn’s interest in communications and marketing stems from her love for storytelling and writing. As a Bay Area native, Erinn aims to support and uplift local entrepreneurs and small business owners from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds while utilizing her professional background as a communicator and educator.
She is a proud alumna of San Francisco State University, where she earned her Master of Arts degree in Broadcast & Electronic Communication. In her free time, Erinn enjoys working her way through cookbooks, playing tennis, traveling and spending quality time with her family.
RANDY NYE - OF COUNSEL
Randy’s law practice is focused on matters relating to executive compensation and employee benefits with a special emphasis on alternative asset investing within self-directed retirement accounts and (k) plans. Randy originally cultivated this expertise while practicing at a large Cleveland, Ohio based law firm with a national reputation for its executive compensation and ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) practice group. Subsequent to this large law firm practice experience, Randy was a principal in his family’s financial services business where he engineered new concepts and created the compliant financial infrastructure to distribute them. Also during this time Randy maintained a boutique law practice focusing on “private client” issues. In addition to his “of counsel” relationship with Cutting Edge Counsel, Randy is shifting more of his professional attention to the highly complementary (to his role at Cutting Edge Counsel) consumer and producer focused cooperative design center he founded. The center seeks to promote cooperative entrepreneurship via co-op enterprises affiliated with a new platform/network Randy is designing of cooperative common bond (i.e., community) foundations.
Randy lives in the Cleveland, Ohio area with his wife, Karen, who is a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. Randy assists Karen with the business aspects of her independent anesthesia practice focusing on ophthalmic anesthesia. Randy and Karen have four adult sons who are spread between California, Ohio and Germany. They are doting grandparents to their first grandchild, Luke, who lives in the gateway to the Black Forest, Freiburg ii Bresigau, Germany.
fatimeh pahlavan - of counsel
Fatimeh is a workplace democracy and cooperatives practitioner. She sees her work through an empirical lens given her background and training as a biochemist. In her legal practice, Fatimeh provides counsel in the areas of governance, fundraising, and intellectual property. She helps organizations secure investment and build systems to support promising practices.
Fatimeh is especially committed to helping organizations capture and leverage intellectual property in a way that supports economic viability while promoting greater cooperative activity in the market.
steven virgil - of counsel
Steven Virgil is licensed to practice in North Carolina, Nebraska, and Ohio. His practice is dedicated to representing social enterprises, cooperatives (including worker, consumer, and agricultural coops), and business entities at all stages. He has practiced law serving clients from community-based organizations to publicly traded companies since 1994. Steven maintains an active pro bono practice representing clients in asylum and special immigrant proceedings.
Steven is a tenured faculty member at Wake Forest University School of Law, in North Carolina, and is founding Director of the Law School’s Community Law Clinic, which serves community-based development needs. Prior to teaching, Steve practiced law in Cleveland, Ohio and Omaha, NE. He clerked for the Honorable George W. White, Chief Judge, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, is a former legal aid lawyer. Born in Trenton, N.J., he retains a misplaced love for the Garden State.