Our Board of Directors

Marco Cardenas founded Pathfinders for Hope after seven years navigating homelessness across America. Starting in San Angelo and San Antonio, Texas, he built a successful cleaning business before losing everything to COVID in 2020. What followed was a journey through homelessness that took him across the West — and through every homeless services agency that turned him away. In San Diego, he educated himself on life issues and the systemic failures he experienced, which became the foundation for Pathfinders for Hope. He got out in 2022. Now he builds Operation Iron Gate to ensure no one gets lost the way he did.

“I contribute to the Board 12 years of Lived Expertise which includes actual Homelessness, years of committee memberships, and speaking roles at national conferences. My lived Expertise will provide great insight, knowledge, and awareness to the plight of the Unsheltered issue.”