Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Soyla Fernandez

66. Soyla Fernandez

In 2004, Soyla Fernandez opened Fernández Government Solutions, one of the first lobbying firms in California owned and operated by a Latina. Her firm, now known as Fernandez Jensen Kimmelshue Government Affairs, is another one of the state’s major lobbying forces, with clients that include Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Edison, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Meta (the owners of Facebook and Instagram), PhRMA, Verizon and Visa. Her firm is always around the top of the earnings tabulations, which must make dinner conversation with her husband (Kelly Jensen of Sloat Higgins Jensen & Associates) ….interesting. No rivalries there! Fernandez is the daughter of migrant workers from Mexico who spent part of her childhood in the same fields they did. She’s received gubernatorial appointments to the Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency and the Technology, Trade and Commerce Agency, and was a senior consultant to the Assembly Budget Committee and former Assembly Speaker and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Updated Aug. 26, 2025