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Fanny Diego Alvarez

Director of Learning and Leadership Development

Fanny leads the Foundation’s strategic priority of accelerating leadership growth and development by supporting grantee leaders engaged in racial justice work. Her role also supports internal learning and development crucial to advancing the Foundation’s commitment to systems change and movement building.

Fanny was born in Mexico and raised in Chicago’s west side. As a student activist at Farragut Career Academy, Fanny was shaped the by immigrant rights movement and the fight for social and racial justice locally and globally. Her foundation for organizing and transformative leadership comes from her community in Little Village and neighboring North Lawndale. Fanny joined GVF originally to lead the Education Program and prior to that role, she led the creation of the Sustainable Community Schools project at Chicago Public Schools, an effort born out of a grassroots education campaign and a contract negotiation between the school district and the Chicago Teachers Union.

From 2004 to 2017, Fanny worked at Enlace Chicago, a grassroots community-based organization on the city’s west side. Some of her roles included education organizer, director of education, and associate director. Under her leadership, Enlace secured over $1 million annually of additional education funds to eight schools, expanding and deepening its work in out-of-school time programming, social-emotional learning development, postsecondary readiness, family engagement, and resident-led strategies. During that time, Fanny established the Little Village Education Collaborative (LVEC), a collective impact strategy where that parents, students, educators and other stakeholders strategized and worked together to strengthen the local education ecosystem and advance racial equity.

In her volunteer roles, Fanny has served on local school councils and is active in several non-profit boards including Chicago United for Equity. She earned a BA in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an AM in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago.