Maricela Garcia

Maricela Garcia is the former Chief Executive Officer of Gads Hill Center, a community-based organization founded in 1898 that creates opportunities for children and their families to build a better life through education, access to resources, and community engagement. Ms. Garcia has more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit management, leading organizations through start-up, turnaround, and expansion.

Previously, Ms. Garcia was Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; founding Executive Director of the Latino Policy Forum; and Director of Capacity Building and Juvenile Justice Policy at UnidosUS, formerly the National Council of La Raza. After coming to the United States from Guatemala in the early 1980s, she founded Casa Guatemala to assist newly arriving refugees and later co-founded Women for Guatemala to build solidarity among women in the United States with women’s organizations in Guatemala fighting to uphold human rights.

Over her career, Ms. Garcia has served on various boards and councils, including those of the National Immigration Forum, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Northwestern University’s Human Rights Center, the Chicago Community Renewal Society, Illinois Partners for Human Services, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, Latino Policy Forum, and UnidosUS.

Ms. Garcia holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in public administration from Northeastern University and a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition, she was a policy fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and has completed leadership programs at Northwestern University, the Kellogg School of Management, and at Harvard Business School.