Alicia Vega

Alicia Vega has 25 years of experience serving youth of color affected by trauma and violence. She is currently the Executive Director of Changing Worlds, a nonprofit organization fostering inclusive communities and enhancing cross-cultural understanding in Chicago through the arts. In just under 4 years at Changing Worlds, she has grown the organization’s impact significantly by providing programs in more communities, grown the diversity of the board of directors, launched an essentiality study to understand the needs of Chicago’s youth arts community with close to 2,000 youth and adults engaged, and led the re-branding of the organization as it approaches its 25th anniversary.  In addition, she successfully led the integration of Foundations of Music programs, a 30-year-old organization with a vision to bring music to every child, into Changing Worlds. She has also led a new initiative, The Art of DEI Living, which uses the arts to assist businesses and corporations with DEI values to deepen the authentic interpersonal relationship among their teams.

Alicia has served in multiple community leadership roles such as Illinois Children’s Justice Task Force, Amigas Latinas, Pride Action Tank and is a board member of She100.Most recently she was appointed by Governor J.B. Pritzker to the Illinois Youth Budget Commission and currently serves on the Forefront Mission Sustainability Initiative Advisory Committee. She was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2017, named One of Chicago's Top Latina Leaders in Philanthropy and Government 2 years in a row, and is a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Psychology and a Master of Jurisprudence in Child Law from the Loyola University Chicago. Alicia is proudly sponsored for the DEI Leadership Institute by Adtalem Global Education.