As the President and CEO of DC-CAP, Argelia worked in partnership with all of the DCPS and DC public charter high schools in Washington DC to provide comprehensive city-wide college counseling services. She was able to work across the system to help standardize counseling protocols while ensuring that individual school demographics, staff and challenges were considered and addressed in each school’s operations. Over the years she was able to collaborate and sustain partnerships with hundreds of teachers, counselors, principals and school administrators. Argelia’s data driven approach to creating, refining, scaling and measuring impact helped maintain the quality of student services and reach the targeted goals system-wide.

Argelia is innovative in creating programs that enable student progression. Her innovation could be seen through her Alpha Leadership Project for Young Men of Color and the STEM Ready Programs that operated in various schools around the city. The Alpha Project helped to significantly increase the high school graduation and college enrollment rate of thousands of boys who participated in the program. The STEM Ready Program graduates had improved math and science proficiency and enrolled in STEM majors at double the historical rate for DC public school graduates.

Argelia’s innovation was also demonstrated through DC-CAP’s College Retention practice. Unlike all other students around the country, DC students do not have the benefit of an in-state tuition university system. While most students stay in their home state to attend college, DC students are attending hundreds of institutions around the country, making college retention even more challenging. Her pioneering strategies helped to dramatically raise DCPS and DC charter school graduates’ college graduation rates.

Her conviction that every student, regardless of demographic background, income level, citizenship, gpa or family circumstance can and has the right to better themselves through higher education, helped create a college culture among DC public and charter high school families that persists today. In addition, her ability to attract and sustain long term partnerships with corporations and foundations has resulted in millions of dollars in support of DC students through college counseling, scholarships, and internships.

As the longest serving Chancellor of the DC Public School System during Argelia’s 23 year tenure, I can tell you that you could not find a better partner to help advance your school system’s goals and student success.