Argelia Rodriguez has a deep passion and commitment to promoting the educational and career progression of under-represented minorities. For over 20 years, Argelia stewarded the awarding of hundreds of millions of dollars to tens of thousands of Washington, DC public school students through her leadership at the District of Columbia College Access Program (DC-CAP).

As the first President and CEO of DC-CAP, Argelia took the first, pioneering steps to reimagine how to ensure more students of the District could become college-bound, creating the systems and supports to help so many achieve that dream.

As the Chairman of the Board of Director’s at DC-CAP, I have witnessed firsthand Argelia’s tireless advocacy for disadvantaged youth. Through her leadership, DC-CAP changed the trajectory of students across the District, breaking the cycle of poverty that comes from undereducation.

Argelia’s long collaboration with university administrators, public school leadership, principals, and staff, helped to dramatically move the needle on DC student college enrollment and graduations rates. She also helped establish partnerships with universities that help maximize graduation rates while minimizing the debilitating burden of post graduate student loans.

Further, Argelia cultivated relationships and worked with corporations and foundations to ensure their social and community impact goals were met through their partnership with DC-CAP. Argelia enabled corporations and businesses to funnel support – whether through technical expertise, volunteerism, employment skills training, internships, or scholarships - into the educational pipeline.

Her data-driven, engineering approach to what had been seen as an intractable social and economic problem, helped DC-CAP not only to exceed its goals for getting DC students into and through higher ed, but it also helped to create a college going culture in Washington, DC that still thrives today.

Despite her retirement as President and CEO in 2022, due in large part to Argelia’s passion and leadership, the District of Columbia College Access Program is in an excellent position to continue its critical work so that even more students across DC can fundamentally change their life trajectories by making it to and through college.

I would highly recommend Argelia to any educational or corporate organization that is looking build a strategy or a system that has the potential to affect lasting and transformative change.