Honoree Lorelei A. Vargas

Lorelei Atalie Vargas has three decades of experience in the non-profit and government sectors with a strong focus on creating community-level opportunities and helping to strengthen the lives of children and families. Lorelei’s career has involved work in critical areas of child and family wellbeing including physical health, substance abuse, mental health, education, childcare and food insecurity.  Lorelei currently serves as chief community impact officer of Trinity Church Wall Street where she has developed and led a place-based initiative to focus holistically on addressing the wellbeing of communities in lower Manhattan. The approach combines targeted investments with on-the-ground support to address both immediate needs, and root causes. Prior to her current appointment, Lorelei served as deputy commissioner for child and family wellbeing with the City of New York’s Administration for Children’s Services where she advocated for, designed, developed, and administered the country’s first child welfare division dedicated to using a two-generation approach to strengthen programs, leverage existing resources, and building on the assets that are inherent in families. Prior to that appointment, Lorelei served as New York City’s deputy commissioner of early care and education, leading the country’s largest publicly funded subsidized childcare system, serving the needs of close to 110,000 children with a budget of over $1 billion annually.  In this role, Lorelei successfully led reforms, including expanding access to care, implementing a trauma informed care model across the system, and developing two-generation programs. Before entering city government, Lorelei spent over a decade at a New York-based nonprofit where she led the organization’s work to implement a trauma informed organizational culture model in over 300 child-serving organizations world-wide; managed and grew the mental health division to include multiple school-based programs; and oversaw the expansion of the childcare program. Lorelei’s career has allowed her to spend time both in government and nonprofit settings, informing a rich understanding of the systems that exist to support low-income and oppressed communities. She uses that knowledge to shape sustainable change for families, communities, policies, and systems.

Fully bilingual in English and Spanish, Lorelei earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Bryn Mawr College, where she currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees. Lorelei also holds two Master’s degrees, one in Public Policy and one in Education Administration and Policy, both from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. In 2017 Lorelei was named a Pahara Fellow for her work on equity in education and an Ascend Fellow (2018) for her leadership in developing two-generation systems, both from the Aspen Institute where she is a member of the Aspen Global Network.  In 2020, Lorelei was named to New York’s City and State’s Responsible100 list, for her thought leadership in creating transformational social change during the pandemic. She sits on several boards, most recently being appointed to the board of the Puerto Rican Women’s Foundation.