Juan Salgado

Juan Salgado, chancellor at City Colleges of Chicago, has focused his 20-year career on improving education and economic opportunities for residents in low-income communities. He oversees Chicago’s community college system, serving more than 80,000 students across seven colleges. As a community leader, he has worked to help immigrants overcome barriers to success in the workplace. Salgado has been nationally recognized for his work, most recently as a 2015 MacArthur Fellow, one of the most prestigious innovation prizes in the United States.

From 2001 to 2017, he served as CEO of Instituto del Progreso Latino, where he worked to empower residents of Chicago’s Southwest Side through education, citizenship, and skill-building programs that led to sustainable employment and economic stability.

Chancellor Salgado is a community college graduate himself, earning an associate’s degree from Moraine Valley Community College prior to earning a bachelor’s degree from Illinois Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.