If you ask Juan Salgado — the newly minted chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago — about how having led a not-for-profit prepared him for his current role, he has no shortage of answers.
“The thing that not-for-profits have to rely on almost 100 percent to be excellent is mission focus,” Salgado says.
“If you’re not completely mission-focused and everyone in the ecosystem is not completely mission-focused, you’re not going to be a high-performing not-for-profit,” says Salgado. He was tapped by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel earlier this year to become chancellor after having served 16 years as CEO of Instituto del Progreso Latino, or Institute for Latino Progress, a community-based not-for-profit located in Chicago’s Lower West Side neighborhood.
In addition to mission focus, Salgado stresses the need to inspire the people who work in the organization through “servant leadership” and efficiency.
“You gotta operate at the absolute optimal performance so you can drive every dollar back to value to your student,” Salgado says.
Salgado, a former community organizer, says he has an “additional layer” of skills stemming from the fact that the not-for-profit he ran was based in the community. He first joined the institute as CEO back in 2001 because “it was at the crux of education and economic development.”
“It’s where investments in human beings in local communities, aligned to the local economy, can actually create more income, better family stability and upward mobility,” Salgado says of the institute, where he oversaw two schools, including one aimed at out-of-school youth and another that prepares students for college or jobs in health care.
