Vanessa Calderon-Rosado

Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, Ph.D., is Chief Executive Officer of Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), a community development corporation dedicated to empowering and engaging individuals and families to improve their lives through high-quality affordable housing, education, and arts programs. Under Vanessa’s leadership since 2003, IBA has become the largest Latino-led nonprofit organization in Eastern Massachusetts with over $150 million in assets, and with a portfolio of 667 affordable housing units in its South End Villa Victoria development, in Roxbury and Mattapan. Vanessa was selected as a Barr Fellow in 2009, and in 2010, she became the first Latina to be appointed to the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Vanessa is a founding board member of the Margarita Muñiz Academy, the first dual-language innovation high school in Massachusetts, and a co-founder of the Greater Boston Latino Network. She serves on the boards of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC), the Barr Foundation, the Boston Foundation, the Yawkey Foundation, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. She is also a member of the Boston Foundation’s Latino Equity Fund Advisory Committee and Eastern Bank’s Board of Advisors. In 2022, the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce recognized Vanessa with the Distinguished Bostonian Award.

Vanessa is a Puerto Rican-born civic leader who received her doctorate in public policy from UMASS Boston; and a Honoris Causa Doctorate from Cambridge College.