Andrea Sáenz
President and CEO
The Chicago Community Trust

As president and CEO of The Chicago Community Trust, one of the nation’s largest and oldest community foundations, Andrea Sáenz works to bring to life a vision to realize a stronger and more prosperous Chicago region where access to opportunities transcends race, ethnicity, or zip code. The Trust’s work is both professionally fulfilling and deeply personal for Sáenz. As an immigrant from Ecuador who grew up in Los Angeles and came to Chicago as an adult, she is energized by the region’s strength, creativity, connection, and cultural vibrancy. However, she has also experienced the obstacles many Chicagoans face as they strive to build financial stability and prosperity. She has dedicated her career to reimagining civic institutions to engage and serve people impacted by inequitable access to opportunities, aligning with the Trust’s legacy of addressing the Chicago region’s greatest and most critical needs. 

Considered one of Chicago’s leaders making a difference, Crain’s Chicago Business recently included Sáenz on its “Who’s Who in Chicago” list and its inaugural “Women of Note” list in 2023. Her extensive board service includes the Economic Club of Chicago, National Louis University, Chicago Public Education Fund, Chicago Public Library Foundation, and College Unbound. She is a member of Leadership Greater Chicago and received an honorary doctorate from Dominican University. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from Scripps College.

TITLE: From Research to Results: Catalyzing Chicago Through Data-Driven Social Innovation

Join The Chicago Community Trust President & CEO Andrea Sáenz as she highlights how research powers innovative social impact initiatives in Chicago. Through case studies — including the city’s guaranteed income pilot, early community violence intervention efforts, and the Trust’s community-driven neighborhood investment — learn how research and data can transform promising initiatives into large-scale solutions. This session demonstrates how partnerships between researchers, funders, and community organizations can drive measurable social change, offering lessons for future cross-sector efforts, data analysis, and impact evaluation.

Fernando De Maio
Moderator
Professor of Sociology & Vice President, Health Equity Research and Data Use | Center for Health Equity | American Medical Association

Fernando De Maio, PhD, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received a BA (Hons.) degree in Sociology and Economics from the University of Toronto, and his MA (Sociology and Health Studies) and PhD (Sociology) degrees from the University of Essex. His research and teaching interests lie primarily within medical sociology and social epidemiology, with a focus on the concept of structural violence and the social determinants of health. His work has been guided by the notion of ‘radical statistics’ – the idea that statistical analysis can be used to not just describe the world, but to change it. 

He is the author of Health & Social Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Global Health Inequities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and co-editor of Latin American Perspectives on the Sociology of Health and Illness (Routledge, 2018), Community Health Equity: A Chicago Reader (University of Chicago Press, 2019), and most recently, Unequal Cities: Structural Racism and the Death Gap in America’s Largest Cities (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021).

His work appears in a wide range of academic journals, including the American Journal of Public Health, Critical Public Health, Global Public Health, the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, the International Journal of Epidemiology, and the New England Journal of Medicine. He served on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s National Commission to Transform Public Health Data Systems and is on the Board of the Institute of Medicine Chicago