Bio

Arleen Vargas is the Director of National Organizing Training for Innovate Public Schools. Before joining the Innovate team, she brought over a decade of experience building power with directly impacted communities to OneAmerica as their Organizing Director.

As a child of Dominican immigrants, she holds that we cannot continue fighting for a just country without immigrants on the front line, which informed the organizing strategy that she developed at OneAmerica and the David Ayala Organizing Fellowship.

Arleen has a deep background in education, including being an education organizer and a classroom teacher. She started her career in organizing back in college, where she organized to save four out of five million dollars from being cut from a higher education fund in her home state of New Jersey. This experience prompted Arleen to become a Teach for America corps member in Delaware and organized students to start a statewide college access program.

Arleen moved to the west coast after winning 2.5 million dollars for the legal defense of immigrants in Washington, DC, to continue building immigrant and refugee power in all levels of government and foster the growth of real community leaders and organizers. She is also passionate about centering the voices of women of color – her leadership as a part of Community Change’s Power 50, Women of Color in Leadership Cohort.

Arleen lives in Seattle, Washington, and loves spending her weekends exploring the city, especially the views, and finding a local poetry slam to perform in.

…sparked my passion for educational equity and social justice.

My immigrant parents who named education as the number one value in my household …

What I love most about our work is …

…leadership development and what I learn with leaders and the journey we take together!

Inspiring Quote

“Imagination is one of the spoils of colonialism, which in many ways is claiming who gets to imagine the future of a given geography. Losing our imagination is a symptom of trauma. Reclaiming our right to dream the future, strengthening the muscle to imagine together is a revolutionary decolonizing activity.” – adrienne maree brown