One Christmas, when Sylvia Pérez was 11 or 12, she asked for a map of the New York City subway system. Her wish was granted, and on her next trip to the city from her home in Washington, D.C., she spent an entire day riding the rails.
It was an early sign that urban issues were her calling. Ms. Pérez, 34, is now vice president for corporate governance and governmental and international affairs at the Cleveland Foundation, where she works with board members and government officials to improve life for residents of Ohio’s second-largest city.
“I just had this passion for cities for a very long time,” she says. “How do you help everyone have a higher quality of life in these great, dynamic centers of opportunity?”
Role as a Mediator
One of the most significant projects Ms. Pérez has led is the foundation’s work with the civilian commission established to oversee the Cleveland police department after an officer killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African-American boy, in 2014.
The mayor of Cleveland wanted the foundation to help the commission get started. Foundation President Ronn Richard tapped Ms. Pérez to run the panel that chose people to serve on the body.
After designing the selection process, Ms. Pérez spent several more months helping the commission get off the ground, “establishing their brand as a reliable forum for community engagement” and serving as “mediator, translator, and a person who can listen and understand the perspective of each side,” she says.
“It’s been a true honor,” she says. “It’s extremely important, even though it’s tough.”
Ms. Pérez also encouraged the foundation to increase its mentorship opportunities for young people who lack connections to job opportunities. She’s a big supporter of the foundation’s new public-service-fellowship program, which offers jobs to recent graduates from diverse backgrounds.
“It’s not just about your job experience, it’s about the relationships you build,” she says. “I’m a strong believer in mentoring. I’ve invested a lot of my personal time in that, as soon as I felt I had something to offer.”
International Outlook
Early in her career, Ms. Pérez sought a combination of domestic and international work experiences.
After majoring in urban studies at Columbia University, Ms. Pérez worked for Living Cities, a collaborative of foundations and corporate grant makers that helps low-income people in urban settings. Next, she got international experience as a volunteer with a microfinance program in Nicaragua and through a one-year Atlas Service Corps fellowship in Bogota, Colombia, working with Give to Colombia, a nonprofit that tries to increase international donations to organizations in the country.
She arrived at the Cleveland Foundation through the National Urban Fellows, a graduate-school program designed to connect women and people of color with opportunities in the public and nonprofit sectors. After completing her fellowship, she worked with Mr. Richard to create a position at the foundation — chief of staff — that aligned with her career goals.
“I’m attracted to roles that are complex and unique,” she says. “After working in community development and international development — macro and grass-roots — I wanted an organization that has a combination of the two, with the perspective of a place, in particular a city.”
But a local focus doesn’t necessarily mean a parochial one, says Ms. Pérez, who in January will move to the United Way of Greater Cleveland to become its vice president for strategic programs and knowledge. “It’s important for place-based philanthropies to consider themselves part of the world. That’s the perspective I carry. I consider myself a global citizen.”
