Maria O. Alvarez is a social entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience designing and building mission-driven programs. An expert in social impact initiatives, content development, audience engagement, communications and marketing, she has dedicated a good part of her career to giving a voice to underserved communities not only in California, but nationwide. She’s passionate about the well-being of families and children, especially young kids.
In her most recent position, as Vice-President, Mrs. Alvarez created two programs at Common Sense Media, the nation’s leading non-profit offering resources for families, educators and policy makers on how to navigate media and tech safely and responsibly. First, she designed the Common Sense Latino program to respond to the tech and media needs of Latino/x families in the US. Starting from scratch, Common Sense Latino grew in 5+ years to serve 4M+ through its website, an online community of over 100K people over different channels and had a 5M+ reach via syndication partnerships with media outlets. Second, Maria designed the Family and Community Engagement program that built off the learnings of Common Sense Latino to reach and serve other underserved communities.
A proud immigrant from Venezuela, fully bilingual in English and Spanish, Maria believes in the power of storytelling to change the world. She lives in Berkeley, California with her husband, two bilingual and bicultural boys, and her mini-Schnauzer, Daisy.