Cecilia Alcantar-Chavez

Cecilia Alcantar-Chavez is a project manager, public speaker, and lifelong learner. Cecilia works in the Phoenix City Manager’s Office, fifth largest city in the United States and largest U.S. council-manager form of government. She is also an instructor for PAF 547: Science, Technology, and Public Affairs in Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs. In this capacity, Cecilia works as a course designer, video director, and video producer. She is your go-to resource for this course's final project.

At the City of Phoenix, Cecilia assists with special projects and City Council meetings as a Management Fellow in Phoenix’s Management Fellowship Program, a nationally recognized program training future municipal leaders. She has also worked on projects for the City’s Budget and Research Department, developing recommendations for a $500M General Obligation (GO) Bond program, analyzing employee leave data, and surveying dozens of Police and Fire departments across the U.S.

Cecilia was a lead author of a federal report on equity efforts for Latino communities while in the White House Hispanic Initiative Latino Leadership Program, housed in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Secretary during the Biden-Harris administration. For this report, she analyzed workforce and procurement data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), and summarized twenty federal agency action plans. Cecilia completed Valle del Sol’s 2024 Hispanic Leadership Institute, a 16-week Arizona leadership development program.

Cecilia has over four years of public speaking experience for dozens of university articles and events. Recent articles and stories featuring her include a Forbes article "Graduation And The True ROI – Transforming Lives And Communities” and a live TV interview with Arizona’s Family.

She received her Master of Global Management (MGM) at ASU's Thunderbird School of Global Management, with a concentration in Public Administration. During her Masters program, she completed a 2-month long international consulting project exploring the science innovation ecosystem in Costa Rica for a startup focused on merging entrepreneurial skills with the life sciences sector. Cecilia earned her BSE in Mechanical Engineering Systems at ASU’s The Polytechnic School and a minor in Project Management. She completed her Capstone engineering project with Raytheon Missiles & Defense. She was a student in the Science, Technology, and Public Affairs course in 2022, and served three years as a TA.

At ASU, she has been a recipient of dozens of leadership and impact awards. She worked as Assistant Project Manager for the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions (CNCE) in the Global Futures Laboratory, supporting engineering projects funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) and National Science Foundation (NSF) and assisting with grant proposal writing. Prior to that, Cecilia served as twice-elected ASU Polytechnic Student Body President from 2021 to 2023, representing thousands of students, working with executive leaders, overseeing $1.6M, managing a team of 20, and leading dozens of university-wide and campus improvement projects. She started her student worker journey at Changemaker Central. 

Cecilia enjoys challenging hikes and was raised on a farm in California.