When Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, was shoring up his leadership skills in 2013 in a training session with Leadership Greater Chicago, a civic leadership development organization, he looked around to find only three Latinos in a cohort of 35.

       “They were talking about city issues, issues around social justice and us not being at the table and our communities being impacted ... it was something I thought was lacking,” he said.

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       Although there were other organizations offering similar training, none were focused specifically on the Latino community. So he studied other leadership programs already in existence and chose the curriculum that best helped with developing Latino leaders and then created the Leadership Academy for the Chicago Latino Caucus Foundation in 2018 with a cohort of 24 Latino fellows.