Saúl Valdez is the director of AIBM’s Higher Education Male Achievement Collaborative, where he leads strategy, programming, and partnerships to improve postsecondary access, persistence, and completion for men. Saúl’s work focuses on building evidence-based, scalable solutions that close gender gaps in higher education.
His career spans philanthropy, nonprofit management, and college access and success initiatives. Before joining AIBM, Saúl led grantmaking portfolios at ECMC Foundation focused on increasing college persistence, two-year transfer, and bachelor’s degree completion for students from underserved backgrounds. Saúl also worked with the Seattle Foundation’s philanthropic advising team where he advised a portfolio of donors and philanthropic partners and managed a youth grantmaking board. Earlier in his career, Saúl worked at the Seattle Region Partnership and served as the program manager for the Latin American Association in Georgia. He is an alumnus of Coro’s Lead LA fellowship program and Hispanics in Philanthropy’s (HIP) Líderes fellowship program.
Saúl currently serves on the Board of Directors for HIP. He holds a master of arts in public administration with a nonprofit management certificate from the University of Washington and a bachelor of science in international business and bachelor of arts in Spanish from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
In his free time, he enjoys reading, running, traveling, and exploring new coffee shops and public parks with his wife and son.