Felix Alexander Nieves · Strategy, People, Governance & Mission

"Every season of my career has gone into building structures that serve people the systems were not designed for."

My Story

I grew up on the West Side of Chicago.

My father came from Puerto Rico, my mother from Mexico. They worked hard with their hands and built what they could in Humboldt Park, a neighborhood that didn't offer many shortcuts. I grew up without a college track, without anyone pointing me toward opportunity, in a place where violence was close.

At 18, I started in banking. Someone saw something in me I couldn't yet see in myself, and the banker development program that became the Harris Bank Management Trainee Program opened a door my neighborhood couldn't provide. I walked through it. By 20, I was an assistant manager. By 21, a manager and assistant vice president, among the youngest in the bank, and I eventually became a vice president, entirely through demonstrated performance.

This conversation was recorded July 25, 2018. The story has not changed.

The answer came in the highlands of Bolivia, in a small shop run by an indigenous woman who had taken a microloan to start a business after her husband died in the mines. More than a decade and a half of banking discipline finally had somewhere to go, into a program that was failing her. That was the moment everything I had built made sense.

Everything that came before had been preparation. The banking discipline, the regulated environments, the financial rigor, all of it became the foundation the mission stood on.

Most leadership problems are trust problems eventually. I learned that sitting across from clients in banking long before I ever sat in executive meetings. Whether someone is handing you their finances, their team, their organization, or their crisis, the work starts the same way: earn trust first.

Someone saw something in me I couldn’t yet see in myself. I have carried the promise to pay that forward ever since. That commitment has not changed, and it never will.

Chicago West Side Bilingual 6 Countries 30 Years People First

Work

Four areas of work,
built on the same belief.

Underneath all four, the work is the same: build the people, and they build the organization.

Field Team · Costa Rica · © Felix Nieves

Vision, Strategy
& Growth

Moving complex organizations forward without leaving their people behind.

For years I set direction across a global network of field teams in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, in different countries and time zones, all working toward one mission. Later I did the same inside a multi-site enterprise, across campuses and departments, each with a tendency to pull in its own direction. In both, I learned how one decision in a corner moves three others, and how to keep the whole thing moving the same way without losing the people inside it. Much of it I led without a direct reporting line, so people moved with me because I was transparent with them, treated them with dignity and care, and carried their weight as my own.

A Women-Led Poultry Cooperative · Retalhuleu, Guatemala · © Felix Nieves

Financial & Resource
Stewardship

Bringing a banker’s discipline to money that carries a mission.

Money is trust before it is math. When someone gives, they hand you their belief in the work, and how you handle it decides whether that belief was well placed. Sometimes that looked like growing a first gift into something that funded community health centers in the field. Sometimes it was a decision I carried for a long time. A partner we trusted mishandled the funds, and the call was not simple. I had to hold the donors who believed in the work, the integrity of the organization, the legal exposure, and the plain fact that an institution our size could end a smaller one with a single decision. We had to part ways, but we protected their dignity and kept a real path back to full standing. What the figures measure is whether you can be trusted with what matters most to people.

Set for a Listening Session · South Barrington, IL · © Felix Nieves

People
& Culture

Keeping people together through the conversations most organizations avoid.

This is the work I would do for free. Every organization has conversations it would rather not have, the ones that sit under the surface and quietly pull people apart. For many, it feels easier to push those conversations down the road. I understand the instinct, but the delay usually makes them harder to address later, and the waiting often does its own quiet harm. I have learned to do the opposite. I stay, and I hold the room. I make sure every person in it feels seen, heard, and respected, and I keep it a place where people who see the world differently can still sit at the same table and build together. The skill underneath it is hard to do and simple to name. Hold people accountable without stripping their dignity, and protect their dignity without letting accountability slide. Get that wrong in either direction, and trust is gone. I have spent my life learning to hold both.

Campus at Dusk · South Barrington, IL · © Felix Nieves

Governance
& Risk

Building the systems that keep an organization sound, and leading the investigations that protect its people.

Most of this work gets built quietly, long before anyone needs it. I inherited an investigative structure with a foundation already in place, identified where the gaps were, and completed the build: a board-level whistleblower channel, an ethics review for staff matters, and a team for the highest-risk cases. I build the policy, the accountability, and the training that hold the standard on an ordinary day, working alongside HR and leadership so it actually sticks. Then come the days it gets tested. I carry the hardest investigations from the first report to the final finding, the ones involving harm, abuse, and misconduct, coordinating with counsel and law enforcement and taking what I find straight to the board when I have to. When a board collapsed in crisis, I was one of five leaders entrusted with full board reconstitution. I carry it calmly, because the people caught in it are usually having the hardest week of their lives.

The Through Line

Three chapters.
One conviction.

Every season built something the next one needed. Banking gave me discipline and financial rigor. Global field work gave me mission and a deep understanding of what people actually need to survive and thrive. Executive leadership put me at the table where the institution’s hardest calls get made, and trusted me with them. None of it was wasted.

1993 – 2009 · Banking

Building Discipline. Opening Doors.

More than a decade and a half advancing from bank teller to Vice President through the Harris Bank Management Trainee Program, entirely through demonstrated performance. P&L accountability for a $35M portfolio, branch turnarounds including a flagship I rebuilt under active litigation and mounting financial losses, and banking access built for Spanish-speaking communities on Chicago's West Side who had been excluded from traditional financial institutions.

2009 – 2019 · Global Field Operations

Mission at Scale. Across Three Continents.

This chapter began in 2009 with consulting work: building the organizational structure for a new Spanish-speaking congregation reaching first-generation immigrant families, and creating a crisis response function for families facing deportation and extortion when no structure existed to help them. The work grew into a staff role directing nonprofit operations across Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa: a $5.8M portfolio of grants and operating budgets across 7 primary and 12 secondary partner organizations in 6 countries, 500 volunteers deployed annually, and major donor relationships grown from first conversations into lasting investments. The banking background showed up in every underwriting decision and every program that stayed solvent when others didn't.

2019 – 2025 · Executive Leadership

Enterprise Scope. Board Trust.

Executive leader at one of the larger multi-site nonprofit organizations in the United States, with enterprise authority over governance, risk, employee relations, safeguarding, and organizational care across six campuses with 350 staff and 5,000 volunteers at peak. One of five leaders entrusted with full board reconstitution following institutional crisis. Led a four-year belonging initiative adopted as permanent policy. Fewer than half the people in the network had been cleared to be there when I took it on. Raised it to 98%. Still 98% when I left.

Through all of it, the standard I held was the same one I had carried since banking.

The advisory work that opened the second chapter in 2009 never closed. It runs alongside everything since, and it runs now. The next chapter should require all three.

I lead in two languages, and it shapes more than who I can reach. It shapes how I think. Working in Spanish and English across communities and countries taught me to ask whose way of seeing is being treated as the default, what gets lost in translation, and who is quietly designed out of the room before the conversation even starts. Bilingual leadership is not a communication skill. It is an organizational design philosophy.

Up Close

The work I led

Clean Water, a Kilometer Closer · Chitipa, Malawi · © Felix Nieves

Clean water was never just infrastructure. It was hours a mother got back, a walk she no longer had to make. This well is one of many we funded in Malawi, and water was only one piece of the work. The same portfolio built integrated farming into a renewable food source so families could provide for themselves, and stood up community health centers where there had been none. I brought donors to the field to see the impact firsthand.

Road sign in a Guatemalan cornfield at golden hour, Cuatro Caminos

Cuatro Caminos · Guatemala · © Felix Nieves

Cuatro Caminos means four roads. Guatemala was a crossroads for the hardest work: helping build a hospital where there had been no medical care, training indigenous women as midwives, and walking children orphaned by HIV from grade school to graduation. Long-term, sustainable care for communities the world overlooked.

Partnering to Address Food Insecurity · Chicago · © Felix Nieves

When the pandemic hit, mission had to move faster than any program. I mobilized what the moment needed: funding, resources, and volunteers pulled together fast, new partnerships built in days, food kept moving to families in a Chicago food desert. Some work is patient. This was right now.

Community Water System · El Cascajal, El Salvador · © Felix Nieves

A water system that carried water uphill, from the valleys to mountain communities it could not otherwise reach. Standing it up meant securing multi-year funding and growing the giving behind it, moving international teams and volunteers into the field, and keeping operations, safety, and logistics sound in remote and difficult places. This is what running complex international operations requires.

A Drive-In Prayer Vigil · South Barrington, IL · 2020 · © Felix Nieves

In 2020 a community needed a place to grieve and to stay together. Hundreds came, headlights on, at the distance that year required. Grief is lighter when someone stands in it with you, and I have always tried to be that someone.

Voices

What others say.

From people who were in the room.

“

“I met Felix when I first started at Willow Creek as the Financial Controller, we have been great friends ever since. Felix immediately impressed me with his keen business acumen and his ability to make common sense, correct, appropriate and achievable business decisions, both financial and organizational, within Willow and as they relate to the global organizations he oversaw. His respect and compassion for the individual is incredible. He communicates clearly and treats everyone respectfully in all circumstances and is able to have tough conversations without compromising his values. Felix would be a tremendous asset to any company he works for.”

Ralph Kammann

Financial Controller · Willow Creek

Global Operations & Executive Leadership Eras

“

“As a licensed psychologist, I pay close attention to how people handle pressure, communicate through complexity, and influence the people around them. Felix is thoughtful, self-aware, and an exceptionally good listener. He asked good questions, helped people think more clearly, and brought structure to conversations that could have easily stayed scattered or stuck. The same calm, relational presence I experienced early on was the same person I saw when situations became more complicated.”

Dr. Kimberly Lemke

Licensed Clinical Psychologist & Author · CEO & Founder, Drift® Sleep & Wellness Institute

Consulting Client · Drift Sleep & Wellness Institute

“

“I have seen him lead with professionalism, candor, and compassion while remaining firm where the necessary outcome requires an authoritative approach. Felix is the kind of leader who, once a resolution has been reached, has made sure all parties have felt heard, seen, and understood. He brings a wealth of experience in handling high-pressure situations with a balance of grace and resolve.”

Elizabeth Andaas

Fund Development · Blessings In A Backpack, Chicago

Executive Leadership Era

“

“His work ethic and proficiency match the kind of man he is: dependable, thoughtful, and committed. I have never seen him boast in his busyness or his accomplishments. He has made me better, and I am grateful for his influence in my life.”

Nat Bodmer

Executive Pastor · The Hope Collective

Executive Leadership Era

“

“Felix’s management experience has earned him the respect among his peers. He is goal driven and can motivate his team to succeed. I can count on him to take care of clients with superior customer service.”

Michael Chin

Senior Vice President · BMO U.S.

Banking Era

“

“Felix is not the type to ‘go through the motions.’ He gives his best effort, in his performance, and in the relationships he had with colleagues no matter what level they were in the company.”

Julia Price, MSW, LSW

Cole Taylor Bank

Banking Era

Values

Faith, family,
and the open road.

I believe you cannot give people your best if you are not caring for yourself the same way you care for the work. Self-care is not a luxury. It is what makes everything else possible.

For me, that looks like two things. A blacked-out Harley-Davidson on an open highway, no phone, no noise, no one pulling for my attention, just the road and my thoughts. And a guitar, which I have played since I was 20, not always for an audience, mostly for the quiet.

Leaders who don’t know how to refuel either burn out or hollow out. I have watched it happen. The Harley and the music are what keep the work sustainable.

Faith is the foundation beneath all of it. People matter to God, so they matter to me, and that has meant giving voice to the voiceless and standing in the gap for the invisible. That belief is the reason I left a VP role in banking, crossed six countries in the field, and spent the last six years of my career protecting people inside an institution.

Dignity

for every person

Accountability

without exception

Grace

especially under pressure

On fatherhood

"Raising three young women with a strong sense of justice has made me a better father, a better man, and a better leader. They have refined me in ways no leadership program ever could."

Thirty years.
Every role.
People first.

I grew up on the West Side of Chicago.