HACE Family
Age:32
Organization: Más Allá Consulting
Title:Founder & CEO
City: Escondido
State: California
Having worked for HACE in her first non-profit fundraising role, Shantel Suárez Ávila’s professional history is deeply connected to the organization.
As a founder and CEO of her fundraising consulting firm, Más Allá Consulting, she credits HACE with helping give her a firm footing and the confidence to go on her own.
She remembers being eager to create meaningful change for Latinx and people of color in Chicago after graduating from DePaul University with a degree in public policy. She had served on the Obama for America presidential campaign and then joined HACE.
HACE allowed her to grow in her fundraising ideas and practice and provided her with the opportunity to work in an environment where she felt confident to learn, lead, and even make mistakes and learn from them.
To help diversity HACE’s revenue streams, she launched HACE’s first major-gifts fundraising event on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. While the team was hesitant about the event, they remained open and supportive. It turned out to be a success.
She felt that HACE was a supportive family. Other examples of HACE’s trust came when she created the first fundraising gala video for the group and then created its first end-of-year campaign and coined the term and tagline, HACE Family/HACE Familia.
While she left the organization to branch out on her own, the group still uses the HACE Familia term and produces powerful videos and successful fundraising campaigns.
She pointed to the 40-year history of HACE and the people and leaders who have helped it move forward and said she feels proud to be one of those leaders. She said the HACE team and network she discovered through the organization continues to support her, embrace her, and invest in her leadership. She said she is thrilled to have HACE by her side as she helps close the funding gap existing for women and black, indigenous, and people of color.
She said, with the group’s support she’s confident, “HACEmos Más.”
