Marcela C. Poveda is a community advocate, program manager, and educator working at the intersection of social justice, strategy, and storytelling. As Administration and Operations Lead for The Dedication to Community Justice Institute at University of Mount St. Vincent, she steers operations, cross-institutional partnerships, and high-impact programming that advance the Institute’s justice-centered mission.

Her career cuts across education, nonprofit, sports and entertainment, public policy, and marketing — a range that shapes how she approaches strategy and engagement. During her tenure with the School District of Philadelphia, she led multilingual outreach and culturally responsive programming that expanded access for Spanish-speaking families and drove a measurable rise in community participation.

Poveda is also an adjunct professor, teaching courses that examine how the arts — from music and dance to marketing and visual culture — carry social justice messaging and drive movements forward. She is a bilingual Spanish-English interpreter and a former public policy fellow with the National Puerto Rican Coalition, where she worked on national advocacy and grassroots initiatives.

She holds a Master of Science in Integrated Marketing and a Master of Arts in Music Business Professions from New York University, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania.

A proud Latina and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, she was born in Los Angeles and raised in New York City. Off the clock, she’s reading, traveling, deep in a streaming series, or belting out a song on karaoke night.