Minority Business Leaders: Alfredo Calderon [1]

Philadelphia Business Journal - by Natalie Kostelni [2], Staff Writer

Alfredo Calderon is the CEO of Aspira of Pennsylvania, which is a local division of a national Hispanic organization that focuses on Hispanic youth and their education.

Aspira of Pennsylvania has been around for more than 40 years and while the organization was originally established to support Hispanic students in public schools it has seen its role change. It opened its first charter school in 1998 and now it runs two elementary charter schools.

Last fall, it took over Stetson Middle School and transformed it from a public school to a charter and “in less than a year, completely transformed the behavior of some of the notoriously violent children,” said Robert Toporek, president of Team Children who has worked with Calderon.

Calderon’s next challenge will be taking over Olney High School. In addition to his work in schools, Calderon has also initiated a program that focuses on physical development with children that has proven to positively impact cognitive development.

“In the three years I have known him, he has completely transformed a sleepy little nonprofit into one of the rising stars on the educational landscape,” Toporek said. “He is not following an already established path [but] he is creating a new view of education and child growth and development that soon will be the envy of every early child program.”