Partnership Team

Rafael “Rafa” Alvarez is the Sr. VP of Regional Workforce Development at the Greater Houston Partnership, where he leads the UpSkill Houston initiative with the goal of connecting education, nonprofit and business sectors to provide pathways to jobs that provide businesses the resources they need to grow and thrive and provide people the career pathways to achieve family sustaining incomes.

Alvarez is the founder of Genesys Works a national non-profit social enterprise he established in 2002 and led for 17 years, for which Forbes Magazine named him one of the worlds’ top social entrepreneurs. Genesys Works helps thousands of students from underprivileged communities change the trajectory of their life, from one destined to a lifetime of low wage, dead-end jobs, to one in which they will fully participate in the economic mainstream. This is accomplished by training and employing students to work in meaningful internships at major corporations during their senior year in high school so they can discover that they can indeed enter and succeed in the corporate world. Alvarez took Genesys Works from an idea in his head to a national social enterprise, employing over one thousand people in seven major American cities.

After leaving Genesys Works in 2019, Alvarez went back to the private sector as a member of the founding leadership team of Moderno Porcelain Works where he led the People and Training function. There, he led the hiring and training of the first 300 employees, helping the company expand to 14 cities in just its first three years of operation, to become the largest manufacturer and installer of large format porcelain slabs in America.

For his work at Genesys Works, Alvarez received the Entrepreneurial Leadership Award in 2012 from Texas A&M University, his alma matter. He was inducted into the international Ashoka Fellowship in 2006 and into the Immigrant Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in 2005. As a part-time Lecturer, Alvarez taught social entrepreneurship in the MBA program of Rice University’s Jones School of Business from 2015 to 2022.

Rafael holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University and a M.S. in Engineering Management from the University of Houston. Alvarez has made Houston his home for over 30 years.