William Alvarado Rivera is the senior vice president for litigation at the AARP Foundation, where he leads and provides strategic direction. Rivera manages a team of more than twenty attorneys and legal professionals to file impact litigation lawsuits on behalf of older adults.
Alvarado Rivera has more than twenty-five years of experience in law and public policy, specializing in litigation and policy issues affecting low-income families. He started his career as a trial attorney in the Civil Division of the US Department of Justice under the Attorney General’s Honors Program, and later served as senior advisor to the commissioner and acting deputy commissioner of the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement. Prior to joining the AARP Foundation, he served as deputy associate general counsel and chief of litigation for the Children, Families, and Aging Division of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the General Counsel.
He is a champion of diversity, equity, and inclusion and is the cochair of AARP’s DEI Advisory Counsel and helps lead efforts to promote and support DEI internally and externally with colleagues across AARP. “The past year has seen challenges to DEI efforts in many sectors,” he says. “Successfully navigating them has not been easy, but I am proud of our continued commitment to DEI and my role in advancing equity for our workforce and the people we serve.”
Alvarado Rivera received his bachelor’s degree with honors in public policy and American institutions from Brown Universty and his law degree from Stanford Law School. He spent one year as a Fulbright Scholar in Sweden at the University of Stockholm. In 2023, he launched his journey toward becoming a certified professional coach and will take the International Coaching Federation exam in the next year.
How does your Latino heritage influence you as a leader?
As the workplace increasingly promotes bringing one’s authentic self to work, I am grateful that I have felt comfortable doing so throughout my career. This includes embodying my Latinidad as a Puerto Rican leader is big ways and small. Having navigated the world in multiple languages since I was a child, I am more comfortable navigating differences in backgrounds and experiences; more culturally competent in working with and for others; and more situationally resilient and adaptable than I otherwise might be. Many values traditionally associated with Latinos—faith, family, and a strong work ethic, among others—have served me well as a leader by enabling me to embody and champion the importance of pursuing and excelling in work that is not only productive or lucrative but also fulfilling and purposeful.
Outside of work, what are you passionate about and why?
Outside of work, I am passionate about learning and serving, which are among my core values and cornerstones for me of a life well lived. As noted above, I am studying to become a certified professional coach, which complements my long history as a mentor and advisor.
I currently volunteer with several organizations that promote some of my professional and personal interests. I am an instructor for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy, helping to teach advocacy skills to litigators at all career levels. It is rewarding to teach participants how to be better lawyers and improve the justice system, generally. I also serve on the Leadership Council of Frontline Justice, a new nonprofit created to improve access to justice by mobilizing and training a national force of helpers for people with civil legal problems who cannot afford lawyers.
I continue to mentor law students and lawyers through the Hispanic Bar Association of the District of Columbia, for which I previously served in various leadership capacities, including as its president. I also serve on the board of the Lois Roth Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting cross-cultural dialogue by supporting international research and projects of scholars, artists, and recent graduates, among other things.
I have also served as a scholarship application reader for the Esperanza Education Fund, with provides higher education scholarships and mentorship to DC-area students who are immigrants or the children of immigrants, and for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which awards scholarships for college and graduate students.
I also enjoy spending time with my wife, Tara, and daughters, Alannah (23) and Lydia (20), whenever I can. I love to travel, read, play golf, and attend as many sporting events, concerts, and theater performances as possible.
The Alumni Society’s theme of this year is Leadership for a Changing World. What does it mean to you to lead in a changing world?
Leading in a changing world means communicating more often and through more and different modes to promote clarity of direction and purpose. It means embracing adaptability, managing differences—not just of culture, background, or identity but also of values and convictions, and being comfortable with discomfort. It means listening more deeply and learning more quickly to navigate changes with greater foresight, empathy, a bias to action.
What major changes have you observed in your industry over the past year?
In the past year, my industries (the nonprofit and legal sectors) have increasingly embraced technology to improve effectiveness, efficiency, donor management and engagement. We also have deepened our commitment to person-centered design to achieve better outcomes for beneficiaries, clients, and supporters. Artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI, presents tremendous opportunities and challenges, both internally and externally. It is rapidly changing the way that we do business and how we look to not only maximize its upsides but also minimize its downside.
What are you doing to ensure you remain a nimble and adaptable leader during these changing times?
To remain nimble and adaptable, I maintain—and challenge my team to maintain—a persistent curiosity about both our current state and our vision of the future. I am dedicated to learning and taking smart risks to optimize our impact at scale. A learning and growth mindset makes it easier to accept change as a constant and to both create and leverage opportunities for improvement. That same mindset enables me to better embrace diversity of thought and foster an environment of wonder and ambition, which I believe will inspire greater agility, creativity, and innovation throughout my organization.
