Executive Director & Founder
Angela G. Reyes, MPH, is the Executive Director of the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation. She was born in the Southwest Detroit Latino community and continues to reside in the area where she raised her 4 children as a single mother. Angie has been a community activist for over 30 years, dedicating much of her life to working with “at-risk” and gang-involved youth, beginning when she was a teenager herself.
Ms. Reyes received her Master’s Degree in Public Health in 1998 from the University of Michigan, and has been the recipient of several awards for her community work, including the 1992 Michiganian of the Year, Detroit Public Schools Community Service Award, and Corp! Magazine’s Michigan’s Most Influential Hispanic Leaders. Ms. Reyes is an international speaker about issues affecting the Latino community, including cultural awareness, youth gangs and violence, community-based participatory research, policy development and community organizing.
In 1997, Ms. Reyes founded the Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation, a community-based non-profit, from her living room, “because I was tired of burying children”. In an attempt to reduce the violence, DHDC’s initial program formed after forging a truce with the leaders of several rival gangs, and encouraging them to “retire” in return for jobs in local Hispanic-owned manufacturing companies.