Alissa McCurley Vogel
pRESIDENT alissa@oakrosefund.org
Alissa serves as President of the Board of Directors of Oak Rose Fund, and works to promote and advance the organization's mission throughout the country.
Alissa previously served as a Partner at Oak Rose Group (ORG), a mission-driven consulting firm that advances policies, ideas and organizations that lead to human flourishing. Oak Rose Fund builds upon ORG’s work, serving as a charitable entity to further the shared mission of expanding economic opportunity for all.
Previously, Alissa served as Government Affairs Director of Empower Illinois, the state’s leading scholarship granting organization focused on education policy advocacy and the implementation of the Illinois tax credit scholarship program. In this role, Alissa directed the organization’s legislative policies and lobbying strategies, as well as advanced relationships with coalition partners and key state and national stakeholders. Alissa led efforts to raise over $3M for annual scholarships and secure seed funding for the Black Education Excellence Initiative, a scholarship fund dedicated to serving black students and majority minority private schools.
Alissa is an experienced legislative affairs and policy staffer with over a decade of political and government experience on Capitol Hill, including specialized work in financial services, veteran’s affairs, armed services, and education. Alissa’s primary expertise centers around building and executing bi-partisan policy initiatives through the integration of policy, communications, advocacy, and coalition building at federal and local levels. Working for mostly Republican members of Congress in blue states, Alissa has built a career in finding bipartisan solutions with broad, and often seemingly odd, alliances. Her portfolio of diverse policy initiatives includes reforming the Veterans Affairs hospital system, modernizing economic investment, protecting the environment, and helping curb gun violence.
Prior to her role at Empower Illinois, Alissa managed US Senator Mark Kirk’s state operation as his Illinois Chief of Staff, where she partnered with Illinois’ largest industry leaders in business, finance, education, agriculture, healthcare, legal services, and manufacturing on communicating and implementing federal policy at the state and local level. Most notably, Alissa acted as the lead investigator and policy advisor credited with exposing deficiencies and corruption within Hines VA Hospital in Illinois, garnering major local and national press, as well as passage of unprecedented legislation resulting in critical protections for whistleblowers and reforms inside the Veterans Health Administration.
Alissa graduated from the University of Kansas in 2002 and remains an avid Kansas Jayhawk fan. Additionally, Alissa is a member of the Illinois Bar — a graduate of DePaul College of Law, 2008, and has a Master’s in Public and Strategic Communications from the American University in Washington, D.C., 2010. Alissa is involved in many philanthropic endeavors in the Chicagoland area, South and Northeast Kansas and Western Michigan.
