Victor Amaya is fueled by a limitless mindset and a love for data. He believes that the solution to many community issues is within reach and that data is going to help us get there.
“Data has the power to transform communities by creating opportunities, breaking down inequities and amplifying the voices of those most affected by systemic barriers,” Amaya said.
Since 2021, he’s led Data You Can Use, a nonprofit that uses technology and data to empower community organizations and cross-sector partnerships to help facilitate community change. Recent wins include providing the necessary neighborhood-level data for Milwaukee residents to successfully advocate for the Milwaukee Common Council to restore $1.2 million to the City’s 2025 budget for home downpayment assistance.
“We provide the data and tools necessary so people can make some good decisions and make Milwaukee better,” Amaya said. “That is how we transform community.”
Amaya is the 2025 recipient of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Doug Jansson Leadership Award for the transformation and impact his leadership has had on the community. The award honors passionate and inspirational nonprofit leaders in greater Milwaukee.
His passion for making a difference was influenced by his upbringing. He and his parents emigrated to the United States from Mexico when he was 12. Amaya said that his father told him that the family came to the United States to do something positive.
“He saw beauty and opportunities,” Amaya said “Now, when I look at our communities, I often talk about people’s assets and their bright spots. I learned eventually how to see the best in people because sometimes we don’t know we have it. So how do you bring it out of them?”
Amaya earned a doctorate in 2018 in leadership in the advancement of learning and service but has lived out those ideals since starting his career nearly 20 years ago. He began as a bilingual educator with Milwaukee Public Schools, before moving on to the nonprofit sector with City Year Milwaukee, where he served initially as its managing director of impact and then later became its executive director.
With every position Amaya has taken throughout his professional career, he’s expanded the impact that he has had on the community that he now calls home.
“I’m really passionate about seeing growth, whether in a person, an organization or a community,” said Amaya, who also is the founding director of the Milwaukee chapter of Techqueria, a nonprofit that serves Latino professionals in technology. “Every role I take, I expand my reach a bit more – through partnerships, through connections and through empowering and advocating for people.”
Over the past 3-1/2 years, Amaya has helped Data You Can Use grow from two full-time employees to seven. The nonprofit has experienced a 140 percent increase in revenue and a 400 percent surge in participation in its events. It offers tools like Neighborhood Portraits, which are individual reports of 27 neighborhoods in Milwaukee, along with MKE Indicators, which show the well-being on a citywide and neighborhood level through equitable housing, population, market value and health.
“Our growth is due to the response to the need,” Amaya said. "We don’t sit and strategize and think about the next project. All we do is listen.”
Listening to community needs has led to projects that center community voices like a project that highlighted the success of Black and Latino youth achievement in Milwaukee. Data Day, an annual event hosted by the nonprofit, draws hundreds of community leaders to learn about how data can be used to address issues like health care equity and housing justice. Each year the nonprofit selects two community organizations to work with over a six to nine-month period to use data to advance a project.
In 2025, Data You Can Use was one of four organizations nationwide awarded $50,000 in unrestricted funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Local Data for Equitable Communities grant program for its “extraordinary contributions that have helped their communities use data to improve the conditions necessary for health and well-being.”
Amaya’s insight into systemic issues has also led to impactful partnerships. His organization’s role in the D.E.E.R. Accelerator—a landmark 10-year initiative tackling disparities in life expectancy and income led by the Milwaukee Bucks and Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin — underscores his ability to align data with bold, multi-sector interventions.
Perhaps one of the most ambitious undertakings to date is the development of the Milwaukee Wealth Index, a forward-looking, groundbreaking tool designed to quantify the investments needed to close Milwaukee’s wealth gap within two decades. This project is underway and expected to be completed in August 2026.
Amaya is also helping develop Milwaukee’s first Racial Wealth Index, a data-driven tool that aims to close the racial wealth gap by 2046. Work is also underway on the Driving Equity Empowerment and Resources Accelerator, a 10-year project led by the Milwaukee Bucks and Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin that addresses disparities in life expectancy and income levels in Milwaukee.
Much of Amaya’s work is about solving issues or problems in a way that hasn’t been tried before, removing obstacles that currently exist and improving outcomes for the next generation.
He foresees the organization becoming Milwaukee’s data hub, the trusted partner that organizations across the city can share their data with to move the community forward.
“If you give people the tools, they will take them and create something you never imagined,” he said. “My role is to provide those opportunities so people can take it to the next level.”