Vice President, Economic Development

Alicia Wilson is vice president for economic development for The Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Health System. In this role, she leads the institution-wide Office of Economic Development and builds on Johns Hopkins’ strategy and initiatives as an anchor institution in and around Baltimore. She focuses on issues including economic development, neighborhood revitalization, civic engagement and community partnerships.

A Baltimore native, civic leader, and attorney with expertise in community and economic development, Ms. Wilson has strong ties to business, community and civic institutions across the city, and has a record of achievement in forging effective large-scale public-private partnerships to advance economic and social opportunity in Baltimore.

Since 2016, Ms. Wilson has led economic development, community engagement and impact investment strategies for the Port Covington Development Team. She served as vice president of community affairs and legal adviser at Sagamore Development Company, and then was senior vice president of impact investments and senior legal counsel for Port Covington. Prior to her work with the Port Covington Development Team, Ms. Wilson spent eight years as a litigation partner at Gordon Feinblatt LLC.

Ms. Wilson is actively involved in civic and charitable organizations. She currently serves as board chair for the CollegeBound Foundation and a board member for the Center for Urban Families, the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, the Open Society Institute, the Walters Art Museum and the Diverse Attorney Pipeline Program. 

Her accomplishments and public service include receiving numerous awards and honors, such as the Whitney M. Young Jr. Award from the Greater Baltimore Urban League and a Distinguished Women Award from the Girl Scouts of Central Maryland, each in 2019. Also that year, Forbes magazine profiled Ms. Wilson as the “black millennial lawyer making Michelle Obama more accessible to Baltimore’s youth,” and Savoy magazine named her one of the most influential women in corporate America. In late 2018, the National Business Journal featured Ms. Wilson as one of the nation’s top 50 influencers under age 40, and Black Enterprise produced a feature highlighting her economic development work. 

Ms. Wilson graduated from Baltimore’s Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School, where she was class valedictorian, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland.