Amara Enyia

Enyia is regarded to be a political progressive.^[3]

Policy work and community organizing[edit]

Enyia worked in the policy department of the Chicago mayor's office from 2009 until the end of Mayor Richard M. Daley's term in May 2011.^[1][4] In this fellowship she worked on a variety of matters, including ones related to transportation and ecumenic development.^[8]


After her fellowship in Daley's office, she worked as a community organizer in Chicago's West Side. In April 2011, she was hired as the executive director of Austin Coming Together, an umbrella organization that promotes coordination and collaboration between community and nonprofit organizations in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago.^[9][4][10] She spent roughly a year in this position.^[8] During her time as executive director of Austin Coming Together, she was also part of the Community Action Councils, which assisted the Chicago Public Schools to develop an educational strategy in the city's communities.^[11] She also founded ACE Municipal Partners, a consulting firm that works with municipal officials.^[4] In 2013, Enyia began working as the director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce.^[12] She held this position until 2019, when she stepped down amid her second campaign for mayor of Chicago.^[13] Enyia also blogged about local government affairs under the pseudonym "The Municipal Maven."^[8][14]


Having aborted a campaign for mayor of Chicago months earlier, in September 2015, Enyia formed an exploratory committee to look at launching a possible primary election challenge to longtime incumbent Democratic congressman Danny Davis in 2016.^[15][16] In November 2015, she announced that would not challenge Davis and that she would instead partner with Davis to establish a new youth initiative called the "Bridge program". This program partnered local youth with elected officials and community stakeholders with expertise,^[17] with the aim of increasing youth engagement in political organizing. In late-2015, the initiative was launched in the Austin neighborhood.^[18]


Enyia was one of eight co-authors of the 2016 book Chicago Isn't Broke: Funding the City We Deserve, the main author of which was former Chicago alderman Dick Simpson.^[19] Enyia also worked as a policy director for the Chicago Pincipals and Administrators Association.^[20]


In May 2017, Enyia took a job as the interim village manager of University Park, Illinois.^[21] Her brief tenure as interim village manager was later reported to have been troublesome, with a dispute taking place between her and the village surrounding what her salary should be, and some village trustees criticizing her during her tenure for doing what they regarded to be an insufficient amount of work.^[21][22] The village's mayor Vivian Covington praised the value of Eniya's legal expertise, despite critics in the village arguing it was limited in value by the fact she was not a practicing attorney.^[21] In August 2017, her tenure ended.^[21]


In September 2017, Enyia began consulting work for Kids First Chicago, a significant school choice advocacy group.^[23] This came despite Enyia's stated political opposition to charter schools.^[23] Enyia worked as a consultant on Chris Kennedy's 2018 Illinois gubernatorial campaign.^[22] Enyia founded of the Institute for Cooperative Economics and Economic Innovation social lab in 2018, for which she partnered with the organization Blue1647.^[24][23][25] However, the social lab never advanced beyond a nascent stage before Enyia abandoned it to pursue her second campaign for mayor,^[24] at which time she also left her role as director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce.^[13]


In 2019, after her mayoral campaign, Enyia joined the board of directors of the Chicago Community Loan Fund.^[26][27] By 2021, Eniya had begun serving as the policy and research coordinator for the Movement for Black Lives.^[7][28] Enyia also has served chairwoman of the International Civil Society Working Group (ICSWG) of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent.^[29][30] She also has served as a strategist for the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing (GCRH).^[31] Enyia also worked as a leader in residence at the Atlantic Institute.^[7] Enyia is a senior advisor to the Institute On Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School.^[32]


Amid the 2020 George Floyd protests and coinciding civil unrest, Enyia helped organize local organizations and block clubs to protect local businesses in the Austin neighborhoods from vandalism and looting.^[33] She also penned an op-ed for Injustice Watch arguing that Chicago should "defund" its police department.^[34] In March 2021, Enyia gave her endorsement to an ordinance introduced by Byron Sigcho-Lopez that would see the city of Chicago spend $180 million in federal stimulus funding on creating new sites to distribute COVID-19 vaccines and increase the staffing at the city's health department.^[35]