This former cross-country story collector and archivist is joining our team to create new partnerships and expand City Bureau’s Documenters program network.
By Lucia Anaya
Nalani Saito (Photo: Shreya Tewari)
Last week we welcomed the latest addition to our City Bureau team, Nalani Saito, our first Documenters program manager.
Prior to joining us, Nalani worked as a bilingual facilitator for the national media organization StoryCorps, traveling across the country collecting, archiving and preserving the stories of hundreds of Americans. She also worked as their mobile tour outreach manager, leading engagement efforts with dozens of local community organizations.
With Nalani on board, we’re excited to build larger community networks for our Documenters program, creating new avenues to share the work of our Documenters and produce a greater impact across Chicago.
Here’s a little bit about her.
You traveled for a year across the United States recording the stories of so many individuals. What was your favorite part of the experience?
The best thing about it was being able to bear witness, being able to hear and hold space for people to have these very intimate conversations. The majority of the time people would come in knowing what they wanted to say. They had questions they had made ahead of time, and they would have a story that they wanted to make sure was recorded. So, being able to be in that space with people who I wouldn’t necessarily meet walking down the street, living my normal life, was one of the most incredible things. I found patterns in what people were saying depending on where we were, what city we were in, but then also hearing the individual experiences of everybody’s story. I was very privileged to be able to do that.
How did you hear about CB and what made you interested in this work?
I heard about it through a newsletter called, Words of Mouth. The job postings pertained to art, design, tech, research and non-profits. I went to the City Bureau website and saw all the different programming that was going on and I thought that it was so interesting. I remember sitting there thinking, ‘I can’t believe this exists. This is so amazing that this exists.’ The way City Bureau is taking this idea of journalism and both expanding it and refining it down to what really matters for people, and what information people really need and what journalism can do for a community—that’s a very special idea. I read the community engagement guidelines and I was like, ‘Wow, yes, that’s so cool.’ That the information in the guidelines is explicitly stated and transparent and I can see the texts that created these ideas, and the fact that it creates this public accountability for the work, I think is very amazing.
How do you think your past experience will help you do the work for Documenters?
The common thread in all my experiences has been people first: thinking about the individual level of connection that we all have with one another or that we can create with one another and building from those individual connections. I’ve realized that’s the way people feel inspired. That’s the way people feel excited about things. That’s the way people feel like they belong or that something they’re doing is important.
My experience having a lot of one-on-one conversations and connections with people will help me to centralize that individual perspective, the ground-up perspective, that I think is very important to any kind of community work. I want to make sure that in this role I’m always thinking about, and receiving information from, individuals who get a sense of what it means to be working with the community.
You’re moving to Chicago from Seattle. What are you most excited about?
What I’m really excited for, what I’ve heard and what I’ve seen in my research, is that Chicago is really locally focused. People care about the city, people are proud of their city, people want to do things that contribute to Chicago. Whereas many places have a national focus or a broader focus, Chicago really seems to care about itself and I think that’s so special. I can’t wait to experience that and get to understand that better.
What would you want to say to folks in the CB community who are reading this blog?
I want people to know that I come to this from a perspective that I have a lot to learn and I’m going to learn a lot. I see this as a very collaborative role, both internally working with the team, and externally being able to work with members of the community and people who have a stake in the community and who have opinions and questions and desires for their local government. I’m really excited to learn from all of these people and design something that feels like it’s ours, that it’s all of ours.
If people want to reach out to me, if they have feedback, if they have questions, if they have ideas, if they want to chat and give me recommendations for things to do they can email me at nalani@citybureau.org.
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