This community-driven policy advocate is joining our team to expand the Documenters Network to dozens of cities nationwide. 

By Nora Bryne

Portrait taken by Max Resnik

We are excited to welcome Jody Chong to the team as City Bureau’s new Documenters Network deputy director!

Jody brings years of experience in nonprofit strategy and operations, policy advocacy, and program design. Previously she was Heartland Alliance’s director of operations of the nonprofit’s Impact Division, where she led regional coalition building, nonprofit operations, and economic justice project development. As our deputy director of the Documenters Network, Jody oversees the strategic development, growth, and the impact of the national program. Jody lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she moved to in 2019, but has strong roots in Chicago, where she lived for about a decade.

We asked Jody to share a little bit about her experiences, her background and what she’s bringing to the role. Here are some of the highlights, edited for length and clarity.

What is your connection to Chicago and the Midwest?  

I grew up and went to college in Florida. I moved to Chicago to go to graduate school at the University of Chicago for social work, with a focus on social change, policy and community organizing. I completely fell in love with Chicago and lived there for about 10 years. I really loved Chicago’s rich community organizing and policy work. I built deep connections in Chicago and developed relationships throughout Illinois and the Midwest through my regional network building and advocacy work. 

Chicago is definitely my second home. It’s also the place where I came into my values. I grew up in a more conservative environment. The progressive values of inclusion, justice, and liberation were always in me, but I wasn't in spaces where I could cultivate them, learn and grow. I learned so much from a lot of people and organizations during my time in Chicago. They deeply shaped who I am and cultivated these values to emerge in a more real way. I have deep, deep love for Chicago.

You have an eclectic background in nonprofit work, from policy to lobbying to operations. What led you to City Bureau?

I've been following City Bureau’s work for a while, from my time at a nonprofit in Chicago. I always admired the community-oriented, people-focused reporting. It seemed like a place that was really aligned with my own values. 

I was immediately drawn to this position in the Documenters Network. As someone who worked in statewide advocacy for many years and was a registered lobbyist, I saw firsthand how incredibly hard it was for the community to access the decision making process, and the lack of transparency in the political process. It really takes paid lobbyists to fully understand the process — to know when and how meetings are posted, how agendas are made, how decisions are made, and all the ins and outs. As a result, I believe it gives corporate influence outsized power because they can pay people to fully understand this process and influence it in various ways. The Documenters Network really connected with me immediately because I saw how Documenters could bring about transparency, accountability in the process, and really equip community members to engage with their local government. 

The Documenters Network is growing and expanding across the country.  How do you approach this growth? 

I naturally practice some of the tenets of emergent strategy to ground me. One of the principles is presence over preparation, which includes a practice of deep listening. Another emergent strategy principle is to change constantly like water, understanding that nothing is static. Joy and humor also really matter to me. There is so much work to do, and we spend a lot of our waking hours doing it, so I want to make sure that we all have fun and enjoy our time together.

There’s also the quantitative side of growth, like growing the number of sites, the number of Documenters and the number of people who are invested in this work. Growth also includes increasing the visibility of Documenters, their notes and special projects. These are all obvious and important parts of the growth. 

Perhaps the less obvious one, but equally important, is growing the holistic strength of the Documenters Network, like how comfortable staff feel in picking up the phone and calling someone else in another city to ask a question. As the Documenters Network grows and evolves, I’m excited to see how our practices evolve. Everyone is part of that process. 

What is your work grounded in?

My work is grounded in a very deep desire and drive to make a world where we all thrive and can live to our full potential and find freedom, liberation, and community. As part of that, it's really important to me that we are centering the people who are most impacted by oppression. Equity is at the front and center of all of our work. I am easily driven by anger at unjust systems, but I also find hope and joy in the future that I see emerging. 


To connect with Jody, feel free to reach out at jody@citybureau.org.

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