Morgan Malone,
Executive Director

Morgan is City Bureau’s Executive Director. With a strong background in administrative operations, city government, inclusive placemaking, and economic development, Morgan brings experience in community-driven partnerships, complex systems change, organizing and advocacy, and social impact program design to City Bureau.

Read more about Morgan here.

Marilyn Carteno,
Events and Outreach CoOrdinator

Marilyn is City Bureau’s Events and Outreach Coordinator. She is an educator and theater artist who is committed to creating spaces where folks feel heard and welcomed. In this role, she will plan and facilitate City Bureau’s public events as well as develop relationships with civic and community organizations in Chicago’s BIPOC neighborhoods.

Read more about Marilyn and her work.

Grace Del Vecchio, Editorial Program Coordinator, Chicago Documenters

Grace is a City Bureau’s Editorial Program Coordinator for Chicago Documenters. She is a proud Philadelphian with a background in organizing, reporting and producing. Grace is passionate about developing newsroom practices that prioritize opportunities for Chicagoans to grow as storytellers and stakeholders while developing their own relationships with civic engagement and participation.

Read more about Grace and their work.

W.D floyd,
director of community engagement

W.D Floyd is City Bureau’s Community Engagement Director. He is a multidisciplinary practitioner whose work is grounded in the desire to illuminate the dignity of those who have traditionally been framed through a lens of degradation. 

Read more about W.D. and his work.

NavJOT HEER, Documenters Network Coordinator

Navi is a Documenters Network Coordinator with City Bureau. She comes from the Central Valley of California with a background in architecture, urban planning, and community organizing. Currently based in Chicago, Navi aims to foster connections between people and ideas, dismantle expertise, and co-create dignified spaces for systems-impacted people to thrive.

Read more about Navjot and her work.

Kris smith, Network Manager, documenters network

Kris is City Bureau’s Network Manager for the Documenters Network. In this role, they use their background in nonprofit administration, consulting, project management, and trauma-responsive and healing-centered facilitation to support the network to thrive. Based in Philadelphia, Kris grounds their work in co-creating spaces for people and communities to critically think, deeply feel, and self-determine aligned actions.

Read more about Kris and their work.

Sonam vashi, Director of Network success, documenters network

Sonam is City Bureau’s Director of Network Success for the Documenters Network. Based in her hometown of Atlanta, she leads the development of strategies to support a thriving network of community journalists. She has a background in local reporting, archival research, and nonprofit leadership as a cofounder of Canopy Atlanta.

Read more about Sonam and her work.

TYRA BOSNIC, Lead Development Writer

Tyra is City Bureau’s Lead Development Writer. Born and raised in Chicago, Tyra comes to the work with a background in journalism and state government that has centered on tapping into the power of words to redefine narratives and foster collective healing.

Read more about Tyra and her work.

catherine campos, chief of staff

Catherine is City Bureau’s Chief of Staff. Based in Washington, DC, she previously served as the Senior Program Coordinator for the Aspen Institute Socrates Program and a Program Manager for Impact for City Year Washington, DC. Catherine has a passion for civic engagement and dialogue and community engagement.

amira turner,
executive assistant

Amira is City Bureau’s Executive Assistant. She is a Chicago-based professional with expertise in data analytics, nonprofit development, and community engagement. With competencies in performance metrics, program evaluation, and administration, she is bringing a detail-oriented intentionality to her work across City Bureau.

shabaka verna,
operations coordinator

Shabaka is City Bureau’s Operations Coordinator. He pulls from his background in multimedia, special events and information systems to fuel ingenuity and equip people to dream big. In this role, he maintains administrative systems to ensure City Bureau’s space is used to have a positive impact on staff and community.

Read more about Shabaka and his work.

Akili Lee is a social entrepreneur who has spent 15 years creating human-centered and technology empowered systems that provide equitable access to opportunity. He is the co-founder of the Digital Youth Network (DYN), an organization that addresses the urgent need to redesign learning by cultivating equity in our systems and agency in the lives of young people. Akili has led the design and development of two ground-breaking technology platforms that power the DYN learning systems. He is the creator of iRemix, one of the earliest youth-focused social learning networks. Akili is the co-founder of Remix Learning, a social enterprise that provides proven learning products to schools, non-profits and city agencies.

Sheila Solomon is an award-winning former newspaper reporter and editor and has worked for the Hampton Monitor, Daily Press, Newsday, The Charlotte Observer and Chicago Tribune. She’s chair and a co-founder of Journalism Funding Partners, a nonprofit helping to secure and manage grants to support local journalism. She’s also Strategic Alliance Manager at Rivet360 (based in Chicago). Among her honors is being inducted into the Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications Hall of Fame at Hampton University (Hampton, Va.) receiving the Ida B. Wells Award given by Medill and the National Association of Black Journalists, and the Chicago Headline Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Sheila is a judge for the National Headliner Awards, serves on the board of Growing Community Media, The Obsidian Collection leadership team and The News Literacy Project’s national leadership council.

Tiana Epps-Johnson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Technology and Civic Life. Prior to CTCL, she was the New Organizing Institute's Election Administration Director. She and her team provide resources and training to support local election administrators in modernizing the ways they communicate with voters. They also publish free, open-source civic datasets that have been accessed over 200 million times through some of the most powerful tools that drive civic participation. Tiana earned a MSc in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science from Stanford University. In 2015 Tiana joined the inaugural class of Technology and Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. And in 2018 Tiana was selected to join the inaugural class of Obama Foundation Fellows.

Matt Denn is a managing director at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a global venture philanthropy firm that supports high impact social enterprises.  An attorney, Matt previously served as the elected Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, and Insurance Commissioner of Delaware, as well as appointed chief counsel to the Governor.  Matt is the co-chair of the Redding Consortium on Educational Equity, a Delaware government body dedicated to improving education for Delaware students, and is the co-founder and vice chair of Action for Delaware’s Children, a children’s advocacy organization in Delaware.  Matt also serves on the boards of Cultural Brokers, a California non-profit that works to assist families involved in the child protection system, and First Place for Youth, a non-profit that operates supported housing for young people aging out of foster care.