Meet our new Board of Directors!
Rey Wences (they/them)
Communications Director at Unemployed Workers United
Rey was born in Mexico City and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Rey grew up undocumented and became involved in community organizing after graduating high school. In 2009, they co-founded the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL), an undocumented-led organization in Chicago that spearheaded the campaign to “Come Out of the Shadows” the following year. By 2013, Rey and other local organizers created Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD — a grantee partner of the Woods Fund) a community organization focused on campaigns against the deportations, immigrant detention and criminalization of immigrant communities in Illinois. During their time as campaign organizer with OCAD between 2018-2020, Rey coordinated a coalition of grassroots organizations and led the campaigns to Erase the Gang Database in Cook County and the City of Chicago — in 2019 the coalition was successful in pushing the Sheriff to decommission the county’s gang database.
Rey leans on 10 years of experience in grassroots organizing, direct action trainings and executing communications strategies with communities in places like Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix and Louisiana, against the criminalization of Black and Brown communities.
Unemployed Workers United works in multiple states in the Southeast and Southwest, to respond to the current economic and health crisis with solutions that will allow everyone to thrive. UWU is anchored by five partnered national progressive organizations: People’s Action, United for Respect, Mijente, the National Black Worker Center, and Working Families Party. Their focus is to organize with local grassroots organizations to engage unemployed, underemployed and workers facing precarious employment in building power to change their living conditions in their own cities and change the working conditions in their workplaces.
Kimberley Rudd (she/her)
President/Senior Counselor at Rudd Resources
Kimberley has 30 years of writing, strategic marketing and communications, and coaching experience. A skilled project manager, she is trusted to provide counsel, support, and ideas to clients. She honed these skills while working at Burrell Public Relations, managing marketing and sponsorship for the Chicago Park District and, later, the national nonprofit KABOOM!, and serving customers at two brick-and-mortar retail businesses she owned and ran in Chicago. She is a board member of the Publicity Club of Chicago and a charter board member of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women's Chicago Metropolitan chapter.
Rudd Resources LLC is a Chicago-based communications agency that provides strategic business communications leadership and support to philanthropic organizations, nonprofit organizations and enterprises. Their capabilities include branding and message development, annual report and website production, social media management and video production.
“I am honored to join the Woods Fund Chicago board for many reasons; I’ll share two. This service will give me a chance to apply my communications experience and knowledge in new ways. Communication is generally used as a tactic — tweet this, make a flyer, send a press release. In business meetings, it’s often the last item on the agenda. I think the Woods Fund Chicago sees things differently and that the discussions, decisions, and investments here demonstrate that communications expertise is valued as a strategic tool important to social change. I’m here for that. The second reason I’m honored to join the board is trite but true: My ancestors would be proud. They were generous do-gooders who accomplished much, but never had anything close to the opportunity like this. I’m excited to sit at the board table with their energy around me.” —Kimberley Rudd
Stacey Sutton (she/they)
Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Policy and the Director of Applied Research and Strategic Partnerships at UIC’s Social Justice Initiative
Stacey’s scholarship and teaching are in community economic development, with a central focus on racial and economic justice; economic democracy and worker-owned cooperatives; movement building and the solidarity economy; gentrification and dispossession; neighborhood small business dynamics; and disparate effects of punitive policy.
Her frameworks for research and community engagement entail advancing “cooperative cities” and the solidarity economy and critiquing “punitive cities.” Through Sutton’s new body of cooperative city research, Real Black Utopias, she examines the infrastructure and ideology of Black-led cooperatives and solidarity economy ecosystem in multiple cities.
Sutton partners with grassroots and community organizations committed to racial and economic justice, equitable development, anti-displacement, participatory democracy, and cooperative economics. She has led APA award-winning student projects for the Plan Making Studio and co-developed feasibility studies for community partners in her Solidarity Economy course. She served as the principal investigator of a Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar (entitled Urban Edges – Dreams, Divisions, and Infrastructures: Comparative Cross-Disciplinary Dialogues about 21st Century American Cities) that brought together leaders within and beyond the academy to advance visions of more just and equitable cities. Sutton has supported the work of numerous community organizations in Chicago and was appointed to the Community Wealth Building Working Group, Office of Equity and Racial Justice in the City of Chicago’s Office of the Mayor. Stacey was a part of the founding of PATHS — a movement building collective funded in 2020 by the Woods Fund’s inaugural Movement Building Fund.
“I'm excited to join the Woods Fund Chicago Board because Woods supports the organizations and movements that I believe have the greatest potential for transforming Chicago into a more just and joyful city for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, queer, trans, and other marginalized Chicagoans.” — Stacey Sutton
Dayo Harris (she/her)
Principal at Village Leadership Academy
M. Ekundayo (Dayo) Harris is the principal of Village Leadership Academy (VLA), an independent, private K-8 social justice school in Chicago, which places an emphasis on liberatory education and transformative learning experiences through its social justice curriculum, Grassroots Campaigns, and World Scholars Program. Ms. Harris is a Teach for America alum with over 12 years of experience in education with an extensive background in culturally responsive teaching, curriculum design and instruction, and educational leadership. She has provided strategic education consulting for administrative teams and school sites across Chicago and remains committed to educational equity and the eradication of the school-to-prison pipeline. Ms. Harris received her M.Ed in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Illinois Chicago and her BA from Smith College, where she received both the Unity Award and the Juliet Evans Nelson Award for her contributions to the college addressing issues of racial equity, cultural competence, and curriculum. Ms. Harris is a vocal advocate for racial justice and has worked alongside various community organizations across Chicago, including Assata’s Daughters, Black Lives Matter Chicago, A Long Walk Home, Inc., BYP100, and the Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project where she served on the review board for NEIU’s University Without Walls program at Stateville Correctional Center. She is a proud board member of Sisters in Cinema, a nonprofit organization with an inclusive mission to entertain, educate, develop, and celebrate Black girls and women media makers and future generations of storytellers and their audiences.
Matt Reilein (he/him)
CEO at National Equity Fund
Matt is the CEO of the National Equity Fund, which focuses on providing collaborative financial solutions to expand the creation and preservation of affordable housing. Prior to NEF, Matt was a managing director at Cresset Partners, a Chicago-based private equity firm, where he steered the firm’s community development work and helped drive its rapidly emerging Opportunity Zone strategies.
Earlier, he was managing director and head of impact investing at O’Brien-Staley Partners and managing director with JP Morgan Chase, where he led more than $5 billion in New Markets Tax Credit investments and oversaw the bank’s community development intermediary lending business supporting LIHTC syndicators and CDFIs.
Matt dedicates his time to a variety of organizations focused on communities, the arts, and education. He chairs the board of the Chicago Community Loan Fund and serves on the board of governors of Georgetown University, the Metropolitan Planning Council, and Timeline Theater.
“I look forward to learning from the decades of Woods Fund’s commitment to fighting for racial equity in Chicago, and to supporting the organization as it continues to expand that work through both its grant program and impact investing.” — Matt Reilein