Who we are, what we believe, and how we got here.
We exist to fund power,
liberation, and justice for
Black communities across Illinois.
This is our story.
MISSION & VISION
The leadership is already here.
Our work is to move resources toward it.
MISSION
AMARA catalyzes racial justice in Illinois by cultivating the voices, power, and aspirations of Black people and supporting communities of color for collective liberation.
VISION
We envisions a just and vibrant Illinois rooted in abundant health, wealth, and joy, where Black people and all communities can flourish.
Our Approach
Why We Center Black Communities
Black communities are places of leadership, culture, imagination, strategy, care and power. Across Illinois, people and organizations are creating solutions, organizing for change, caring for one another and building the futures their communities deserve.
Investing in Black Futures
AMARA sees leadership and moves resources to it. We center Black communities because anti-Blackness shapes systems across Illinois, and investing in Black leadership and futures repairs harm, strengthens community power and advances collective liberation.
Beyond Grantmaking
Our work extends beyond grants. We resource community power-building, narrative change, rest, reflection and healing so communities can shape decisions and systems, expand what futures feel possible and sustain movements and organizations for generations.
Relationships Are the Strategy
Relationships are central to the strategy. AMARA listens, learns and adapts alongside grantee partners, bringing resources, curiosity and care while honoring communities closest to the effort. Trust takes time. Racial justice requires lasting commitments.
Repair & Abundance
This is how AMARA practices repair and abundance: by moving resources with accountability toward the people, organizations and movements already building freedom, while strengthening community-led work that will deepen, connect and endure across Illinois.
OUR HISTORY
The work is not new.
Our story began in 1996 with a commitment to invest in communities across Illinois. Over the next three decades, that commitment grew into more than $184 million in grants supporting organizations and communities across the state.
The years brought relationships, lessons and a deeper understanding of what lasting change requires. We learned that grants alone are not enough. Movements also need trust, infrastructure, connection, narrative power, rest and partners willing to stay for the long haul.
Over time, our purpose became more focused and more explicit. We moved toward a Black-centered racial justice strategy grounded in the understanding that Black communities already hold the leadership, wisdom and vision needed to shape their futures. Our responsibility is to meet that power with the resources, relationships and long-term support it deserves.
AMARA — A Movement Activating Repair and Abundance in Illinois — gives language to this next chapter. The name reflects the commitments already guiding the work and makes our direction unmistakable: advancing repair, recognizing Black Abundance and investing in community power across Illinois.
As AMARA, we carry our history forward with greater clarity about who we are, how we work and what justice asks of us.
CORE VALUES
What we believe shapes how we move.
1. Racial justice centered in community
We center the communities we serve because anti-Blackness has shaped systems, opportunities and outcomes across Illinois. We invest in this leadership, marginalized voices and our collective futures because this freedom is essential to collective liberation.
2. Abundance
Abundance is how we see the communities we serve: in their fullness. We begin with leadership, wisdom, culture, creativity, strategy, joy and possibility, not with deficit or scarcity.
3. Repair
Repair requires more than acknowledging harm. It calls for action, investment, humility, shared power and accountability to the people and communities most affected by anti-Blackness.
4. Love as accountability
Love shapes how we listen, tell the truth, move resources, build trust, remain accountable, and keep others accountable to this leadership. For AMARA, love is not passive. It is a practice expressed through care, courage and a willingness to stay.
5. Community power
Communities should be able to shape the decisions, policies and systems affecting their lives. We resource organizing, advocacy, civic participation, leadership development and the infrastructure that helps people move power together.
6. Relationship and trust
Strong partnerships are built through listening, humility, responsiveness and time. We honor grantee partners as the leaders of the work and allow what they know, need and imagine to shape how we show up.
7. Narrative change
Stories shape what people value, whose leadership they trust and what they believe is possible. We support narratives that reflect marginalized voices in their fullness and lift up community leadership, imagination, joy and power.
8. Rest, healing and sustainability
Rest is part of the work. We support reflection, healing and spaciousness because racial justice movements deserve conditions that sustain the humanity of the people carrying them forward.
9. Courage and long-term commitment
We invest with courage and stay with the work over time. Repair, community power and lasting change are built through relationships and commitments that endure. We believe philanthropy must be bold enough to confront the root causes of injustice, invest where others won’t and support transformative change over the long term. Repair, community power and a vision of abundance are built through courageous partnerships and commitments that endure.
These values guide what we fund, how we make decisions and how we show up alongside communities and partners.
06 Start Here
Uplifting Black Abundance
We envision a just and vibrant Illinois rooted in abundant health, wealth and joy, where Black people and all communities can flourish.
We work to catalyze racial justice in Illinois by
Sustaining Black power, strengthening community power and supporting Black communities across Illinois in the work of collective liberation.
Landscape of Illinois Black Population Centers
Demographic Profiles of Communities and Nonprofits
Leadership
People moving the work forward
Board of Directors
AMARA is guided by a board of directors committed to strengthening the organization’s role as a statewide leader for racial justice in Illinois.
Sharon Bush
President
AMARA
Ricardo Estrada
Director and Immediate Past Chair
Metropolitan Family Services
Christopher Rudd
Secretary
ChiByDesign
Kristin Finney-Cooke
Treasurer
Christian Brothers Investment Services
Teresa Córdova
Vice Chair
Great Cities Institute
Candice Moore
Chair
Race Forward
Chanel Coney
Director
CFI Partners
Andreason Brown
Director
Spencer Foundation
Staff
Sharon Bush
President
Neeta Boddapti
Vice President of Finance and Administration
Steve Hosik Moon
Vice President of Programs
Landon Williams
Communications Director
Tasasha Henderson
Special Assistant to the President
Jeanna Rathell
Manager of Grants and Program Administration
Dianna Manjarrez
Program Manager
Tuyet Ngo
Program Manager
Tracey Whitmer
Manager of Accounting and Administration
Sheibani Patel
Program Associate
Lauren M. Woods
Director of Abundance
