Sheila began her role as manager working toward racial and economic equity in the built environment with the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) on April 10, 2023. Prior to joining MPC, Sheila spent a decade engaged in a spectrum of housing justice work, working in housing policy, affordable homeownership and renter’s rights. Most recently, while working with Housing Action Illinois, Sheila was a lead organizer of a coalition of 8 core organizations that worked to successfully pass the Cook County Residential Tenant Landlord Ordinance, bringing needed protection renters rights protection to some 245,000 suburban Cook County renters. Sheila’s direct service experience, from partnering with renters at Metropolitan Tenants Organization to partnering with prospective homebuyers and homeowners at Habitat for Humanity Chicago, informs her drive for equity and justice. She keeps these experiences and the stories of people she has worked as the guiding star for her advocacy and policy work, with an eye toward holistic solutions.
Sheila has lived in Chicago off and on since 1999, with periods of living in Louisville, Kentucky, Seattle, Washington and attending graduate school at Florida International University in Miami, where she received a master’s degree in Global Socio-cultural Studies focused on Sociology in 2013. A Midwesterner by birth, she was born and raised in Indianapolis, and received her bachelor’s degree from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. Sheila spends her time in her Little Village Cooperative Housing community, gardening and finding fun forest preserve hikes in the Chicagoland region. She has a long-standing interest in cultivating relationships with both cultivated gardens, plants, and our wild plant relatives, as well as cultivating resilient and cooperative ways to live with all our animal and plant relatives.