Amara Enyia facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Amara Enyia
Enyia in 2018
Personal details
Born	Amarachuku Enyia 1982/1983 (age 42–43) Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Education	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BS, MEd, JD, PhD)

Amarachuku C. "Amara" Enyia (born 1982 or 1983) is an American expert in planning and strategy, a politician, and a community organizer. She also works as a consultant for cities and towns. She helps lead the Movement for Black Lives by coordinating their policies and research. She is also the chairwoman of a group at the United Nations that focuses on people of African descent. Amara Enyia is also a senior advisor at The New School's Institute On Race, Power and Political Economy.

She has held several important roles, including director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce in Chicago and interim manager for the village of University Park, Illinois. She also ran for mayor of Chicago in 2015 and 2019. In the 2019 election, she received about 8% of the votes in the first round. Many people see Amara Enyia as a progressive political leader, meaning she supports social and political changes that aim to improve society.

Early Life and Education

Amara Enyia's parents were born in Nigeria and moved to the United States in the 1970s. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in University Park, Illinois. She went to Crete-Monee High School. Her father was a professor at Governors State University.

Amara Enyia went to graduate school and law school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned a Master of Education degree in 2008, a law degree (J.D.) in 2009, and a PhD in Educational Policy Studies in 2010. While at the University of Illinois, she worked as a reporter and editor for Illini Media, a student media organization.

Policy Work and Community Involvement

From 2009 to 2011, Amara Enyia worked in the policy department for the mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley. During this time, she helped with various projects, including those related to transportation and economic growth.

After her work with the mayor's office, Amara Enyia became a community organizer on Chicago's West Side. In 2011, she became the executive director of Austin Coming Together. This group helps different community and nonprofit organizations in the Austin neighborhood work together. She also helped the Chicago Public Schools create an education plan for the city's communities. She also started her own consulting firm, ACE Municipal Partners, which advises city officials.

In 2013, Enyia became the director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce. She stayed in this role until 2019 when she left to focus on her second campaign for mayor of Chicago. She also wrote a blog about local government using the name "The Municipal Maven."

In 2015, Amara Enyia considered running against a long-time congressman, Danny Davis. However, she decided not to challenge him. Instead, she worked with Davis to create a new program for young people called the "Bridge program." This program connected local youth with elected officials and community leaders to help young people get more involved in politics. The program started in the Austin neighborhood in late 2015.

Amara Enyia was one of the authors of the 2016 book Chicago Isn't Broke: Funding the City We Deserve. She also worked as a policy director for the Chicago Principals and Administrators Association.

In 2017, Amara Enyia took a job as the interim manager for the village of University Park, Illinois. Her time in this role had some challenges, including disagreements about her salary. Some village leaders also felt she was not doing enough work. Her time as interim manager ended in August 2017.

In September 2017, Enyia began consulting for Kids First Chicago, a group that supports different school options. This was interesting because Enyia had previously said she was against charter schools. She also worked as a consultant for Chris Kennedy's campaign for governor of Illinois in 2018.

After her 2019 mayoral campaign, Amara Enyia joined the board of directors for the Chicago Community Loan Fund. By 2021, she was working as the policy and research coordinator for the Movement for Black Lives. She also serves as chairwoman of the International Civil Society Working Group (ICSWG) of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. She is also a senior advisor to the Institute On Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School.

During the 2020 George Floyd protests and related events, Amara Enyia helped organize local groups to protect businesses in the Austin neighborhoods. She also wrote an article arguing that Chicago should change how its police department is funded. In March 2021, Enyia supported a plan to use federal funding to create new places to give COVID-19 vaccines and increase staff at the city's health department.

Mayoral Campaigns

2015 Mayoral Campaign

Amara Enyia announced she would run for mayor in the 2015 election on February 25, 2014. She was one of the first people to say they would challenge the current mayor, Rahm Emanuel. Enyia planned to run a campaign that relied on support from many ordinary people, known as a grassroots campaign.

Her campaign did not gain much support in polls. She also did not share many specific plans. She decided to leave the race on December 9, 2014. The next day, she supported another candidate, Bob Fioretti. Enyia dropped out because her campaign faced challenges with its paperwork and did not have enough money to fight them.

2019 Mayoral Campaign

On August 28, 2018, Amara Enyia announced she would run for Chicago mayor again in the 2019 election. She held a launch event in the Bridgeport neighborhood. She spoke about supporting police reform, making the city's budget more open, and investing in neighborhood projects. She also suggested creating a public bank. She described herself as an independent Democrat.

On October 16, 2018, the famous rapper Chance the Rapper supported her campaign. This brought a lot of attention to her campaign from local and national news. Chance later donated $400,000 to her campaign.

On December 12, her campaign had a notable staff change when her communications director left. Some people later described Enyia's campaign as disorganized.

On January 31, Dorothy Brown, who had also been a candidate but was removed from the ballot, supported Enyia. Enyia welcomed this support. People wondered if this support would help or hurt Enyia's campaign. It was thought it might help by connecting her to Brown's supporters. However, Brown had faced questions about her past, which could have made it harder for Enyia to present herself as an outsider fighting corruption.

Because her 2015 campaign did not file financial reports, she owed $73,540. To be on the 2019 ballot, this debt needed to be paid. On October 22, 2018, Kanye West donated that exact amount to Enyia's campaign. The campaign announced that the debt was paid and thanked West for his "generous action."

Enyia's campaign focused a lot on getting young people to vote. One event was a "Party to the Polls" on February 11. This event aimed to get college students involved. Buses took students from seventeen Chicago-area campuses to a rally, followed by early voting. However, the event did not go well. Chance the Rapper, who was advertised to appear, did not show up. Despite heavy advertising, only about forty people attended the rally. In the end, not many young people voted in the election.

As news coverage of Enyia increased closer to February, some negative stories appeared. In early February, the Chicago Tribune reported that she had not reported some of her income in 2018. In mid-February, the Tribune reported that she had allegedly not paid a former campaign spokesperson. Additionally, Enyia's campaign website was criticized for claiming she was an Ironman competitor, even though she had never competed in an Ironman-branded event.

In the first election on February 26, 2019, Amara Enyia finished sixth out of fourteen candidates, winning about 8% of the vote.

Enyia chose not to support either Lori Lightfoot or Toni Preckwinkle in the runoff election. She said that neither candidate was truly "progressive" enough.

In July 2019, Amara Enyia's campaign was sued by 24 former staff members who claimed they were not paid their wages. Her campaign said it was in debt and planned to raise more money to pay the debt and unpaid wages.

The 2020 documentary series City So Real, by Steve James, covered Amara Enyia's campaign in detail.

Personal Life

In 2019, Amara Enyia lived in the Garfield Park neighborhood in Chicago. She has five siblings, including a twin sister.

She says she can speak Igbo, Spanish, French, and Portuguese fluently.

Relatives

In 2020, her cousin Chibuike Enyia was elected to the village board of Oak Park, Illinois.

Her brother, Chimaobi Enyia, used to be the director of the Illinois Liquor Control Commission. He also worked as an aide to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn. After his loss in the 2023 Chicago mayoral election, Paul Vallas filed a lawsuit against Chimaobi Enyia. Vallas claimed that Chimaobi Enyia had misused $680,000 from his campaign while working to reach Black voters.

Electoral History