Building A Future Without Gun Violence: Chicago

Deputy Director | White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention

Greg Jackson is the deputy director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and special assistant to the president, where he oversees efforts to implement federal law, identify new executive actions, expand partnerships, and improve services for those traumatized by gun violence. A gun violence survivor himself, Greg is a leading voice on gun violence prevention for Black and Brown communities. Previously, he was executive director of the Community Justice Action Fund. There he led efforts that secured over $12 billion in public funding for gun violence prevention and the passage of the first new gun violence prevention law in 30 years, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.

Director, Division of Community Safety Policy and Engagement, Comprehensive Injury Center | Medical College of Wisconsin

Reggie Moore has 24 years of experience in non-profit, public health, government, and community leadership. He possesses expertise in community engagement, public health, nonprofit management, program development and evaluation, strategic planning, staff coaching and support, and more. Reggie previously served as Director of the Office of Violence Prevention at the City of Milwaukee Health Department, where he led the creation of Milwaukee’s first comprehensive plan to address violence from a public health perspective, the Blueprint for Peace. He has also founded two organizations, the Center for Youth Engagement, which focuses on advancing quality youth development policies and practices in the U.S. and across the world, and Urban Underground, which promotes a new generation of young leaders committed to building safe and sustainable communities through community organizing and civic engagement. An organizer at his core, Reggie has dedicated his life to being a catalyst for social change.

Managing Partner | Chicago CRED

After serving as a cabinet member under President Barack Obama, Arne Duncan returned home to Chicago in 2016, committed to trying to dramatically reduce the amount of gun violence in our city and allow children on the South and West sides to grow up free of fear and trauma. Starting with 30 men in fall of 2016, Chicago CRED, along with its many community partners, now serves approximately 500 of the young men most at risk of shooting or being shot. He views these men not as the problem, but as the solution to the problem. Walking with them and learning from them, as they work towards individual and neighborhood transformation, he wants to continue to scale these efforts and build the public and private sector partnerships necessary to create real opportunity and make Chicago the safest big city in the nation.

Chief Policy Officer | Metropolitan Peace Initiatives

Kanu Iheukumere has more than 20 years of community development leadership in the public and private sectors. As Chief Policy Officer for Metropolitan Peace Initiatives, Kanu provides leadership to participating agencies and program partners and manages relationships with a broad array of stakeholders, including community-based organizations, gang intervention leaders, law enforcement, academics, and other subject matter experts. He has worked with numerous not-for-profit and government bodies including but not limited to: the U.S Department of State; various political campaigns, the State of Illinois, the City of Chicago; Rainbow PUSH; and the Chicago Urban League.

Director of Combating Crime Guns Initiative | Brady

Rachelle Hunley is an accomplished leader in public health and injury prevention. Her past experience includes program design and supervision of hospital-based violence intervention programs; creating and implementing community-wide initiatives to address gun violence; and training clinicians and other professionals in gun violence response and victim support. As the Director of Brady's Combating Crime Gun Initiative, she is dedicated to shifting the burden of gun violence from communities to crime gun suppliers. Through her efforts, Rachelle is working to disrupt the illegal gun market and reduce the number of crime guns in our neighborhoods.

Executive Director | One Aim Illinois

Yolanda Androzzo works with marginalized and often unheard communities to amplify their voices for social change. A native Chicagoan, Yolanda has 20 years of experience teaming up with diverse, socio-economic communities to launch and lead evidence-based violence prevention, juvenile justice reform, and community education programs. Yolanda is responsible for the overall leadership of Our One Job Coalition. She will manage the Coalition membership, work with aligned organizations to build partnerships and grow diverse membership across Illinois to keep our children, families, and communities free from gun violence.

State Policy Manager | Brady

Liddy Ballard is a former teacher who found her way to the movement after seeing the toll the threat of gun violence had on her students. She is a State Policy Manager at Brady and works to pass gun violence prevention legislation in states across the country, including Illinois.

Research Manager, Programs | Brady

Grace is proud to work at Brady to fight to end the epidemic of gun violence. As part of the Combating Crime Guns Initiative team, she digs deep on the sources of crime guns, and the behavior that allows them to flood communities unchecked. In this role, she is also a keystone of Brady’s Government Transparency for Gun Violence Prevention program, managing the GunStoreTransparency.org tool, analyzing data, and authoring reports. Prior to joining Brady in 2022, she worked at a variety of nonprofits conducting research and drafting testimony. Grace earned her B.A. in Political Science at Rice University and Master’s in Public Administration at George Washington University, where she conducted months-long program evaluation of a gun violence prevention group’s advocacy program.

Combating Crime Guns Fellow | Brady

Brice Jones has a strong passion for health equity and firearm violence prevention. He was a member of the 2022-2023 Chicago Albert Schweitzer Fellowship cohort, where he highlighted the social and structural drivers as essential intervention points to combat firearm violence at the community level. Brice was also given the opportunity to be a fellow for the Chicago Gun Violence Research Collaborative (CGVRC), where he utilized epidemiological principles to analyze the root causes of firearm violence. In addition, he also sat on the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Firearm Violence Prevention Task Force, where he advocated for policy change at the local, state, and federal level. Brice hopes to use his lens and expertise to implement an upstream methodology to provide better health outcomes to historically marginalized and minoritized neighborhoods of Chicago. Specifically, he looks to uplift initiatives that address systemic racism as potential catalysts to community violence, amplifying community-focused actions and activities that provide evidence-based solutions to firearm violence.

Senior Counsel, Combating Crime Guns Initiative | Brady

Tess graduated from University of Virginia’s School of Law in 2018, where she was a Law and Public Service Fellow; member of the Family Alternative Dispute Resolution and Child Advocacy clinics; Vice President of the Domestic Violence Program; and Managing Editor of the Virginia Journal of Criminal Law. Before joining the Crime Guns team, Tess started her legal career as a Kennedy Fellow in Brady’s affirmative litigation department. In her current role, she spearheads Brady’s public records work; assists in the analysis and implementation of supply-side policies; and works to hold the gun industry accountable for its facilitation of gun trafficking and subsequent violence, and the government accountable for its failures to reform or shut down problematic gun industry actors. She is based in the D.C. region, where she lives with her husband and (more importantly) her dog.

Director of Partnerships and Community Engagement | University of Chicago Crime Lab

Dar’tavous Dorsey is a lifelong Chicagoan whose deepest passion is ensuring all youth, particularly young Black men, have the safety, structure, love, and support they need to thrive and achieve their most ambitious dreams. Passion has fueled Mr. Dorsey’s 18-year career; leading him to create and implement numerous youth development programs and initiatives. Dar’tavous is the Director of Partnerships and Community Engagement for the Crime Lab and Education Lab. In this role, Dar’tavous leads a portfolio of projects and initiatives aimed at identifying and scaling programs and interventions to increase graduation rates for youth who are disengaged from school and to decrease youth violence. He also directs and manages a cross-functional team of project managers, researchers, data analysts, and implementation managers to monitor progress toward key project goals and deliverables. Lastly, Dar’tavous advises city officials on how to improve outcomes in the Options Schools (Chicago’s alternative schools system) that serve 10,000+ Chicago Public Schools students a year who are at a high risk of dropping out of school. Highlights of his work outside the Labs include serving as the West Region Supervisor at Youth Guidance’s Becoming A Man program. In 2019, Mr. Dorsey founded a mentoring and housing nonprofit E.Y.E. Lead Foundation to better support young men of color who experience conjoined barriers to achieving their post-secondary goals. Through his work, Mr. Dorsey is proud to have mentored more than 500 young men, modeling Black excellence and providing social-emotional, academic, and post-secondary guidance. Mr. Dorsey is a proud servant in the community, serving on numerous Boards, and he was recently appointed by Governor JB Pritzker to the State of Illinois Children and Family Service Advisory Council.

Deputy Mayor of Community Safety | City of Chicago

As the first-ever Deputy Mayor of Community Safety, Gatewood leads cross-government efforts to eradicate the root causes of crime and violence, and advance a comprehensive, healing-centered approach to public safety. The role was created by Mayor Johnson on his first day in office in one of his first executive orders. Additionally, Gatewood was appointed by Governor Pritzker to serve on the board of the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, the state agency that directs the development and coordination of programs designed to enhance and improve public safety.  Gatewood previously served as the Director of the Illinois Justice Project, where he successfully developed strategies to lift up youth and adults, provided support for returning residents, and helped guide policy in support of the Illinois SAFE-T Act. Prior to his time at the Illinois Justice Project, Gatewood was Director of Policy at the Juvenile Justice Initiative, a non-profit focused on legislation and policy reform for youth in Illinois. Gatewood holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Jackson State University and a J.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Law.

Associate Professor of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery | University of Chicago Hospital

Priya Prakash, MD, is a fellowship-trained surgeon who specializes in trauma, critical care and emergency surgery. She also performs general surgical procedures. Dr. Prakash is active in patient care and research, and she regularly volunteers on medical mission trips in developing nations. Dr. Prakash’s research interests include trauma systems development and violence recovery programs. She has received several awards for her work in sepsis and inflammation, including the New Investigators Travel Award at the Shock Society 35th Annual Conference. Dr. Prakash serves as an ad hoc reviewer for the European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery and the Journal of American College of Surgeons.

Senior Counsel and Director of Racial Justice | Brady

With a background in litigation, human capital consulting, and diversity and inclusion, Kelly Sampson brings a variety of experiences to Brady. In particular, she works to reduce gun violence by advocating for evidence-based policies that prevent gun violence without exacerbating existing racial disparities. Kelly is a nationally recognized expert on the connection between racial justice and gun violence, who has testified before the United States Congress, including the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Accountability. Further, she has represented Brady in numerous major news outlets, conferences, and convenings. A keen writer, Kelly has written a variety of pieces on the intersection of gun violence, white supremacy, racism, and extremism, including “The Supreme Court’s Second and Fifteenth Amendment Hypocrisy Could Shoot Down Voting Rights  and People,” published by the UCLA Criminal Justice Law Review in 2023. In addition, she authored "Origin of an Insurrection: How Second Amendment Extremism Led to the January 6 Capitol Attack" and co-authored “The Right Not To Be Shot: Public Safety, Private Guns, and the Constellation of Constitutional Liberties.” With Brady Podcast Producer Jillian Janflone, Kelly also co-hosts the award-winning podcast “Red, Blue, and Brady,” bringing together survivors, activists, academics, politicians, and more to explore America's firearms epidemic and its underlying causes. Originally from Detroit, Kelly earned a Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Organizing and Policy Director | Live Free Illinois

Artinese leads LIVE FREE Illinois’s organizing and policy work. Artinese has experience in police accountability and reimagining new systems that reduce the footprint of policing. Prior to LFI, Artinese was a justice diversion coordinator, serving individuals who had law enforcement interaction and identifying their needs. Artinese has a master's degree in Social Work from the University of Illinois. Artinese is an adjunct professor at U of I Urbana. In addition to her professional experience, Artinese and her family have been directly impacted by police violence, incarceration, and gun violence. She is committed to building power to transform systems.

Senior Manager, California Combating Crime Guns Initiative | Brady

Greg Fidell joined Brady’s Combating Crime Guns Initiative this year after previously serving as Policy Director at Initiate Justice. He seeks to use the privilege of his education to dismantle mass incarceration. He also serves on the executive steering committee of the California Violence Intervention and Prevention (CalVIP) grant program. Greg is passionate about creating spaces to equip citizens to be policy advocates in their everyday lives.