Urban planner, researcher, dancer
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Jenna Pollack (she/her) is a collaborative, detail-oriented, and trusted community economic development professional and artist. Most recently, she helped launch the Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem (CCWBE) at UIC. She has over ten years of experience in interdisciplinary program design, implementation, and management.
Driven by the operationalization of racial equity in urban development, and particularly through grassroots solidarity economy approaches. Skilled relationship-builder, creative problem-solver, and cross-sector communicator. Committed to cultivating a culture of care and radical accountability.
With support from the Cooperative Development Foundation, she is currently researching cultural community land trust structures across the country and their ownership, capitalization, and governance structures. She also serves on the Archiving Advisory Board for the Chicago Black Social Culture Map.
Jenna contributed a chapter titled 'Locating Power: Sammy Dyer School of the Theatre and Urban Renewal' to Dancing on the Third Coast: Chicago Dance Histories (University of Illinois Press, 2026). She is also working on a book project about the local dance sector’s relationship to urban planning, policy, gentrification and displacement, and community self-determination.
Jenna loves live performance, cultural policy, archiving, and the solidarity economy.
University of Illinois at Chicago (2021 - 2023)
