Meet W.D. Floyd, City Bureau’s New Community Engagement Director

This multidisciplinary educator is joining our team to foster authentic and consistent connection in communities across the South and West Sides of Chicago

By Ireashia Bennett

We are very pleased to welcome a new team member, W.D. Floyd, to City Bureau as our Community Engagement Director.

W.D. Floyd brings over 10 years of experience as a youth educator, multidisciplinary artist and organizer to our team to connect with community with intention and deep care. He utilizes popular education and critical dialogue as a pathway to promote self-love and determination. As Community Engagement Director, he will develop and implement an engagement strategy to build authentic, productive relationships with residents and groups serving Chicago’s BIPOC neighborhoods. Before joining City Bureau, W.D. Floyd worked as an youth educator, documentary photographer and founder of 360 Nation, a community organization on the West Side of Chicago that promotes self-determination in the Black community by building relationships and helping individuals grow their gifts and talents.

Here’s a little bit about W.D. Floyd.

Can you tell us about yourself and your career background?

I'm a polymath. I like constantly learning and exploring new ways to express self – or to model other people’s ways to express themselves – rooted in a self-determined philosophy. I am focused on working with others to free themselves from the very structures that contribute to the deflation of self-esteem and self-actualization.

I grew up on the West Side of Chicago. I'm an educator to youth. I got my master's in youth development with a focus on educational psychology and Black male youth. I’m working on my PhD in Human Development with a focus on Black youth on the West Side of Chicago, but also any urban state.

I also run an organization based on the West Side of Chicago, 360 Nation. It’s based around creating effective skills development as a means to promote self-determination for Black youth and Black children. I run a barbecue eatery that’s based in the same intersection where my organization is based – on abandoned land that we squat on that we turned into an herb garden a few years back.

I also do documentary photography. Most of my documentation has been based on the West and South Side. In particular, Woodlawn, Austin and West Garfield Park. My documentative practice is a big part of my overall context and work. I specialize in connecting people, organizations, resources, building relationships and partnerships. That’s the main focus of what I do. I think of the work as liberation work. Instead of the few doing a lot, if you can get a lot doing a few that can actually get us further. I build relationships with folks that help fill voids and promote self-determination, mainly within a Black context.

Your deep love for Black folks really shows in what you do and how you connect with others, which definitely translates in your photography and life’s work. What drew you to CIty Bureau?

Ella Baker talks about what you do to make a living versus what you do to make a life. Back in 2012, I worked at Chicago State University for Youth Services and Community Engagement, as well as taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, working with faculty, staff and young folks. It was decent getting a salary but I got frustrated because I could not do the work I wanted. So, I quit and started 360 Nation.

For a long time I turned down other job opportunities because I really wasn’t interested. But, Ellie Mejia sent me this position. I already knew the values of City Bureau and what they were looking to become. City Bureau was transparent about building genuine connections with communities. As well as exalting voices that are often suppressed within larger society.

I knew I qualified for the position, I have some familiarity with City Bureau. I had been to City Bureau events and met people. I went through the interview process and that’s when I started to get more of a vibe of who City Bureau was and is trying to become. That’s what drew me in that context. They're familiar with 360 Nation, what I do with 360, my commitment to it and they respect that. Since I've never worked within journalism, this role gives me a way to learn something new and contribute to the community engagement work.

What makes you most excited about this role as Community Engagement Director?

Connecting City Bureau and folks. City Bureau has a distant relationship with some folks and vice versa. If you think about people within CB’s network, the network has depth but not really breadth. So, they have deep relationships but the circle is small. But if you genuinely are thinking about building relationships, you don't operate like that. It's more breadth. I would rather have a certain level of relationships, but with more of a broader span. So, I want folks to at least know me, know who I am, 'cause that's what builds a real reputation.

I'm looking forward to that. 'Cause, there's a lot of folks that I know that do good work in communities, and community folks in general who probably don't even know who City Bureau is.

So, if there's some way that they could become connected through City Bureau in some genuine way, and that connection can meet some need of theirs – or fill some void – that's what I'm looking forward to doing.

Your intention in which you connect with people and the care that comes with it is so palpable! That illustrates the type of person you are. It takes a long time to develop those relationships within community, cultivate that trust.

That takes consistency. If you wanna talk about liberation, there's nothing really optics ready about it. It's really everyday and mundane. For 360 Nation, the whole objective was that we didn’t go for any grants for the first few years because we didn’t want money to interfere with us trying to cement a philosophy and ideology. So, for years I was going up to the school, doing educational programming, building with staff – for no money. I was running our summer programs every year, five days a week for seven weeks, for no money. We would fundraise but no grants. But you reap the rewards, the seeds you sow… you see it in the long-term. When you do it for real, the work kinda never ends. Hopefully, we get our vacations, good wages, benefits within that time but if you are doing this shit for real, you can’t think about that limelight shit.

What do you want people to know about you?

I'm entering the work with care and intention, and connecting to folks in community in a way that’s rooted in self-determination. That’s who I am and how I’m stepping into this.

To connect with W.D. reach out at wd@citybureau.org.

Support City Bureau’s civic journalism model by becoming a recurring donor today.

To get monthly emails about our organizational culture and lessons learned from our programs, sign up for City Bureau’s Notebook newsletter.