The Evanston RoundTable is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion in everything that we do.
We became a non-profit organization in 2020, following a 20-year history as a private company owned by Mary and Larry Gavin, our founders. Since our transition to a non-profit community based organization began, we have taken significant steps to expand our leadership and staff to reflect our community’s diversity.
Leadership
The RoundTable is led by a diverse board of directors. Currently, more than one-third of our board seats are held by people of color. The RoundTable also has a broad, diverse Advisory Committee that helps guide our development and growth. This committee is large – it currently has 45 members – and nearly one-third of the committee’s members are people of color. Importantly, the committee members bring a wide array of expertise that is critical to our growth, including finance, law, communications, journalism, community organizations, philanthropy, business and education.
Editorial
In September, 2022 the RoundTable welcomed its second recipient of the Medill School of Journalism Fellowship in Reporting on Social Justice and Race. This is a one-year, full time position for a young journalist focused on coverage of these critical issues in Evanston, and it will be awarded annually to a recent graduate of Northwestern University’s journalism school.
Our current fellow is Gina Castro, who recently completed a master’s degree at Medill focused on investigative journalism. Read Gina’s coverage here.
The inaugural Medill fellow, Debbie-Marie Brown, graduated from Medill’s Master of Science In Magazine Journalism program in the summer of 2021; she completed her B.S. in Journalism in June, 2020, with a minor in African-American Studies. Debbie-Marie currently is a social justice reporter at the Chicago Reader, and she serves on the RoundTable’s Advisory Committee.