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Photo: The Secret Bureau of Art + Design
Jenna Pearse-Pollack (she/her) is an urban planner, researcher, and cultural strategist based in Chicago. She currently serves as the Community Development Director for the Oak Park Regional Housing Center, where she is leading the development of a regional Community Land Trust and supporting a large-scale historic redevelopment and LIHTC project.
Through her consultancy, Solidarity Works Chicago LLC, Jenna provides strategic planning, policy development, and data analysis for organizations and projects advancing solidarity economy initiatives. She is currently a Cooperative Education and Data Analysis Consultant for WisConnect Holding Cooperative LWCA, helping to launch a multistakeholder solar installation cooperative in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood. Her recent consulting also includes policy, advocacy, and narrative strategy for the Community WEB, program support for UHAB’s National Incubator for Permanently Affordable Co-op Housing Practitioners and the Cooperative Development Foundation’s Cooperative Leaders and Scholar Program, and the production of a variety of mini-documentary films highlighting Chicago-based community development projects and engagement initiatives.
Jenna brings cross-sector experience spanning community-based planning, nonprofit leadership, academia, and live performance. She previously served as Program Manager and Field Organizer for the Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem (CCWBE) at UIC. She has also worked with Borderless Workshop, Arts Alliance Illinois, and UIC City Design.
Jenna serves on the Archiving Advisory Board for the Chicago Black Social Culture Map, and is a board member of Links Hall and Springboard Danse. Her research on local dance, adaptive reuse, and urban renewal appears in Dancing on the Third Coast: Chicago Dance Histories (University of Illinois Press, 2027). She is an alumna of the Cooperative Development Foundation’s Cooperative Leaders & Scholars Program and Chicago United for Equity Fellowship.
Jenna has performed and been commissioned by dance and theater projects throughout North America, Spain, and Germany in spaces like the Chicago Cultural Center, Metropolitan Opera, Scottish Dance Theatre, and Bridge Repertory Theater.
Beyond the stage, she was a Principal Dancer in the film 'Little Women', featured in a music video for Arcade Fire's Will Butler, and in Pantone's 'Make it Brilliant' Color of the Year campaign. Between 2017 - 2021 she was an Assistant Professor of Dance at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Salem State University.
Jenna holds a Master of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois Chicago, an Executive Certificate in Social Impact Strategy from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in Choreography from the Institute of the Arts Barcelona/Liverpool John Moores University, a Certificate with Honors from Harvard Business School Online’s CORe program, and a B.F.A. in Dance from The Juilliard School. She has completed additional professional training in cooperative and community development from Grounded Solutions Network, Chicago Rehab Network, NeighborWorks Training Institute, and the Democracy at Work Institute.
Jenna loves live performance, non-fiction, archiving, and rabble-rousing.