About Gail Schechter
Gail Schechter is a pioneer in adapting grassroots organizing strategies that have typically been employed in disadvantaged neighborhoods to neighborhoods of all types. Whether individuals have needs of their own or moral needs on behalf of others, together theirs is a united voice for social justice.
Gail has a foot in diverse worlds, having been born and raised in Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods of New York City, and since 1990, raising her own family and working side by side with neighbors in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
Gail has been a leader in tenant and community organizing, fair and affordable housing advocacy, discrimination investigation, public school funding reform, and public policy research and development since 1984. She is also a widely recognized "thought leader" in conceiving of and implementing creative grassroots strategies for fostering inclusive, just and diverse communities, most recently through co-founding Skokie Neighbors for Housing Justice, the Skokie Alliance for Electoral Reform, Community Alliance for Better Government (Evanston), and the north suburban-wide The Justice Project: The March Continues.
Since August 2018, Gail is the Executive Director of H.O.M.E. (Housing Opportunities & Maintenance for the Elderly), providing intergenerational housing, community-based housing support services, advocacy and neighborhood engagement with and for low-income seniors throughout the City of Chicago.
She is also a trainer with the Addie Wyatt Center for Nonviolence Training, a program she co-founded in 2016 to teach and mentor Chicago-area high school students and school communities on the principles and practices of Kingian Nonviolence.
From 1993 to 2016, she served as Executive Director of Open Communities, (formerly the Interfaith Housing Center of the Northern Suburbs). She reinvigorated Open Communities' core function as the central suburban grassroots organizing and mobilizing force against racism and other forms of bigotry and in support of the Beloved Community, harking back to its founding as the 1965 North Shore Summer Project. At that time, progressive residents and religious leaders of the Summer Project mobilized against an established policy of racial discrimination against Blacks by the North Shore Board of Realtors. They attracted over 10,000 people to Winnetka for an open housing rally with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as its electrifying keynote speaker and were instrumental in making fair housing the law of the land. She led the organizing of The Justice Project’s 50th anniversary “Justice Day 2015” commemoration on the Winnetka Village Green.
She authored the definitive history of the North Shore Summer Project and its evolution to Open Communities for The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North (University of Kentucky Press, 2016).
Gail got her start as a tenant organizer and quickly ascended to Director of Organizing for a Brooklyn not-for-profit group now called St. Nicks Alliance. She organized tenants in scores of buildings and “Crimewatch,” a multiracial volunteer community patrol in partnership with the local Williamsburg/ Greenpoint precinct. When she moved to the Chicago area, she worked for the Center for Neighborhood Technology to train and provide grants to grassroots groups in Chicago, Houston, Denver, Atlanta and Northwest Indiana through the Fund for Neighborhood Economies and later co-founded what became the Chicago Mutual Housing Network to facilitate co-op housing.
In 2012, she was appointed by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to fill the “affordable housing advocate” seat on the newly constituted State Housing Appeals Board, the enforcement body for the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeal Act, legislation which she supported when it was drafted in 2003, and continues to serve in this role.. She also provides education, outreach, and advocacy for mixed-income communities.
She has served on the Boards of Directors of Housing Action Illinois (where she was also the Chicago-area co-chair) and the Woodstock Institute.
She taught graduate courses in public policy and civic engagement for Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies in their Masters in Public Policy and Administration (MPPA) programs. She is an accomplished strategic organizational planner, writer, curriculum designer and trainer. Gail also writes an occasional column for Patch.
She is the recipient of numerous awards for her social justice advocacy including:
The Jean R. Cleland Community Justice Award from Open Communities (2022)
The Roberta "Bobbie" Raymond Leadership & Innovation Award, from the Oak Park Regional Housing Center on the occasion of its 50th anniversary at their Women's History Month luncheon, "Heroines of Housing." (2022)
Social Venture Partners (SVP) Fast Pitch Coaches’ Award (Second Place) (2019)
Faith In Action Award, St. Paul AME Church, Glencoe (King Day, 2016)
Community Service Award, Evanston-North Shore NAACP (2013)
Rayna and Marvin Miller Housing Justice Award, Open Communities (2013)
BridgeBuilder Award, Justice & Peace Committee of the Chicago Province of the Society of the Divine Word (2005)
Humanitarian of the Year, North Shore-Barrington Association of Realtors (2004)
Community Service Award, Evanston-North Shore NAACP (2003)
Champion of the Public Interest, Business and Professional People in the Public Interest (BPI) at their Annual Law Day Dinner, May 1, 2001
Golden Trowel Award, Housing Action Illinois, for her community organizing campaigns for fair and affordable housing in Morton Grove (1999) and Wilmette (2002)
In 2016, she successfully completed Technology of Participation (TOP) strategic planning facilitation training from the Institute for Cultural Affairs in Chicago. In 2017, due to her experience with the Addie Wyatt Center, she gained the highest certification as a Level III Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation Trainer, a year after she successfully complete the Summer Nonviolence Instituteat the University of Rhode Island, Center for Nonviolence & Peace Studies, founded by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s associate, Dr. Bernard LaFayette.
Ms. Schechter holds a B.A. with Honors in History from Oberlin College and an M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University. She has lived in Skokie, IL since 2004.
More detail is available on her LinkedIn page.
