Nedra Sims Fears
Executive Director
Greater Chatham Initiative
Nedra Sims Fears serves as Executive Director for Greater Chatham Initiative (GCI), a nonprofit, place-based community development organization serving the Auburn Gresham, Avalon Park, Chatham, and Greater Grand Crossing Black Chicago Southside neighborhoods. Inspired by her idyllic childhood in Chatham, Fears champions Greater Chatham so the next generation can live here proudly and prosperously. As a self-described “Daughter of Chatham,” she recently purchased and rehabbed Cubs legend Ernie Banks’ former home just blocks from her childhood home. Fears is a Harvard University Loeb Fellow. She holds an MBA in Finance from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a B.S. in interior architecture from Cornell University.
During Nedra’s eight-year tenure at GCI, she created Mahalia’s Mile, a State-Designated Cultural District on 79th Street between State Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. She completed an architectural design plan and is executing the repositioning of Mahalia’s Mile as both a walkable and economically viable corridor for its 16,700 residents and 500,000 tourists and bus riders. Nedra also created the retail store Artists on the 9ine, an artist/maker space on the eastern boarder of Mahalia’s Mile at 735 E 79th Street. Mahalia Jackson Court, which is on the western border at 1 E 79th Street, is an 8,500 square foot public courtyard. Community-driven plans are now under way to install seven murals, 88 banners, 20 planters, decorative street scaping, and sculptures as part a five-year redevelopment plan. For her placekeeping and placemaking achievements, Nedra received a Midwestern Emmy for “Making of Mahlia’s Mile”, a Chicago Neighborhood Development Award, a Congress for the New Urbanism award, and the 2020-2021 Merit Award for Design from the Illinois Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Always passionate about how money can be a tool to placekeep the built environment, Nedra, during the first half of her career, was an affordable housing mortgage banker. She financed $1 billion of home and apartment building loans while working for Fannie Mae, Community Investment Corporation, the City of Chicago, and others.