Indian American Racial Justice Advocate to Step Down as Executive Director of Chicago United for Equity
- Niketa Brar, a policy strategist and civic systems organizer, co-founded the organization in 2016 in response to national and local reporting about the persistence of racial segregation in urban public schools.
Policy Strategist and civic systems organizer Niketa Brar is stepping down as executive director of Chicago United for Equity (CUE) at year’s end. The Indian American has been with the nonprofit for more than six years and will support the transition to new leadership.
CUE is a network of racial justice advocates working across diverse types of civic power as organizers, researchers, and artists. It was established in 2016 by Brar and Elisabeth Greer in response to national and local reporting about the persistence of racial segregation in urban public schools.
In her role as co-founder and executive director of Chicago United for Equity, she works to transform civic systems to be designed by the communities they serve. She organized Chicago’s first public Racial Equity Impact Assessment, a community process that set national precedent for stopping a school closure on the grounds of racial discrimination, designed the Vote Equity Project, an award-winning citywide voter guide built by thousands of residents, and co-created the People’s Budget Chicago, a popular education model and community budgeting process.
Brar began her career as a criminal investigator for the D.C. Public Defender and as a middle school math teacher in low-income schools, which led her to pursue a policy career focused on addressing socioeconomic inequity. Her policy portfolio includes coordinating post-secondary policy for the State of Illinois, developing an equitable neighborhood policy agenda for Chicago’s city treasurer, evaluating college outcomes of New Haven Public School graduates, developing a small business growth strategy for the City of Oakland, California, and determining recommendations for early childhood education initiatives for the Chicago Mayor’s Office.
She has been recognized for her work through the 2020 Trailblazer Award from Reform for Illinois, the inaugural Bonnie Allen Civil Rights Visionary Award from Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, and the 2022 Changemaker Grant from the Center for Racial Justice at the University of Michigan.
She is an alumna of the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, American University’s School of Education, the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son.