Heidi Massey

Chief Connector and Community Builder

Chicago, IL

Heidi Massey has spent 25 years at nonprofit organizations working on educational and social justice programming for youth and families. She obtained an undergraduate degree in education and a Master’s degree in Jewish Communal Service (community organizing). Heidi continues to love teaching, focusing on community engagement, anti-racism, digital strategy, and social justice.

In 2010, Heidi began the long and winding path of self-employment. Her clients have included many small to mid-sized businesses, and nonprofit organizations of all sizes focused on a wide array of issues. Initially, she helped clients with social media strategy and implementation and has gradually transitioned to dividing her time between digital marketing and group facilitation on a variety of topics. Her digital marketing work currently includes implementation of Google AdWords, Facebook ads, and Google Analytics and training on these and a variety of other digital strategies and tools. She has helped a number of organizations become a part of Google’s nonprofit program, including Google Ad Grants, which provides $10,000 per month in free AdWords search ads for qualifying nonprofits. Heidi also works with nonprofits to facilitate strategic planning, leadership development, and anti-oppression workshops, with a specific focus on race and racism. Since strategic planning involves reformulating an organization’s systems and processes, the work provides a unique opportunity to also move organizations forward to become more anti-racist. Therefore, she encourages nonprofits to do their strategic planning work with her through an anti-racism lens. It is far more effective to build anti-racist systems and processes than to try to remove them after the fact. She believes the best way to explain this is to draw a parallel to trying to remove flour from a batch of cookie dough after mixing it all together. It is virtually impossible to do.

Heidi is currently serving as a Racial Equity Fellow with Chicago United for Equity, helping determine the impact of policy decisions utilizing a racial equity analysis tool. Heidi is known in Chicago’s nonprofit sector as a connector and is passionate about introducing people who she believes would benefit from knowing each other. As a strong believer in climate change who donated her car years ago, she also loves to hop on her bike to navigate the city to take in local theater and shop farmers markets.