Dr. Amara Enyia always knew she was going to use her career to address injustices.

In 1929, Amara Enyia’s grandmother helped facilitate the largest uprising of the time, against the British Empire in Nigeria. 

“There’s a lineage of activism, advocacy, that made it make sense in my mind why I was so committed to that kind of work,” Amara Enyia said. 

Her earliest influences were her family: both of her parents are very active in human rights issues, and both of her parents fought in the Nigerian Civil War. 

Onyi Enyia, Amara Enyia’s twin sister, said that her Nigerian parents had a high standard and never instilled any limitations on what they could or could not do. 

“Cultivating that respect and work ethic, the getting up early at 6 a.m. every morning for prayer time,” Onyi Enyia said. “You know all of those things that we did growing up, really translated into how we are today.” 

So, in 2019 when Amara Enyia ran for mayor of Chicago, Onyi Enyia was not surprised. 

“I feel like she could run for president and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised,” Onyi Enyia said. 

Amara Enyia considered herself an “atypical” candidate, and she was “challenging the status quo.”

“There is nothing that she would not do out of fear,” Onyi Enyia said. “I don’t even think she knows what fear is. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t, actually, she doesn’t.”

She admitted that she wasn’t really interested in running for office. But, she ran for mayor because she had an “internal conviction” that Chicagoans needed a mayor that they could identify. 

“We needed individuals … who are coming from a position of empathy because we understand what it means to have to pay rent, to have to pay bills, to want your kids to get into a decent school, to want to go grocery shopping, to want to enjoy living in your neighborhood,” Amara Enyia said.

For Amara Enyia, what a campaign can do and be is more than the person getting elected.

“It’s, can this campaign be a vehicle to expand the imagination of the public so that they have a different sense of what’s possible,” Amara Enyia said. “So we don’t just have to accept what we have, accept the status quo, accept the current leadership, accept the current policies, we can actually think and dream beyond what we currently see.”

Amara Enyia admitted that running for mayor was her most challenging experience.

“I ran for mayor in Chicago, so that in and of itself, if you did not have a thick skin before, you’re going to have one after,” Amara Enyia said. “My skin is like hippopotamus skin.”

Amara Enyia believes that having integrity and being grounded helped her both in the lead up to running for office as well as the aftermath. 

“For her … there’s no mountain that is too high, and (that’s) because of her principles and conviction,” Onyi Enyia said. 

“My most proud achievement is not compromising my values or integrity in anything that I’ve done,” Amara Enyia said. “Having a good character and being just a decent person is … more important than anything that I can say that I have achieved like a degree or a job or a title,” Amara Enyia said.

Dr. Amara Enyia was an undergraduate at the University from 2001 to 2005 where she double majored in political science and journalism. She then went on to earn her master’s in the College of Education at the University in 2008. She continued with schooling and got a law degree in 2009 and PhD in the College of Education in the Education Policy Studies Department in 2010. And as of this July, she finished a master’s at the London School of Economics. 

Leon Dash, professor in the College of Media, was Amara Enyia’s adviser for a year while she was an undergraduate student. 

“When you think about it, a law degree requires an awful lot of reading and preparation and so does the doctorate, and she did both simultaneously,” Dash said. “That’s extraordinary.”

When Amara Enyia ran for mayor, Dash was encouraging.

“Taking a strong position outside of the normal political channels in Chicago … to bring what she felt was integrity to the political system and to the government,” Dash said. “I thought it was extraordinary.”

When Amara Enyia was working at Illini Media, she was a reporter, development editor and editor-in-chief.

“Even in my journalism, it was with an eye toward exposing injustices and amplifying those issues,” Amara Enyia said. 

Amara Enyia believes working at The Daily Illini was the best job she’s had. The DI was her first major management role she had. 

“I learned a lot about dynamics, about managing conflict, about what it means to steer a ship,” Amara Enyia said. 

Her work at The DI and experiencing conflicts and controversies, gave her resilience that continues to be useful in other aspects of her career. 

Today, Amara Enyia works in public policy and advocacy. She is president of an organization called Global Black. She also manages policy for the Movement for Black Lives in the U.S. She’s a leader in residence at the Atlantic Institute. Lastly, she does consulting with organizations centered around program evaluation. 

When the pandemic occurred, Amara Enyia had the time to rethink the kind of work she wanted to do, and how she wanted to do it. It also opened up more possibilities of the international work she was doing. 

Amara Enyia preaches authenticity and her best advice is to “do what speaks to you.” 

“Tune in, because you’re going to be faced with so many external projections about who you should be,” Amara Enyia said. “And you have to be grounded so that she can withstand those projections and forge your own path in your own identity.”

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