FirstRepair
Robin Rue Simmons, Founder & Executive Director
Civic Lab

FirstRepair is working nationally to educate and equip leaders, stakeholders, and allies who are advancing local reparations policies that remedy historic and ongoing anti-Black practices.
Year Founded: 2021
FirstRepair’s logo incorporates the Ghanaian symbol, Adinkrehene, which stands for leadership. It represents the way FirstRepair works in concentric circles, starting at the center with local reparations as the core of their work, then moving to state and, ultimately, a federal reparations initiative. Therefore, FirstRepair’s central responsibility is to continue to inform local reparations initiatives, like the first-in-the-nation tax-funded reparations program in Evanston, IL that, as alderman, Founder Robin Rue Simmons helped to lead and is currently disbursing direct benefits to its Black community.
Utilizing Evanston’s model as an example for other communities, local reparations are quickly becoming a thriving and promising arm of the centuries-old reparations movement. FirstRepair is seeing unprecedented momentum in gaining government, institutional and aly support for local reparations and they are reaching new milestones daily.
FirstRepair was founded by Robin Rue Simmons, a former Evanston, Illinois alderman and the architect of the nation’s first government-funded reparations program. Robin’s “solutions only” leadership style has inspired the services of FirstRepair including sharing best practices, creating tools, and developing a viable model to advance local reparations policy. Their knowledge network includes seasoned experts and social innovators with a proven commitment to reparations, racial justice, and Black community empowerment. FirstRepair services include workshops, educational symposiums, research, stakeholder development, and policy design for local government bodies and institutions.

Robin Rue Simmons
Founder and Executive Director

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