Robin Rue Simmons is the Founder and Executive Director of FirstRepair, a not-for-profit organization that informs local reparations, nationally. Previously, Rue Simmons was the 5th Ward Alderman for the City of Evanston, IL, when she led, in collaboration with others, the passage of the nation’s first government- funded Black reparations legislation.

Rue Simmons is a 2023 University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Pritzker Fellow.

To date, $20 million has been committed to reparations by the City. She serves as the chairperson of the City’s Reparations Committee which oversees its initial Restorative Housing Program. It began disbursements in January 2021. Several other governmental entities across the country are actively seeking to follow Evanston’s example.

Rue Simmons was born and raised in the largely segregated 5th Ward of Evanston, a city of 75,000 on the shores of Lake Michigan on the northern border of Chicago.

She laid the foundation for her life’s work in 1998 when she became a residential real estate broker. Troubled by the wealth disparities and concentrated poverty she witnessed locally and saw in other communities, she wanted to help young adults begin to build wealth through homeownership.

As an entrepreneur, she has launched and operated multiple businesses, including a bookstore in the 5th Ward, that also offered free after-school programming. She started a construction company in Evanston that employed Black tradespeople and developed dozens of affordable houses funded by the Illinois Neighborhood Stabilization Program. She continues to manage a handful of residential and commercial properties that she owns in Evanston. Until she started FirstRepair in 2021, Rue Simmons was the Director of Innovation and Outreach for Sunshine Enterprises, a not-for-profit on Chicago’s South Side, which has supported over one thousand entrepreneurs (virtually all African American and three-quarters women) in launching or growing their own businesses.

Rue Simmons served as an Evanston alderman from 2017-2021, serving on multiple committees and chairing several. During her tenure, she prioritized improving the lived experiences of and expanding opportunities for Black residents in Evanston, most notably through her work on reparations.

Rue Simmons is also a commissioner of the National African-American Reparations Commission (NAARC), a board member of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), and a board member of Evanston’s Connections for the Homeless. She previously served as a board member for the National League of Cities’ National Black Caucus of Local Elected Leaders and as the President of the Evanston Black Business Alliance.

Rue Simmons has received numerous awards for her reparations and other public service work including from the City of Evanston; Evanston/North Shore NAACP; Urban One; Dearborn Realtists Board; Democratic Party of Evanston; Route Fifty; Realtists Women’s Council of Illinois; Family Focus; Chessmen Club of the North Shore; Distinguished Alumni – Evanston Township High School and the recipient of the prestigious 2022 American Association for Access, Equity, and Diversity (AAAED) (pronounced triple A ED) Rosa Parks Award.

She has been covered in numerous national and international publications, on television and radio, and in podcasts including The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Public Radio, The Guardian, ABC’s Nightline, and CNN. Rue Simmons is also featured in The Big Payback, a documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June 2022 and began airing nationally on PBS on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, January 16, 2023.

Rue Simmons attended the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she majored in communications. She has two young adult children.