Thom Clark
Thom Clark is president of the Community Media Workshop. During his 35 years as an editor, photojournalist and social enterprise entrepreneur in Chicago’s nonprofit sector, Clark has developed affordable housing; co-founded and directed the Chicago Rehab Network; served as editor of the award-winning monthly, The Neighborhood Works, published by the Center for Neighborhood Technology; and operated a freelance business, before co-founding the Workshop in 1989.
Since then he has trained thousands of grassroots leaders and nonprofit executives to tell their stories more effectively, in Chicago and across the country. Recent communications consults include Advocate Charitable Foundation, AARP/Illinois, Chapin Hall, Lake County Community Foundation, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Michigan Land Use Network, Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, GoodWorks/Lumpkin Family Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Sinai Medical Center, South West Organizing Project, and Women’s Action Resource Center, amongst others. Among his honors and awards he was named one of Business and Professional People’s “40 Who’ve Made a Difference,” and he received a Studs Terkel Community Media Award from the Workshop for his journalistic leadership. In 2009 he co-authored The NEWNews: Journalism We Want & Need for the Chicago Community Trust.
Thom has taught in the graduate journalism program at Columbia College Chicago where the Workshop is based; hosted hundreds of public affairs programs on radio and cable access; and is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists/Chicago Headline Club, the Publicity Club of Chicago, the Black Public Relations Society, and the Illinois Education Association.
