Heidi Reijm, Ph.D. is a principal community development specialist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s regional and community development division. In this role, she leads outreach and stakeholder engagement to advance strategies for creating opportunity and improving economic outcomes for low- and moderate-income people and communities.

Prior to this role, Reijm was Senior Program and Learning Officer at the Hudson-Webber Foundation in Detroit, Michigan, where she led programmatic, learning and evaluation, and grant making activities of the Foundation across its mission areas of Community Economic Development, Built Environment, Arts & Culture, and Safe & Just Communities. Prior to this position, Reijm was Project Director at JFM Consulting Group, a Detroit-based research, evaluation, and strategy firm. There she led program evaluations for clients in the areas of community and economic development, public health, education, community safety and racial equity.

Earlier in her career, Reijm was a freelance researcher, consultant and writer, working with clients to manage discrete programs and to conduct case studies in the community development field. From 2004-2009, she was a Program Officer with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a national non-profit financial intermediary. Working on both the national and local level in New York City, she managed lending and grantmaking for community development programs, as well as research projects related to affordable housing, economic development, and community safety, among other issues.

Reijm received a B.A. from Hampshire College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her Ph.D dissertation studied local public-private sector responses to the mortgage foreclosure crisis in Baltimore, Maryland, and Detroit, Michigan.