fakelia guyton

BOARD MEMBER
CIVIC RESEARCHER, 2023 COHORT

fakelia guyton brings to BRC 22 years of experience as an early childhood educator, facilitator/presenter, program manager/administrator, and community engagement specialist supporting young children and families. fakelia is a community psychologist and is passionate about advancing social justice and systems change within early learning and other systems that serve young children and families. She is the Director of the Diversity-Informed Tenets Initiative at Irving Harris Foundation. She served as Director of the DuPage Early Childhood Collaboration where she focused on Collective Impact strategies that engaged cross-sector partners with the goal of increasing childcare capacity across DuPage County, IL. fakelia is an American Evaluation Association GEDI Scholar, where she was trained in Culturally Responsive Evaluations. In 2020, she established Equity Partners Network, LLC (EPN), a consulting group focused on providing human-centered and liberatory design principles that centers community/resident voice and as a result organizations develop goal-setting and prioritize the community voices in their program policies, administration, management, and evaluation/research processes as they strive to strengthen services for young children & families.

fakelia is known for being a bold voice for centering the experiences of people most impacted by policies and program services to make change across metropolitan Chicago. She expanded her work beyond Chicagoland to Austin, TX and worked with RISE Center for Liberation in Early Childhood, an anti-racist organization focused on eradicating racism in early childhood. In 2024, she engaged in Community Resiliency Model training in Freetown, Seirra Leone, and speaking to researchers about Collective Impact strategies in early learning for researchers in Rongai, Kenya.

In her personal life, she is an adventurer who loves learning more about her African Ancestry (Sierra Leone-Mende tribe), she craves international travel and sets intention to build heart-moving community in other cultures and is a passionate thrift shopper.