Photo by Tom Jenz
Sumaiyah Clark - Chief Equity Officer
Sumaiyah Clark, Chief Equity Officer,Milwaukee County Office of Equity
Most of Milwaukee County’s 900,000 residents have probably never heard of the Office of Equity (OOE). Yet decisions made there can influence everything from neighborhood investment and public services to making sure all voices are heard when government decisions are made. In other words, the OOE is important, very important.
Leading the County Office of Equity is Chief Equity Officer Sumaiyah Clark. The decisions made by Clark and her team can quietly shape everyday life in Milwaukee County. I am talking about access to jobs, housing, public services and community opportunities.
Clark leads OOE through a paramount question: Who is being left out? Before policies are approved or tax money is spent, her staff examines how government decisions affect residents across income brackets, neighborhoods, social and racial groups.
I met Clark in the comfortable conference room in the small OOE building on MLK Drive. “We moved our offices here a while back (formerly the Office of African American Affairs) because we wanted to be located where we could be accessible to the community,” she said.
Guided by Islamic principles of compassion and personal devotion, Clark is a Black Muslim woman with a peaceful personality that leans on justice and empathy. As I would find out, she navigates the modern world by advocating for community and gender equity.
Tell me about your childhood, where you grew up, your parents, schools, and neighborhoods.
I grew up in Milwaukee, in different neighborhoods mostly in the inner city, and we moved a lot, Metcalfe Park, Amani, Sherman Park and Granville neighborhoods.
I attended Milwaukee Public Schools. I was always looking for ways to improve my community. I did a lot of volunteering. In Sarah Scott Middle School, I volunteered at Sinai Samaritan Hospital, and I thought I might be a pediatrician someday. While attending Rufus King High School, I got a job as a youth mentor at Rosalie Manor Community and Family Services. I worked with the children of women who had substance abuse issues. I worked there from the ages of 15 to 19. I knew I wanted to get into social work as a career. During that time, Rosalie Manor sent me to Montreal to teach a group of nuns on how to better interact with young people.
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What happened after you got out of high school?
For my first year of college, I went to Mount Mary, then I transferred to UW-Whitewater and majored in psychology, with a Criminal Justice minor. I also learned about economics and public policy. In my junior year, I got married and had a daughter who is now 22 and a college junior. For a while, I focused on being a mom, but I went to Marquette University and studied urban anthropology where I learned about Milwaukee’s cultural history and became a Milwaukee history tour guide for Urban Anthropology.
As my career progressed, I continued my education and earned a master of science degree from Concordia University in organizational leadership and business administration. While I was a student at Whitewater, I received a grant to work at Urban Anthropology from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I conducted focus groups on the
subject of HIV and rates among Milwaukee’s Black women. This work was done through my consulting firm.
After college graduation, I was rehired as the youth department director for Rosalie Manor. Then at the Medical College of Wisconsin Center for Underserved Children. As the community health research project coordinator, I led immunization education efforts for families and helped them get connected to a medical home. At the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Milwaukee I became the senior director of measurement and analysis.
When did you get into Milwaukee County government?
I have now been in county government for eight years, five working at the Department of Health and Human Services as part of its executive cabinet. Two years ago, I was appointed as the Chief Equity Officer, where I am now. My upbringing, knowledge of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods and ethnicities and my collective professional experience was the groundwork for what I am doing now.
In your job, you over see the “Community Engagement Continuum.” This involves engaging LGBTQIA+ populations and also the community partners who provide services to those people.
Our Community Engagement Continuum is a framework and not a tool exclusive to one population or segment. It starts with informing and shaping design and ends with shared leadership as a pathway to strengthen civic trust with Milwaukee County residents, all populations. As framed here, it reads as a tool for one segment when it has been adopted and used by other departments to better serve and the needs of all residents.
Can you provide an example for clarification?
We worked with the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) as they were assessing route changes. The Community Engagement Continuum proved instrumental for MCTS in helping it get input from community members. And we are helping re-envision the new County Courthouse project. Again, using the continuum, we held listening sessions, gave tours, and took input from citizens. The new design needs to be reflective of the various groups who frequent the courthouse.
In 2025, the national nonprofit Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund) selected Milwaukee County to take part in its CityStart initiative. The county has received a $100,000 planning grant via your Office of Equity for the Economic Empowerment Blueprint. The goal is to help craft this plan tailored to fostering financial stability across generations.
This planning grant will help us build an economic empowerment blueprint for Milwaukee County. The blueprint will cover all the county municipalities and is based on our survey research and focus group feedback we got from community members. For example, almost all the challenges of county residents are based on economic roots. We interviewed and surveyed 946 residents over Milwaukee County. We also had several hundred who participated in focus groups. And we did video interviews with about 250 people. The question is “What does wealth mean to you and what are the barriers to achieving wealth?” We also convened partners on community engagement listening sessions. These findings will allow us to design the final blueprint, which will be promoted and shared with community members.
And what were your findings?
One of the top barriers to wealth building was caregiving—either for children or older adults. Then, there is debt—medical debt, credit card debt, student loans debt.
So then what can the government do to help with these needs?
We are developing an economic empowerment blueprint, which could include support for small businesses, partnering with local banking institutions to make sure their services are acceptable to community members. Doing more partnerships with the Financial Empowerment Center to teach credit repair and education. Teaching people to avoid scams by putting consumer protection in place. As for the survey and focus groups, we are now gathering information and seeking additional funds to build upon our work.
You are doing very important work, and I hope you get your findings out to the community. For example, one of your goals has been to expand the focus on demographics such as age, religion, sexual orientation and criminal history. How have you been going about that?
The goal of equity work is to remove barriers that allow people to thrive, that hard working people can achieve a good quality life not based on their circumstances. Milwaukee County does experience segregation. Whether you are 90 years old, a preschooler, a pregnant woman, a bus rider, visually impaired, disabled, have a gender issue, or someone who identifies as LGBTQ, what do you need in these various phases of your life?
Another consideration might be residents who speak a foreign language.
Right. We launched a language access initiative because about 20 percent of Milwaukee County residents have limited English proficiency. For example, in that terrible flooding disaster of last year, we were able to get out language translations about emergency resources to over 200 organizations to share with their clients and neighbors.
We worked with other departments to post the translations on Milwaukee County’s website. The goal was to provide real time translation in terms of crisis like the flooding. For all Milwaukee County Departments, we work to make sure information is in plain language, so it makes sense with the community. This makes translating English to other languages more accurate.
Racism means that one racial or ethnic group is superior to another. Is racism a public health crisis in Milwaukee County?
That is an important question. Racism is a public health crisis because it involves a system of oppression that assigns value to looks, ethnicity, background and skin color. We try to examine oppression. If we examine the outcomes of home ownership, and we address those systems of oppression that prevent some groups from owning homes, then it improves the ability of everyone to own homes. This means looking at the barriers including loan applications, how funding is awarded, and other obstacles that prevent people from being able to keep their homes. Our approach is to fix the system across the board, and this improves the quality for everybody.
What is the Milwaukee County Human Rights Commission and what is your office’s role in that commission?
The Human Rights Commission started back in the 1980s. Our office is updating the ordinance. Many of the things the commission was doing has since been implanted such as the establishment of the Commission on Aging and the Aging and Disability Services area. We are partnering with other Milwaukee County departments to change the ordinance.
We’re also looking at current topics the Human Rights Commission can address like food apartheid.
What is the Racial Equity Budget Toolkit?
Great question. Milwaukee County is one of nine counties across the country that has a racial equity budgeting tool. This tool allows each county department to examine its budget and make sure it is responsive to the needs of the community. Besides race, it examines people with disabilities, people with limited English proficiency, financial empowerment, and other topics that improve the quality of life.
What I find interesting about your department is that it looks at so many equity issues—not just race, but old people, young people, minorities, the health impaired, the handicapped.
Our department is unique in that we are accountable to county residents and also to department leaders. We are like a bridge between these two groups. We work very closely with the county departments depending on the issue, for instance, the Department of Health and Human Services or the Department of Administrative Services.
I understand you are an experienced speaker. What do you speak about and who are your audiences?
I speak about the strategy we use here in Milwaukee County, making difficult decisions, management strategy, and sustainability planning. I’ve also guest lectured at different universities, with public health and nursing students, for instance.
I also understand you have traveled abroad to study cultures, history, and business practices in many countries, including Egypt, Ghana, Japan, Jamaica, Greece, and Turkey. What was that like for you? What did you learn?
I hope everyone has a chance to travel to other countries. It can increase your curiosity about how people think. It can make you more compassionate, more empathetic. As for me, when I travel to the countries with long histories, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, I am curious how their cultures influenced Western government practices and culture.
How many employees work for Office of Equity?
We have six employees here. We are a small office.
But you do big work.
