If you were an elected official in Cleveland, what would your first act be?
That’s a question at the core of My Cleveland Agenda, a collaboration between the Journalism + Design Lab, Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), Neighborhood Media Foundation, and Signal Cleveland. Our goal with the project is to gather insights from people across the city to learn about their priorities for local elected officials and understand their questions about the upcoming November 2025 election.
To power the effort, we’ve hired four Community Listening Fellows — Emma Sedlak, Dru Thompson, Teralawanda Aaron, and Tucker Handley — to interview hundreds of Clevelanders over the next few months. They’ll distill their findings and produce a people-centered agenda to share back with community members and candidates for local office.
This is the second fellowship cohort we’ve facilitated with our partners in Cleveland; we hosted our inaugural cohort last fall for participants who completed our community journalism certificate with Tri-C.
Four community media publishers in Cleveland — The Lotus, the Erie Chinese Journal, Profile News Ohio, and La Villa CLE — will also contribute to My Cleveland Agenda. Coordinated by the Neighborhood Media Foundation, they will produce original content that elevates perspectives from the communities they serve and publish accessible election-related resources.
My Cleveland Agenda is modeled after a similar effort that J+D piloted in Oakland in 2022 and 2024 in partnership with Oakland North, a publication of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Our 2025 Cleveland Community Listening Fellows:
Emma Sedlak is a recent graduate of Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where she studied Politics and Philosophy. Her senior thesis, titled “Why Democrats Lost Ohio: Realignment, Electoral Capture, and Nationalization,” received the honors distinction. Emma is a fourth-generation Clevelander dedicated to local journalism and public service. Driven by a passion for equity and justice, Emma leverages her research on local politics to promote inclusive political engagement and tackle systemic challenges in her hometown.
Dru Thompson is a creative entrepreneur, fashion designer, writer, and educator. As the founder of Dru Christine Fabrics & Design, Dru mentors sewists of all ages, coaches local entrepreneurs, and teaches at Tri-C’s Corporate College. A proud champion for small businesses and the arts community, Dru amplifies local voices through storytelling that might otherwise go unheard. A former CoolCleveland writer and the force behind platforms like the Tarblooder Project and Chat ’Bout Cleveland, Dru shines a light on creative talent, events, and cultural creators — bringing people together through creativity and shared purpose.
Teralawanda Aaron created The Spot Youth Empowerment Organization in 2005 and has remained president for 20 years. She has a long history of Cleveland community work. She was the Safe Haven Coordinator for Burten Bell Carr Development Inc. in the Cedar-Central Area, was a board member of Stop Targeting Ohio’s Poor and The Family Connection Center, and volunteered with Black on Black Crime Inc. and Governor’s Office Call to Action Regional Leadership Team.
Tucker Handley works for an agency that provides mental health services for children and adolescents. Most of the time, he works with numbers, computing basic statistics like counts and averages. Through his work with Cleveland Documenters over the past several years, he’s gotten to know something about the world of city and county government and how it works.
The coalition of community media publishers participating in My Cleveland Agenda:
- The Lotus is a monthly newspaper that reports on the Indian Community and its activities. Founded in 1967, it’s the oldest Indian community newspaper in the U.S. and the only nonprofit Indian community newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio.
- Erie Chinese Journal is a regional, Mandarin-language community newspaper headquartered in the AsiaTown neighborhood of Cleveland. It has long been distributed in Cleveland; Columbus; Cincinnati; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: and other regions.
- Profile News Ohio is the largest Arabic-language newspaper in Ohio, reporting in both English and Arabic. This community outlet specifically focuses on the Arabic-speaking community in Northern Ohio.
- La Villa CLE is a people-centered media outlet amplifying the voices, stories, and spirit of Cleveland’s Latinx and Afro-Latin communities