Friends and colleagues remember Geoffrey Banks, whose leadership and commitment to justice had a profound impact on all of us.
Each of us who had the pleasure and privilege to be part of Geoffrey Banks’ MacArthur family are still struggling to accept the loss of his presence, his camaraderie, and his wisdom.
Geoffrey was a Senior Program Officer and an integral part of the Chicago Commitment team. Throughout his career, Geoffrey developed expertise in several areas that contributed to his deep impact across sectors. His early professional days were spent as a community organizer, an experience that led him to celebrate community-based leaders through Leaders for a New Chicago. Geoffrey’s academic pursuits and gifts as an educator steered him to teach courses on racial equity through Chicago African Americans in Philanthropy (CAAIP), a group he co-chaired. As a grantmaker, Geoffrey took special care to support small and midsized arts organizations, demonstrating profound respect for their work and helping them to navigate the philanthropic world. In recent years, he championed participatory grantmaking as a way to shift power through our Culture, Equity, and the Arts program. On a broader scale, he assembled a panel of external advisors as a part of MacArthur’s Equitable Recovery Initiative, ensuring that our response to racial injustice and the global pandemic was informed by voices from the local, national, and international levels. He collaborated often, and with our President John Palfrey, shared his thoughts on this process. Geoffrey made all the individuals and organizations he touched better.
We invited friends and colleagues of Geoffrey to reflect on these aspects of his legacy, which will help us honor his values as we strive to achieve our shared goal of a more racially equitable Chicago.
Kevin Iega Jeff, Co-Founder, Artistic and Executive Consultant, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater/Productions
I first came into professional contact with Geoffrey Banks at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, where his contributions left a deep and lasting impact. Our connection deepened and persisted when Geoffrey moved to MacArthur. At this pivotal time, I was reestablishing leadership at Deeply Rooted Dance Theater as Executive Director. We were championing artistic and cultural impact while tackling the systemic issues of underfunding and inadequate representation, especially for organizations committed to advancing human liberation by celebrating Black artistic expression, culture, and history.
Geoffrey's presence arrived at a crucial moment, characterized by his subtle leadership and reassuring warmth, his spirit and intellect both stimulating and supportive. His approach to partnership, marked by transparency and shared accountability, became the cornerstone of our collective achievements. Geoffrey's dedication to our cause and his insight into our obstacles were pivotal during a period of significant change for Deeply Rooted. His capacity to co-envision our aspirations rendered him an essential ally and a cherished member of our extended family. In memory of Geoffrey, we honor his lasting legacy. May he rest in eternal peace and power, a dear brother whose life was a testament to love, community, and meaningful impact.
Daniel O. Ash, President and Board Member, Field Foundation
Our professional work is deeply personal. It is communal. Although our journeys first intersected over 20 years ago, my memory reveals a simple truth: Geoffrey always created warmth. He made us all feel welcome, stronger, safe, and included.
Last summer, Geoffrey’s brilliance was on full display. We convened a community panel to review and determine the inaugural grants from A Road Together, our partnership with MacArthur. Although he was not obligated to do so, Geoffrey attended every session. He was fully present as a peer, bringing his dynamic personality and humor to ensure all voices were heard. That was Geoffrey’s signature style and his superpower. His gift was centering others. He was adept at making himself one of many versus being the person of authority. In this way, he was transforming how philanthropy shows up.
I remember being in an intimate session with Geoffrey and other Black men at the Association of Black Foundation Executives conference last year. With characteristic irreverence and humor, he spoke about how it was essential for us, as Black men in philanthropy, to lean on each other. He always sought ways to make everyone else feel confident and empowered.
We should all be grateful when we encounter people like Geoffrey in our lives. People who whisper words of encouragement, advice, and support we needed to hear. His focus was always on the artist, the creator, the organizer—and trying to create the conditions for others to have impact. He was always willing to be someone else’s advocate and supporter, and he was always lifting others.
May Geoffrey’s family, friends, and colleagues feel the warmth of the legacy of a man who was truly a force for good.
Monique B. Jones, President & Chief Executive Officer, Forefront
Working with Geoffrey as CAAIP co-chairs was one of the best partnerships in leadership I’ve had. On occasions when we were approached with new ideas to vet, or challenges to navigate, adding humor to the conversation was Geoffrey’s talent. He was good at leading off the cuff and responding to a growing field of Black folks in philanthropy in Chicago. Geoffrey joked that he was doing a good job because the sector was growing! I simply concurred.
Even among the humor, I knew his commitment to CAAIP and the diversity of the field was steadfast. We were both still new to the field and were handed what we now know was one of the best leadership opportunities in Chicago. Geoffrey was inviting and encouraging to everyone, making our membership events fun and worth attending, even after a long workday, so members could network and connect. He was also very matter of fact and honest, which I appreciated immensely. Even after our term ended, when we met in public at events or meetings, we still affectionally referred to each other as “co-chair.” He will be missed, but his candor and humor will not be forgotten.
Hilesh Patel, Consultant, Educator, Writer, and Member of the Chicago ACT Collective
There is an immediacy with racial equity work that demands action, and Geoffrey could be wildly impatient when he saw injustice in any form. This work also demands time and intention, and he knew that too. Geoffrey could wield an immediate acerbic wit to call out racial inequity and in the same breath approach it like a sculptor, taking the time, method, and practice to build what he knew to be right.
I don’t mean that as some grand metaphor (I can already see him rolling his eyes). He was someone who created projects, programs, and connections with such care, sometimes stepping back, always assessing, and giving the work the space to grow.
For those who mistook his impatience and wit for gruffness, no doubt bolstered by a wry and self-deprecating sense of humor, they would have missed the warmth at his core. I truly got to know this warmth when we collaborated and co-created the Leaders for a New Chicago award when I was at Field Foundation.
He was exceedingly kind, hyperintelligent, and one of the most civically aware people I have ever worked with. I will carry with me the urgency demanded of us to fight against injustice and racial inequity, and the patience, warmth, and kindness it takes to get there.
Amanda E. Lewis, Director, Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, LAS Distinguished Professor, Black Studies and Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago
Almost 25 years ago, I was a new-ish Assistant Professor at UIC, and Geoff was one of my first PhD students. I was trying to figure out what kind of mentor/advisor I would be, and Geoff was a gift. He came to learn. He was thoughtful, interested, a fantastic teacher. He was also irreverent—one of my favorite qualities. I don’t mean sassy or impertinent. He was deeply engaged with ideas and immensely respectful of people and institutions he respected. Fundamentally, I mean that Geoff did things on his own terms.
And I realized one day that I had lots to learn from his way of being. I deeply admired that he was not caught up in the grind, that he refused to be distracted by other people’s goals. He wasn’t interested in “maximizing.”
He was deeply engaged in questions of justice and in doing work that mattered. He spent his entire adult life organizing in communities and lifting up the work of people and organizations that make Chicago a better version of itself. In the last few years, as he took on more prestigious professional roles in philanthropy, he remained himself, with his De La Soul poster in the backdrop.
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to collaborate with Geoff, when CAAIP invited us to co-teach a seminar on Dismantling White Supremacy. This time around, it was me asking, “Are you sure that isn’t too much reading?” and him answering, “They need this content.” As always, he was my favorite kind of collaborator—helping me take the enterprise, but not ourselves too seriously. And I recognized then how much more we both understood and what we were both still trying to figure out: How to keep doing the work and support others doing it with us. How to push folks to be more courageous. What I most appreciated was Geoff’s sense of how necessary it is to stay in community with folks you respect and care for, and who can help you maintain a sense of humor along the way.
Xavier Ramey, Chief Executive Officer, Justice Informed
Geoffrey was my friend. He began as a client. But he was a friend. I expect this is how many people remember him: they met him “in the work,” yet shared values and hopes laid the foundation for more.
Truthfully, as someone who had the honor to know Geoffrey, work with him on projects of civic and social ambition, and as a person who genuinely looked forward to every time we shared a room, a Zoom screen, or a phone call... what matters most to me was that a Black man with his brilliant heart, bright smile, kind eyes, and effervescent humor walked among us, and I got to call him a friend.
Together, we got into so much “good trouble,” most notably as I spent dozens of hours with him and a task force committed to rapidly deploying COVID-19 philanthropic funds to important causes around the world, and later to pursue the idea of collective action for the arts and culture sector with MacArthur grantees. His questions, his curiosity, and his ability to balance his role at a major philanthropic organization with his identity and rootedness in communities of color...he was just special. Truly special.
We've lost another one of the rare men of color in leadership in philanthropy. Personally, I rarely get to work with, build with, or dream with one who identifies as I do—as a Black man in leadership in the social impact sector. The impact he made by just being in his role was immeasurable, and his absence cannot be filled.
However, it can be a catalyst for more inclusion, more equity, more specificity about the imperative of justice, and a torch that we must carry in his name and honor. I will continue to say his name with love, persistence, and expectation: Geoffrey Banks.
