A project manager and public health professional by training, change maker by heart.

Shayla Zimmerman

Shay is a Detroit-based community organizer, storyteller, and activist whose work centers community power, collective care, and everyday acts of resistance.

She began community organizing at only 15 years old. From leading regional climate resilience and water justice initiatives to building grassroots emergency and violence response efforts on Detroit’s East Side, she uses her talents to amplify grassroots voices.

She’s worked in nonprofits most of her career, including grantmaking and project/program management efforts at Institute for Sustainable Communities and United Way.

Background

Institute for Sustainable Communities

Program Officer, Environmental Justice Grantmaking, 2024-2025

United Way Southeast Michigan

Special Projects Director, 2021-2024

Freelance nonprofit program designer and manager, 2019-present

University of Michigan, 2023

Masters of Public Health

Certificate in Spatial Epidemiology

Expertise

  • Nonprofits and grassroot efforts

  • Community-organizing

  • Place stewardship

  • On-site event management

  • Grant writing and distribution management

  • Program design, management, and evaluation

Current projects for good.

  • Radicals for Good

    Founder, Host, and Producer of Radicals for Good, a podcast and network that aims to encourage everyday people to take small yet revolutionary action towards collective good.

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  • NIA Weaving

    Jasmine Path Collaborator at NIA Weaving, a creative studio and design consultancy, solidarity network, and gathering space threading intention and purpose into movements, moments, and everyday environments. I helped launch the Monarch Boulevard space.

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  • Community Organizing & Publications

    Community Organizer in Detroit is my main purpose since I was 15 years old.

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  • Cetera Florida

    Fund development consultant

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Community Organizing

I’m a community organizer and activist first. I’ve been doing community change work since I was 15 years old and my values guide me. From leading cross-cultural workshops on social justice and community organizing as a youth organizer, to supporting political campaigns and grassroots organizations. At CeaseFire Detroit, I helped establish a community collaborative safe housing program for victims of gang violence, working directly with residents navigating some of the most acute forms of community harm. That ground-level experience shapes how I approach every project — with an understanding that sustainable change is built through relationships, not just programs.

Work

  • Community Engagement Director/Board Member - Detroit Heals Detroit, 2026

  • Fellow - Barack Obama National Change Collective, 2024

  • Racial Equity Fellow - Detroit Equity Action Lab, 2021

Climate Resilience

My work in climate resilience has been rooted in community response — focused on what happens to people when systems fail. At United Way, I led disaster planning and response following the 2021 regional floods in Southeast Michigan, and my work in utility assistance and water access has kept me close to the ways climate impacts fall unevenly on low-income communities. At the Institute for Sustainable Communities, I supported EPA-funded grantmaking specifically aimed at building resilience in rural, remote, and Tribal communities — connecting organizations with resources to strengthen their capacity to withstand and recover from environmental harm.

Work

  • Marine Cleanup Mini Grant Committee, 2026

  • Environmental Protection Agency Thriving Communities Environmental Justice Grantmaking Program development and launch, 2024-2025

  • East Side Flooding Task Force, 2021 - current

Publications