Trust Talks
Chicago’s biggest challenges play out block by block, in homes, neighborhoods, and everyday lives. Trust Talks, brought to you by The Chicago Community Trust, takes listeners inside conversations with experts and changemakers working to build a thriving, more equitable region. From breaking down barriers to homeownership and advancing solutions to homelessness to strengthening college transfer pathways and sustaining our cultural ecosystem, each episode explores the choices, stories and strategies shaping lasting opportunity.
Trust Talks
Latest Episodes
Trust Talks Episode #27: Fueling Small Business Growth in Chicago
Small businesses are essential to stabilizing neighborhood economies. They create jobs, activate commercial corridors, and provide the goods and services that help communities thrive. Yet across the Chicago area — particularly in historically u...
Episode #26: Building Opportunity, Block by Block
From 2021 to 2025, We Rise Together: For an Equitable & Just Recovery (We Rise Together), a funder collaborative led by The Chicago Community Trust, invested $47 million in brick-and-mortar development, small business support, and workforce...
Episode #25: Transforming College Transfer Pathways in Illinois
In Illinois, nearly 80 percent of community college students say they plan to transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree, yet only about 35 percent actually transfer, and just 20 percent complete a four-year degree. Students from underinvested neigh...
Episode #24: Sustaining Chicago's Cultural Ecosystem
Chicago is one of the most influential cultural cities in the United States, known for its distinctive blend of architecture, visual arts, music, theater, and deeply rooted neighborhood culture. Widely recognized as the birthplace of modern arc...
Episode #23: Understanding the Impact of Public Benefits
When most people picture hunger in America, they think of food pantries. Yet for every meal a pantry provides, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – SNAP – quietly supplies nine more. Formerly known as food stamps, SNAP is the nation’...