HELENE ACHANZAR | Director of Programs
Helene Achanzar is the Director of Programs at the Chicago Poetry Center, a senior editor at Poetry Northwest, and the Midwest Chair for Kundiman. She has 15+ years of experience in education and literary arts programming, including roles with Illinois State University and After School Matters. Her poems can be found in jubilat, Sixth Finch, Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2022 New England Review Award for Emerging Writers, her writing has been supported by the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Mastheads.
TATE BROBERG | Community Outreach Intern
Tate, originally from the Black Hills of South Dakota, joined the Chicago Poetry Center in March of 2025 as the Community Outreach Intern. She helps connect CPC partners and other networks to free workshops, upcoming events, and various resources within the Poetry Center community. Tate possesses a strong focus on inclusive education and youth engagement. With a background in Youth Mentorship and After-school Education from her time working at RCITY Community Development Center in Humboldt Park, she now thoroughly enjoys packing boxes of free books for educators in southwest Chicago through Open Books, committing her energy towards improving DEAI initiatives and inclusive representation. Outside of work, she enjoys reading, writing poetry and music, supporting queer and trans artists, and exploring the cutest of vintage stores.
ESTHER IKORO | Content Strategist
Esther Ikoro is the founder of Soft Metric Media, a creative agency focused on science communication and social good. She received a Master of Public Health from the University of Illinois, and spent several years working with community-based organizations in Chicago. She helps clients in the tech, healthcare, art, and education industries to build better programs, campaigns, and connections with their communities. When she’s not hiking, camping, or canoeing she’s performing standup comedy and sharing her fascination with the natural world on her show “See You Outside” and Discovery Education’s Mystery Science.
SAMUEL JOHNSON | Programs Intern
Sam grew up in a beach town in northwest Michigan before attending college at the University of Michigan, majoring in Creative Writing & Literature and Biopsychology. There, Sam began to understand how important it is for him to write, and in 2015 Sam won the Hopwood award for his poetry. After graduating, Sam moved to Chicago, where he continues to pursue his artistic passions while working for CPS as a substitute teacher.
MARTY MCCONNELL | Director of Strategy & Innovation
Marty McConnell is a poet, educator, healer, and nonprofit professional based in Chicago. She is the author of “when they say you can’t go home again, what they mean is you were never there,” winner of the 2017 Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Her first full-length collection, “wine for a shotgun,” received the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Awards, and was a finalist for both the Audre Lorde Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and her first nonfiction work, “Gathering Voices: Creating a Community-Based Writing Workshop” was published by YesYes Books. She is the co-creator and co-editor of underbelly, a web site focused on the art and magic of poetry revision and her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Best American Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, Gulf Coast, and Indiana Review among others.
B. METZGER SAMPSON | Executive Director
B. Metzger Sampson is the Executive Director of the Chicago Poetry Center and has worked in public arts programming, nonprofit, and education for over 15 years. Through a decade of rebuilding CPC, the organization has transformed into a values-driven, equity-focused arts organization with a strong financial model and cash reserve. B. is particularly interested in budgetary structures that foreground equity for artists, teaching artists, and non-profit staff, and in consensus-based leadership models that engage a large community of stakeholders in building mission, values, and policies that shape the organization through collective input and drive meaningful community engagement. Interviews with and B. regarding this work can be found on POETRY, NBC, and NPR. After many years on Chicago’s Lit 50 list, they are now in the Lit 50 Hall of Fame. Their work has recently included co-curating an exhibit on CPC’s founding and first 50 years and the production of a poetry web series. B. is also a writer, visual artist, and frequent collaborator. Other roles include consulting on organizational transformation, equity and inclusion at MMGE, founding Dear Navigator Literary Journal (SAIC), and 20 years of teaching everyone from age 8 to 80, in artist workshops nationally and internationally, higher ed institutions including SAIC and Dominican University, and CPS classrooms across Chicago.
CLAIRE MEHTA SCOTT | Communications Intern
Claire Mehta Scott is a current Literature & Archeology student at Bryn Mawr College where they have spent the last three years living in a social justice and sustainability collective. Their undergraduate academic work has centered around post-colonial and ecofeminist theory in literature. Deeply invested in community-oriented and artistically based initiatives, Claire looks forward to supporting CPC as the Comms Intern.
RINNAH SHAW | Operations and Resource Manager
Rinnah Shaw is the Operations and Resource Manager at the Chicago Poetry Center. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Rinnah has been living in the Chicago area since May 2022, and she is always looking for more ways to get involved with her local community, especially in areas related to the arts, youth programs, and transformative justice. They fell in love with the nonprofit scene after working for the Highland Youth Garden, an urban garden in downtown Columbus that combats food insecurity through free fresh food markets and youth programming. Rinnah also holds double degrees in Illustration and Creative Writing, and strongly believes that telling our stories through art can be a transformative, empowering, and revolutionary act.
