Renee C. Hatcher
Community Engagement Award - Emerging Awardee (2023)
Assistant Professor of Law and Director, UIC School of Law, Community Enterprise and Solidarity Economy Clinic
About
Renee Hatcher is a human rights and community development lawyer. She is an Assistant Professor of Law and the Director of the Community Enterprise & Solidarity Economy Clinic at UIC Law, a pro bono legal clinic that provides free legal support to community-based businesses, non-profits, cooperatives, and other solidarity economy enterprises. Since March of this year, Hatcher also serves as the Co-Director of Solidarity Economy Research, Policy, and Law Project at CUPPA’s Center on Urban Economic Development (CUED). Renee has significant experience organizing and providing legal support to worker centers, worker cooperatives, and community-based initiatives to empower workers and community residents. Her work and research focus on legal and non-legal strategies to build power and create equitable development practices and healthy neighborhoods in predominantly in Black, low-income neighborhoods and other communities of color rooted in solidarity economy theory. Simply put, Renee provides legal support for community-driven development and innovative solutions to achieve community goals.
In collaboration with organizational and community partners, Renee co-organized the Cooperative Professionals Guild conference at UIC Law in 2018; advocated for cooperative development at the state and local levels; gave testimony and co-drafted a worker cooperative resolution that was passed by the Cook County Social Innovation Commission and Cook County Board of Commissioners in 2018; drafted worker cooperative legislation (Limited Worker Cooperative Association) passed into law in 2019; led over 50 community-based workshops; and served on former Mayor Lightfoot’s Community Wealth Building Advisory Committee, which focused on supporting cooperative and community-owned institutions. In 2022, the city of Chicago allocated $15 million dollars to support the cooperative ecosystem, including a substantial grant to UIC, as the “hub” organization, to conduct research and convene the Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem. Renee co-directs the “hub” with her close colleague, Associate Professor Stacey Sutton. Most recently, Renee served on Mayor Johnson’s Transition Committee on Economic Vitality and Equity. This appointment has been a part of Renee’s long-standing efforts to advance cooperative development in Chicago to improve the lives of Black, brown, and poor communities.
Renee is an advisory member of the Federal Reserve Board Community Leaders Forum, Law 4 Black Lives, and the Detroit Justice Center. She previously served as a board member for the New Economy Coalition, the national co-chair for the US Human Rights Network Working Group on Equality and Non-Discrimination, co-chair of the AALS Clinicians of Color Subcommittee and volunteered with several local and national organizations including the Illinois Torture Injury Relief Commission, Future Founders, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Mikva Challenge, Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), Black Yield Institute, and Resist Reimagine Rebuild.
Prior to joining UIC Law, Hatcher taught in the Community Development Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law and served a post-doctoral appointment at the University of Texas-Austin's Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis. Previously, Professor Hatcher served as a staff attorney and project director for the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (CLC), where she directed a community development law project providing legal services to entrepreneurs, community-based organizations, and individuals interested in expunging their criminal history to create better opportunities for local marginalized communities. During her time at CLC, Hatcher also served as lead counsel on community benefit agreement campaigns and matters of regional equity and represented individuals in matters of employment discrimination and prisoners' rights in the U.S. Northern District Court of Illinois.
Her previous work experience also includes time with the ACLU's National School-Prison-Pipeline Project, the International Network for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and Congressional Office of the 15th District of New York.
Renee received her Juris Doctorate from New York University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Management with a minor concentration in Leadership, Ethics, and Social Action (LESA) from Indiana University- Bloomington. During law school, Renee served as an advocate in the Racial Justice Clinic, working on issues of illegal search and seizure, as well as the Global Justice Clinic, researching the impacts of U.S. counterterrorism and national security measures on gender equality.