We’re a group of normal folks who want to see Chicago be a little more awesome. Every month each micro-trustee throws in $100. We combine our funds and award a $1,000 grant to the applicant judged most awesome.

Our current micro-trustees are:

  • John Carnwath serves as the “Dean” of the Chicago Chapter of the Awesome Foundation. He’s a  doctoral candidate at Northwestern University.
  • Drew Bradford is an aerial acrobat, and is the founder of Symbl, an interactive design firm.
  • Jon Dugan is a network engineer who connects scientists at Department of Energy Labs to their collaborators all over the world.
  • Cedric Hurst
  • Josh Metnick  is Chairman of Chicago.com, Inc. and has been recognized by Crains as one of their “40 under 40″ as well as the Tech Top 100 in Chicago.  Most proudly, Josh served two terms as President of his high school’s Science Club.
  • Mark Mitten served as Chief Brand Officer for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic Bid, a producer of NBC’s “The Apprentice”, and now leads Mitten, a firm that focuses on projects fusing strategy and creativity.
  • Ken Pelletier is a technologist/designer and musician, partner in City Winery Chicago,  board member at The Old Town School of Folk Music, founding member of The Kitchen Community Chicago, and former CTO of Groupon.
  • Derek Sherman is a Creative Director whose work has been honored by the top awards in advertising, and the founder of Middle Child, a public service agency.
  • Ken Waagner is the founder of Smartley-Dunn Solutions and an independent consultant to a number of companies, agencies and organizations.  He also founded E.A.T – Chicago a program focused on urban agriculture development and education in the City of Chicago and co-founded Wi-Fi for Humanity a non-profit organization that responds to natural and manmade disasters by helping re-establish communications.
  • Paul Klein
  • Colleen O’Grady
  • Christen Carter
  • Mark Skroch

Former micro-trustees:

  • Chris McAvoy  works for the Mozilla Foundation, used to work for Threadless and really likes Chicago. He lives with his wife and 5 year old son in Lincoln Square.
  • Sean Donohue is a designer, art director, husband, father and the creative director at Threadless.com.
  • SimpleScott is a designer, developer, and author, known best as the Design Director for President Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign.
  • Matt Dorn is the founder of TextMethod Informatics, an information technology consultancy.
  • Elke Anderle owns Small Bar, and is a Senior Planning Director who builds ideas, stories and strategies for global brands.
  • Ryan Wagman is a VP/Executive Creative Director with Leo Burnett.
  • Nuno Ferreira is a VP/Executive Creative Director with Leo Burnett.
  • Jeffrey Tran is a competitive swing dancer, and runs a trade desk at Allston Trading.
  • Jared Wheeler is a software engineer at Digitas.
  • Ben Helphand is the Executive Director of NeighborSpace, and the co-founder of the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail.
  • Katie Friesema is on tour with a rock band.
  • Thomas Johnson is a trader at Allston Trading, and is involved in several Chicago philanthropic organizations.