Anthony Na'eem Simpkins

Anthony Simpkins is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago (NHS), joining NHS in November of 2020. NHS provides education, counseling, lending, home repair and other services to promote homeownership and community revitalization in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and communities of color in the
Chicagoland area.

Anthony earned his law degree and a Master’s in Political Science from Loyola University and began his legal career as a Skadden Foundation fellow at the Legal Assistance Foundation and Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, where he represented renters who were victims of illegal evictions called “lockouts.”

After graduating with a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Illinois, he worked for the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, the Chicago fair housing organization founded by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Anthony Simpkins is a leader in Chicago’s affordable housing community and has held multiple roles serving the City of Chicago. As Managing Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Housing, he administered housing and community development policies, programs, and strategic investments. In 2014, he was appointed a Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County by the Illinois Supreme Court, and served until 2016.

Previously, he was Deputy Commissioner for the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development (DPD), focusing on asset management, intergovernmental affairs, housing preservation initiatives and economic development policy. While at DPD, he helped to develop and administer many groundbreaking programs focused on revitalizing struggling communities, including the Troubled Buildings Initiative and the Micro-Markets Recovery program.

Anthony maintains an active civic life as well. As a 2011 Emerging Leader for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, he co-authored a published report on immigration. He is a past-president of the Muslim Bar Association of Chicago, the first association of Muslim lawyers organized in the United States, and a former board member of the Cook County Bar Association, the country’s oldest association of African-American lawyers. He is also a Board member of the Downtown Islamic Center, Masjid al-Taqwa, former Managing Editor of the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, and Board member of the Greenwood Policy Institute. Most recently, Anthony was named Vice-Chair of the Steering Committee for the Homeownership Alliance, an initiative from the National Community Stabilization Trust, which advocates for more resources and better policies to promote affordable homeownership opportunities for American families.