Honors an individual with less than five years in executive leadership who is an emerging luminary in the field.

2024 Award Winner

Maple Walker Lloyd

Block Club Chicago

Maple Walker Lloyd is the director of development and community engagement at Block Club Chicago. She works with subscribers, foundations and corporations to expand Block Club’s support base. 

There is a long list of Walker Lloyd’s accomplishments since joining the team in 2019. She created an advertising program for the organization and laid the groundwork for its director of sales, who arrived in 2023. She secured major grants from foundations that allowed the outlet to expand its editorial reach and coverage of Chicago. Millions of dollars from those foundations have gone toward the launch of a five-person investigative team named The Watch, hiring additional revenue-side help that assists in the outlet’s sustainability and growth and hiring a team to meet the organization’s growing advertising demands — work Walker Lloyd used to handle herself.

She helped Block Club Chicago “grow from a less-than-$1 million-a-year neighborhood news operation that relied mostly on reader revenue to a more-than-$4 million-a-year nonprofit leader that enjoys a healthy, diverse mix of revenue streams, from reader revenue to institutional giving to private gifts to advertising to corporate sponsorships,” Shamus Toomey, publisher and co-founder of Block Club Chicago, said in the nomination letter.

Walker Lloyd shows a deep commitment to the communities the outlet covers and she organizes staff outings to build community within the organization, Toomey said. She also organized Block Club Chicago’s five-year anniversary gala, which raised $50,000 after expenses from a mix of donors and funders. 

Walker Lloyd, Toomey said, “is a force of nature who has helped lead Block Club Chicago to new heights both on the local and national level.”

Finalists

• Valeria Fernández, palabra. by NAHJ 
• Allison Taylor Levine, Spotlight Delaware