Shelli Reeves

Shelli Reeves has dedicated her life to breaking down barriers and building community. She uses innovative ways to start conversations about social determinants of health, and economic inequities while focusing on community, society, and policy. Her activism has led her to do work within museums, media, and political campaigns. Shelli was a community engagement specialist at Ideastream Public Media, Cleveland’s PBS/NPR station where she co-created projects focused on toxic stress and racism as a public health crisis with people who lived in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Before that she held the same title at the Cleveland Museum of Art where she ran a mobile art studio where she utilized art to start conversations about community issues, and how our lives are influenced by our experiences. At IDEO, Shelli is a Senior Design Research Operations Specialist where she focuses on recruiting the ideal research participants while intertwining her knowledge of community engagement, afro-feminism, and storytelling. She believes design research operations is a form of community care and if we are able to support research participants with empathy we are able to design a more equitable world. Shelli is also the Founder and CEO of Reframe History which is an organization dedicated to keeping stories alive through archiving the past, recording the present, and advocating for the future. Specifically, she does this by building a virtual African American Museum that is accessible through a Black history app where people can learn and share stories. Shelli also produces short-form documentaries that bring the same standard of public media storytelling to neighborhood stories. When Shelli is not creating exhibitions and sharing stories, she is tending to her 27 plants and teaching yoga throughout Cleveland.