The City of Grand Rapids’ Office of Equity and Engagement (OEE) employs former activists to advance the city’s equity agenda.
The city established the OEE in March 2019. It was created by restructuring and elevating the former Office of Diversity and Inclusion to give equity work higher priority and visibility within city government.
In FY2026, the city allocated $1.3 million to the OEE.
The OEE’s stated mission is to advance policy and systemic change that fosters “liberation and belonging.”
More concretely, it administers the city’s Equal Business Opportunity (EBO) program, which includes reviewing and approving bid discounts for businesses located in Neighborhoods of Focus, micro-local enterprises, and those hiring NOF residents, directly influencing who wins city contracts for goods, services, and construction.
It also provides internal racial equity training and consultation for city departments, investigates internal harassment complaints, and coordinates community engagement efforts, like the Neighborhood Summit.
A number of the OEE’s employees have a history of participating in activism around West Michigan.
Brandon Davis, Managing Director
Davis, the head of the office, has a history of involvement with the organization Black Lives Matter. He was also a city liaison to the protesters during the George Floyd riots of 2020, at which time he called riots “the voice of the unheard.”
In order to create radical change and address systemic injustices, Davis recommended “reimagining what safety looks like,” though he did not elaborate on what the reimagination might entail.
In 2022, he ran for the Muskegon County Circuit Court Judge, though he placed last out of four candidates in the field.
Prior to that race, according to his campaign website, he was an assistant prosecutor in Muskegon County. At that time, he led the Muskegon County Social Justice Diversion Program, which aims to avoid the prosecution of low level crimes.
“The Social Justice Diversion program uses restorative justice practices to allow low level offenders the opportunity to avoid criminal prosecution by obtaining their education and/or performing community service,” the site says.
Sierra Hatfield, Equity Systems Manager
Hatfield describes herself as a “biracial Appalachian woman dedicated to embedding equity within systems that were not designed to sustain it.”
Her job within the OEE is to investigate internal racial harassment and write equity-based policies.
She previously founded a nonprofit called the Grand Rapids Circus Project, which increases “racial equity in circus arts,” and was involved in the writing of Kent County’s 2024 West Michigan Welcome Plan, a plan created “to improve the experience of New Americans, Immigrants, and Refugees in our region.”
Andrea Riley-Mukavetz, Community Engagement Member
Riley-Mukavetz appears to have been a part of the OEE until a recent reorganization shifted her to the city’s communications department.
She brings an academic background to the city’s equity efforts. Her past scholarly work focuses on decolonial theory and methodology, indigenous rhetoric, building coalitions against anti-Asian racism, and “realigning systems to be more just.”
Past publications show that Riley-Mukavitz is familiar with thinking in racial terms. In her “Statement on Indigenous Visibility and Reconciliation,” Riley-Mukavetz worries that any indigenous spaces created today will be filled with “a bunch of well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning folx [sic]” who are likely to perform “an act of settler colonial violence and white nonsense.”
She also previously co-edited a book titled ‘Decolonial Possibilities: Indigenously Rooted Practices in Rhetoric and Writing.’
Amaad Hardy, Business Development
Hardy sits on the board of a progressive environmentalist organization called “The People of WMEAC,” which stands for West Michigan Environmental Action Council.
He is also associated with the West Michigan Cannabis Guild, with the proclaimed aim of “recognizing and increasing the diversity of voices in the local cannabis industry.”