904Ward CEO announces her departure

Kimberly Allen will step down as the inaugural CEO of 904Ward, a racial equity nonprofit she has led since 2020.

In a statement shared with donors Monday morning, she says her family will move to Houston to pursue another opportunity.

Allen expects to remain in Jacksonville, leading the organization until June.

In her tenure at 904Ward, the organization has produced research that details the impact race plays on education, heath, housing and legal outcomes in Jacksonville; spurred community conversation about race in an accessible and non-threatening way; sponsored Little Free Diverse Libraries in response to book removals from public schools; and partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative to remember Duval County’s victims of racial terror.

“As a board, we are incredibly sad to see Kim and her family leave,” 904Ward board Chair Maira Martelo said in a statement. “She has done so much to help people in our community see each other in ways that might not have happened otherwise. As the inaugural CEO her impact is long and deep. She and her 904Ward staff have planted seed that those of us who remain here, and committed to this work, get to water and prune as they grow.”

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Allen has lived in Jacksonville for most of her life. She is a Stanton College Prep graduate who has held research positions with the Jacksonville Public Education Fund and Florida Blue before becoming the full-time CEO of 904Ward in 2020.

“Nothing we have accomplished at this organization is without the love, generosity that you have shown,” Allen said in a thank you message to donors. “Our donors have been an incredible force to us getting started, to me being the CEO — after years of doing this work. Now, we have flourished in some amazing ways as a result of their giving.”

Allen says the creation of 904Ward in 2015 was a testament to Jacksonville’s commitment and desire for change. That the organization is still needed as it approaches its 10th anniversary means, Allen says, that racism has not been eradicated.

She says the site of dozens of volunteers wearing orange T-shirts and working to remember World War I veterans Bowman Cook and John Morine with a historical marker in 2021 was a moment when she knew there were Jaxsons dedicated to racial equity.

904Ward’s work has been championed by Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan. When the organization unveiled a library in February 2023, Deegan beamed as Allen stood outside Yellow House Art Gallery in Riverside and captured the moment on her cellphone.

As mayor, Deegan has challenged Jacksonville to strive to create a society where diversity is celebrated and every individual feels they belong. She issued that challenge at a soil collection ceremony that 904Ward organized alongside the Equal Justice Coalition to remember the victims of the Dollar General shooting in Grand Park.

“We must expand the work that is harnessing our city’s diversity, not undermine the people and programs that nurture it,” Deegan said at the time.

Allen, through her efforts at 904Ward, have often been at the forefront of that work.

“There’s no substitute for getting to know people.” Allen told Jacksonville Today. “There is nothing that will break down barriers like building relationships with people who have the ability to decide our stereotypes and the things we have relied on to make assumptions about people who we have othered. We have all done it. “

“The one thing that rings true, and I do hold to this … we are wired to make thoughts and assumptions so that we can act, move and make decisions very rapidly. And, sometimes, those assumptions, those judgments and those biases fail us because they cause us to put people in a box without getting to know them.”