About Chinyere E. Oteh
Chinyere E. Oteh indigenizes archives and libraries. She is a founder, an artist, a mother and a seeker. A St. Louis native, she now enjoys the soft life on the east coast. After graduating with honors with a B.A. in American Culture Studies from Washington University in 2002 she began a career in youth development, arts and non-profit administration, and teaching. She attended the iSchool at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a Spectrum Scholar and American Association of University Women Career Development Grantee. Chinyere graduated with an MLIS in December 2022.
On the creative side, she has examined her own mixed-race identity through autobiographical creative non-fiction and academic writing, photographic self-portraiture, and now, an exploratory musical method. She has taught photography to the young and old throughout St. Louis.
On the collective side, she is a Community Matchmaker and Courageous Experimenter, who founded a time bank, in 2009, called Cowry Collective – a network geared toward forging economic equity and bridging racial divides all the while reminding each of us of our past rich cooperative practices.
On the personal side, she is a fierce and loving protector to her two children who were birthed at home in 2008 and 2012.
Chinyere has formed the basis of her leadership philosophy and style through her training as a fellow at Community Arts Training Institute, founding member of Yeyo Arts Collective, Urban Bush Women Summer Leadership Institute participant, Jamaa Birth Village Perinatal Doula Training participant, BLACC – Black Leaders Advancing Community Change participant, Re-Evaluation Counseling training, YES! Jams organizer and facilitator, Library Freedom Institute and Spectrum Institute. A practitioner of adrienne maree brown’s emergent strategy principles in her personal and professional endeavors, Chinyere continually strives to balance the demands and joys of motherhood, career and self-care. She also rejoices in synchronicity and serendipity.
My Latest Projects
FotoChi x Music Research Stategies
In the spring of 2022 Chinyere collaborated with long-time emergent strategy focused pen pal, Marshall Trammell of Music Research Strategies to document his participatory performance of Ebonics Native Land Acknowledgement at SPACE in Baltimore and Rhizome in Washington DC. Autumn 2024 brings MRS and CEO together again for more powerful participatory rhythmic experiences.
Personal Archives
I continue to digitize my personal archives, including; photographs made by my students and I during my 15 years of instruction, community portraits centered on my solidarity economy work through Cowry Collective, family photographs, slides, and files, mini DV tapes from my 2004-5 trip to Nigeria, and audiotape interviews with my parents discussing our home life as a multiracial family.
Plans for creating a multimedia memoir are now taking shape.
