We partner with efforts to advance equity in Chicago

 We join shoulder-to-shoulder to help others execute their initiatives with excellence and build the capabilities they’ll need for sustained impact through the course of that work. If you have an equity strategy, we want to be the collaborative partners who help you bring the vision you have on paper to reality.

We will help you go further faster and achieve both the business results and social impact you desire through aligned actions and rigorous problem solving. 

We will help you process through the learnings of your successes and failures and find even more ways that your efforts can advance equity.

We will help you make substantive, mutually beneficial community relationships where your actions align to community priorities and receive the full benefit of community support.

We will help you make connections with like-minded thought leaders and expand your partnership network to ensure your efforts are coordinated, amplified, and sustainable. 

We will help you identify and remediate the ways in which your organization(s) need to operate more equitably in order to deliver equity for others.

If you want to take action to advance equity in Chicago – or have already started – we can help.

 It’s both who we are and what we’ve done, as individuals and as partners.

Juatise Gathings and Matt Johanson co-founded Just Act Partners in 2023.  They decided to hang their own shingle with the firm conviction that expanding equitable economic opportunity for all Chicagoans is the single most important challenge they could pursue with their time, talents, and treasures.

Juatise previously spent 12+ years at Discover Financial Services. Most recently she was the celebrated Director of Operations and Community Outreach for Discover’s Chatham Customer Care Center. Juatise was the boots-on-the-ground leader executing on Discover’s ground-breaking social impact effort to relocate 1,000 jobs to the southside of Chicago. 

Matt previously spent 27+ years at Discover Financial Services. Most recently he was Discover’s Chief ESG Officer and Senior Vice President of Social Impact, and he led Discover’s corporate initiative to establish the Chatham Customer Care Center.  

Their passion for an equitable Chicago and their desire to inspire, motivate, and assist others to use their own platform, power and privilege to create economic opportunity on the south- and west-sides of Chicago is deeply rooted. 

Over the last three years they’ve also learned the magic and power of their unique and unlikely partnership. Just Act Partners desires to be a model of advocacy as a firm that is majorly owned and led by a young Black woman with the full partnership and support of an older, white man. Juatise and Matt are committed to partnering on that life-long journey. 

 We believe that there is an extremely fine line between success and failure in place-based investments. We have seen what success looks like for an entity to move beyond their business-as-usual and effect change. It takes a great deal of intentionality, openness, and curiosity to infuse equity considerations into traditional corporate practices and to learn how to operate successfully in a new community. 

We believe successful place-based investments require excellence at three levels: courage and consistency in executive decision making; operational rigor and cultural competency in boots-on-the-ground execution; and deep, mutually beneficial relationships with dedicated community members. A breakdown in any of those areas will have an impact on the long-term success and sustainability of any equity efforts.  

We believe that the combined forces of public, private, philanthropy, non-profit, and community will be required to address inequities, but these groups need better coordination to maximize the impact of their individual and collective efforts. Chicago’s corporate community seems poised to embrace the role that it alone can play in providing jobs and business spend at scale in Black and Brown communities, but companies often don’t know how to get started or too easily accept failure when initial efforts miss the mark on results or impact. 

We believe that Chicago’s inequities in employment, income, wealth, health, and safety cannot be solved by waiting for others to act. We’ve collectively spent 40+ years solving complex business problems, and have proven that diverse perspectives and a no fail mentality can deliver both outstanding business results and economic opportunity for communities.