The City Club of Cleveland

Founded in 1912, the City Club is one of America’s leading public forums, producing more than 120 forums every year to strengthen democracy, inform and engage citizens and prepare them to participate in strengthening their communities. A product of the Progressive Era, we were founded in 1912 and are renowned for our tradition of debate and discussion, as well as for convening conversations with some of the most important voices shaping the future of our community, the state of Ohio, and the nation. The founders of The City Club of Cleveland envisioned “a social club with a civic purpose," where strong differences of opinion would converge to produce solutions to complex problems. For more than a hundred years, all of our speakers—more than 7,000 in total, from sitting presidents to community activists—have answered unfiltered, unrehearsed questions directly from the audience.

The City Club promotes and encourages diversity by welcoming speakers, members, guests of different races, backgrounds, cultures and orientations. In our 2013 Strategic Plan, inclusion was among the four core values we articulated and tracking was set in place to measure representation of diverse voices among our forums. We are proud to report that in the years since, we have continued to meet ambitious targets for speaker diversity. Furthermore, we recognize the structural racism that has long benefitted white supremacy; we work to educate our audiences about the challenges this long-standing reality creates for many members of our community.