City Council

Councilmember Meeka D. Owens was elected to City Council in 2021 and is currently the Chair of the Climate, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee, one of the first local government committees in the nation to prioritize climate change. She also sits on the Budget and Finance Committee and serves as Vice Chair of the Equitable Growth and Housing Committee.

CM Owens was born and raised in Avondale. She attended Cincinnati Public Schools, North Avondale, Kilgour, and Schroder Paideia before attending Purcell Marian High School. Throughout her childhood she trained at Seven Star Dragons, where she learned lifelong skills including self-discipline, hard work, and respect/responsibility/third value. She was also crowned as Miss Black Teen Cincinnati in 1994. As her talent, she performed an Okinawan Shuri-Ryu martial arts routine set to Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman.”

While raising her son Justin as a single mom in Avondale, she also attended Miami University and earned her B.S. in Mass Communications with a minor in Marketing. She later returned to school, this time at Xavier University, where she earned her M.Ed. in Human Resources Development.

CM Owens’ personal mantra is “to continue to make the Cincinnati community a better place to live, work, and play.” She has always tried to serve her community, whether through board membership or community outreach. She has served on the boards of Women Helping Women, Urban Minority Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Outreach Programs (UMADAOP) of Ohio, the YWCA, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and MUSE Women’s Choir. In 2013, she was nominated as a YWCA Rising Star Leadership Academy. She has also continued to serve on the board of the Rising Star Advisory Committee, to further engage young professionals in the organization.

She has worked professionally as a trainer, facilitator, consultant, and small business owner. In 2016 and 2018, she organized for the election campaigns before joining the administration of then-Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval as the Social Responsibility Officer, creating employee engagement strategies, overseeing the college internship program, and managing environmentally sustainable activities within the office.

An organizer at heart, CM Owens also helped to cofound the Greater Cincinnati Voter Collaborative in 2020 to protect access for voting for all Hamilton County Voters in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her fervent belief that a community cannot be changed until it elects leaders who supports its values led CM Owens to run for City Council in 2020. Her goals for the City are to increase safety in our neighborhoods, including from gun-violence; create quality, affordable housing; provide basic services with efficiency and care; create a more sustainable City; and help the unique arts and culture of Cincinnati to thrive. She is dedicated towards working with members of the community to achieve real solutions and will always advocate for the people of Cincinnati.