Corey Dooley was just 15 years old on Oct. 16, 2013 when a domestic violence incident nearly took his life. Shot four times by his then-stepfather, he watched as his mother was shot twice and his younger brother witnessed the violence from the back seat of the car.
Doctors gave him less than a 1% chance of survival.
“That experience changed my life,” Dooley said, recalling how, “by the grace of God,” he managed to beat those steep odds.
More than a decade later, that defining moment has become the foundation behind his work as a community leader and youth advocate in Austin, where he lives and works to expand opportunities for West Side residents.
“My drive to give back to my community is to make sure that that doesn’t happen to any other family,” Dooley said. “How can I be a deterrent and be a leader and be a symbol of hope and of goodness?”
Commonly known as “Community Corey,” a moniker coined during his 2023 campaign for 29th Ward alderman, Dooley has built his work around community development, with a particular focus on economic opportunity and youth engagement.
Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Dooley moved to Chicago in 2016 to attend Concordia University Chicago in River Forest. His introduction to the West Side came through a freshman-year internship with the Austin African-American Business Networking Association (AAABNA), where he became involved in efforts to develop the Soul City corridor.
The initiative sought to establish a cultural destination celebrating Austin’s history, businesses and identity. The corridor is now one of 15 officially designated cultural districts in Illinois, with recognition at both the city and state levels.
His experience with AAABNA also shaped how Dooley thinks about neighborhood change, noting that he sees “social, political and economic development as interconnected,” with each playing a vital role in strengthening a community.
While all three approaches are necessary, much of Dooley’s work focuses on the economic side — helping residents launch businesses, acquire property, and build wealth that stays within the community.
“Sustaining that investment over time requires bringing younger generations into the fold,” Dooley said.
Having transitioned from being the youngest person in rooms with established business owners to one of the older mentors working with youth, Dooley views young people as key to long-term continuity.
He notes that youth bring technological fluency, open-mindedness, and fresh marketing ideas, qualities essential for innovating local businesses and cultural corridors.
Dooley puts that perspective into practice as community ecosystem manager with Project Exploration, a STEM-focused organization. Through a partnership with the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services and the city’s My CHI. My Future. initiative, the organization provides year-round employment opportunities for youth ages 16 to 24.
Dooley works primarily on the community engagement and youth employment side of the programming. Participants help organize free events for teenagers and families, particularly across the West Side and in Austin.
One project that brought together young people’s creativity and neighborhood history was the West Side Love Maps, an initiative developed through Capstone Click, a five-member collaborative group that includes Dooley.
The project culminated in a September exhibit at the Chicago History Museum, where three large-scale maps highlighting places residents love about their communities were unveiled. Young people from Project Exploration helped color the maps, contributing artwork that became part of the exhibit alongside photographs and documentary footage.
Dooley describes how seeing the students recognize their own contributions within a major cultural institution proved deeply meaningful.
“I was just really proud for them to see themselves in history,” he said. “Something as simple as coloring and highlighting the best places in your community — that’s something that could make history.”
The project grew out of “Love Letter to the West Side,” a documentary developed through the Community Leadership Fellows program in 2020. Dooley was part of the program’s second cohort, working alongside J. Simon, Drea Slaughter, Michelle Williams and Kent Jones.
The group initially set out to document the West Side’s history and the experiences of residents who often go unrecognized in broader narratives about Chicago. They interviewed 14 people across generations, ranging in age from 9 to 80, asking what they loved about the West Side and why the community mattered to them.
The Chicago History Museum later continued its support of the group, helping inspire the West Side Love Maps.
Over the course of approximately a year, the collaborators organized six community events across Austin, Garfield Park and North Lawndale. Residents participated in mapmaking, storytelling and workshops focused on preserving community memories through different forms of archiving.
Participants learned how to preserve photographs and stories through scrapbooking and physical media, as well as how to store materials digitally using USB drives and external hard drives.
The workshops also addressed the vulnerability of relying exclusively on digital platforms and the loss of family photographs and keepsakes when flooding damages homes and basements.
Local businesses and organizations hosted the events, while West Side food vendors provided meals, keeping the project’s spending within the communities participating in it.
For Dooley, the work reinforced the idea that neighborhood history and the things residents cherish about their communities are valuable assets.
“Love can be an asset,” he said. “It’s not just a feeling or an emotion, but love can be an asset, and the things that we love about the West Side can be assets.”
Beyond access to employment and creative opportunities, Dooley sees identity as one of the biggest challenges facing young people.
Growing up, Dooley drew his sense of purpose from church, extracurricular activities, and diverse social circles — an experience he sees as starkly different from today’s youth, who are “constantly exposed to online comparisons.”
“I worry that spending so much time observing others leaves the next generation with fewer opportunities to reflect on their own interests, values, and sense of identity,” he said.
Through Chicago Lit. Collective, an organization he works on with business partners J. Simon and Kent Jones, Dooley hopes to expand opportunities for young people through literacy, creative arts and entrepreneurship.
The group focuses on developing the next generation of authors and artists while encouraging young people to explore their talents and consider how their interests might translate into self-sustaining careers.
“I’m not saying that you can’t have a job,” Dooley said. “But what talent or hobby do you have that could be a side hustle for you and maybe potentially a career, a self-sustaining career?”
For young West Side residents interested in making a difference in their neighborhoods, Dooley’s advice is simple: start by getting involved.
He encourages young people to volunteer, attend community events and pay attention to their surroundings. Whether questioning why construction along Chicago Avenue has taken so long or why certain neighborhood amenities are more readily available downtown, he believes residents should feel empowered to ask questions about the conditions around them and seek answers.
“The power of asking a question is a superpower, really,” Dooley said. “Get involved and use your critical thinking and ask questions and find answers to those questions.”