Crain's Chicago Business, February 19, 2024

CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM I FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Underground climate change is gradually sinking Chicago We know Venice is sinking. But what about the Windy City, which accounts for nearly 234 square miles of land?

By Nicole L. Cvetnic, Chicago Council on Global Affairs

Eréndira “Ere” Rendón is vice president of immigrant justice at The Resurrection Project.

Beneath Chicago’s iconic skyline lurks a sinking problem: underground climate change. Over time, its effects could jeopardize the durability of buildings and infrastructure across the city.

Also known as subsurface heat islands, heat emitted from underground structures, such as parking garages, basements, subway tunnels, and sewers, gradually deforms the surrounding earth. Existing structures aren’t designed to withstand those variations, so subtle shifts, tilts, and even cracks in infrastructure can occur.

This silent hazard is a slow but continual process, and it’s affecting urban areas worldwide.

“You don’t need to live in Venice to live in a city that is sinking — even if the causes for such phenomena are completely different,” said Alessandro Rotta Loria, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University.

Chicago’s migrant crisis raises questions of equity

The city becomes a lab

The city’s humanitarian response to new arrivals underscores immigration inequalities | PAGE 13

Though the effects of underground climate change have been examined for years, researchers at Northwestern, led

by Rotta Loria, were the first to study this phenomenon from a civil engineering perspective.

Using computer simulations and a wireless network of more than 150 temperature sensors above and below ground, for three years Rotta Loria’s team transformed Chicago’s Loop — the most densely populated district in the U.S. after Manhattan — into a testing ground. They also installed sensors beneath Grant Park for comparison.

According to their findings, temperatures below Chicago are rising by about 0.25 degrees Fahrenheit (0.14 Celsius) each year.

This has caused layers of soil to swell and expand upward in some locations by as much as 0.47 inches (12 millimeters), and contract and sink downward in other locations by as much as 0.31 inches (8 millimeters). They also found that the ground under the Loop was often 18 F (10 C) warmer than the ground beneath Grant Park, an unbuilt environment.

“Chicago clay can contract when heated, like many other fine-grained soils,” said Rotta Loria. “As a result of temperature increases underground, many foundations downtown are

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ORPHE DIVOUNGUY What’s blocking Black families from getting on the homeownership ladder? PAGE 2

BOOTH INSIGHTS 7 tactics to grab the first 100 customers and start your business off right.

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ORPHE DIVOUNGUY ON THE ECONOMY

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n 2022, 74% of white households in the Chicago metro area owned their home, compared with just 41% of Black households, according to the American Community Survey. The racial gap in the share of owner-occupied households has barely budged since 2012, falling just 2 percentage points.

This makes sense, given that the income gap among those who don't own a Orphe home has not Divounguy significantly narrowed, either. The median income of white families in metro Chicago is 23% higher than that of Black families, a figure that has only been reduced by 2 percentage points over the same time period. Moreover, while white residents are more likely to have a college degree and more years of traditional schooling, they still earn more than their Black counterparts with similar educational backgrounds.

Besides the substantial income gap, other factors contributing to the significant racial disparity in homeownership include credit score differences, the absence of lengthy credit histories and disparate access to banking.

Additionally, Black communities have less generational wealth and have faced a long history of discriminatory housing policies.

However, the slowdown in the Chicago-area labor market, coupled with a sharp increase in mortgage rates, is preventing many from getting on the homeownership ladder. In 2022, the share of Black families that did not yet own but could comfortably afford to take out a mortgage was more than halved to just 8.3% from 19% in 2021.

Despite this, an estimated 32,000 Chicago-area Black families were “income mortgage-ready,” meaning the share of their income that they would have spent on a mortgage payment for the typical Chicago metro-area home would have been 30% or lower.

One challenge for these potential homebuyers is the unpredictability of increases in the region’s already-high property taxes.

Moreover, there are significant barriers to homeownership that are not solely related to income.

The National Survey of Mortgage

Originations suggests that roughly one-quarter of first-time mortgage borrowers were unsure of the down payment or income needed to qualify for a mortgage at the start of the application process. Almost one-third of mortgage borrowers were unsure about closing costs at the start of their homebuying journey. So while some could afford to own, they simply did not even know it.

The good news is that down payment assistance, rent payment reporting to the credit bureaus and other credit improvement strategies, as well as reducing transaction costs associated with buying a home, could potentially help a large number of Black families become homeowners. A conversation with a mortgage loan officer might in some cases be all it takes to overcome some of these hurdles that aren't related to income. However, for the bulk of families that are stuck on the sidelines, the largest impact would still have to come from a large and sustained increase in housing supply.

Despite relatively higher median household incomes, those living in markets with strict land use regulations are least likely to be mortgage-ready and less likely to own their home. This is due to housing supply in these markets not keeping pace with increases in housing demand, resulting in continuously rising housing costs.

While new construction surged across the country during the pandemic, the supply of new housing in Chicago has been underwhelming.

Chicago has been losing Black residents for decades. And just like everyone else, they’re moving to more affordable housing markets.

A recent Zillow analysis of movers' data showed that interstate movers tend to move in search of more housing options that are relatively more affordable. Sadly, Chicago topped the list for largest metros by population with more outbound moves than inbound moves in 2023.

Addressing the decline in Chicago's Black population will require significant measures to reduce housing costs and tackle racial disparities in employment and housing.

Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow Group and executive adviser at Quantitative Research Group, writes a monthly column for Crain’s.

FRANCK MICHEL/FLICKR

What’s blocking Black families from homeownership

Smaller banks face bigger risks amid commercial real estate downturn More pain is expected to come in 2024 despite forecasts of an improving economy

By Mark Weinraub

Small banks in the Chicago area are holding an outsized portion of the risk from the depressed commercial real estate sector, with more pain expected in 2024 despite forecasts for an improving economy.

“For the smaller banks in the Chicago area, the commercial real estate loans are, relative to their total loan portfolio, are more than twice that of the larger banks,” said Terry McEvoy, banking industry analyst with Little Rock, Ark.based financial services firm Stephens. “That is just by nature of

being a community bank and the type of customers you have.”

The sector faces a squeeze from the massive jump in interest rates over the past few years, which will leave prospective borrowers with much higher costs than the ones they shouldered under their current loans.

Additionally, lingering uncertainty about return-to-office trends and desk workers’ demands for top-of-the-line amenities have cratered prospects for many downtown property owners and raised questions about their ability to pay off loans.

For the 20 local banks with the

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BIG ENOUGH TO SERVE YOU. SMALL ENOUGH TO KNOW YOU.

Correction there” was published in the Feb. 12 issue with an incorrect photo of Stanley Nitzberg.

biggest percentage of loans devoted to commercial real estate, the average had 53.6% of its loans coming from that troubled sector, according to data provided by Stephens.

“As these loans mature and need to be refinanced it becomes more of a challenge, given what the impact would be to the borrower,” McEvoy said. “As an industry we have not seen the charge-offs but obviously there are fears looking ahead.”

Those 20 area banks with the most commercial real estate exposure had assets ranging from $107 million to $2.642 billion. Elgin Bancshares, which has assets of $355 million, topped the list,

Banking products provided by Wintrust Financial Corp. banks.

TM

Duckworth gave Boeing’s CEO an earful Illinois’ junior senator pushed back on the company’s request for a safety waiver on a new aircraft that’s still awaiting FAA certification

By John Pletz

The Chicago-based toy company is dabbling in the digital entertainment business.| RADIO FLYER

Radio Flyer’s Red Wagon could soon get eyes, ears and a voice On the heels of Mattel’s success with “Barbie,” the Chicago-based toy company is taking its wagon world digital | By Jack Grieve

R

adio Flyer is taking its Little Red Wagon on a ride to Hollywood.

The Chicago-based toy company is launching a new digital entertainment division, Radio Flyer Studios, that will use animated storytelling to bring the beloved wagon brand to life. What will start as a string of short animations uploaded to the company’s YouTube channel could one day become a networkbacked television series or live-action motion picture.

“Those would be our goals, to do all of those things over time,” said Radio Flyer Chief Wagon Officer Robert Pasin, referring to a show and film production. “The sky is the limit.”

For now, though, the digital storytelling is just getting started.

See RADIO FLYER on Page 46

The idea is for Radio Flyer Studios to build the entertainment brand in-house before potentially partnering with distributors.

She’s been chair of the Senate’s aviation subcommittee for only a year, but Tammy Duckworth is making her presence felt.

When the Illinois senator and former Army helicopter pilot told Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun he should drop his request for a safety waiver on a new, smaller version of the 737 that’s still awaiting FAA certification, Calhoun took her advice.

The company dropped its request for a waiver related to the 737 Max-7 for a known de-icing issue, even though it’s likely to cost Boeing some money and heartburn with a key customer, Southwest Airlines.

Duckworth no doubt got Calhoun’s attention when she opposed the waiver in a sternly worded letter to the FAA. She continued to make her case to Calhoun when he came to Washington amid the crisis over another version of the 737, the Max-9.

“I was not expecting when I met with Senator Duckworth, the conversation that we had,” the CEO told analysts during Boeing’s conference call Jan. 31 to discuss fourth-quarter earnings. “You know she is a pilot and a decorated pilot. She listened to everything I had to say, we didn’t have a debate about the safety of the 7. And the 7 in its certification work was moving along at a pretty steady pace.

“She had a way different argument for me, and it was right. She said, ‘You want to introduce this new airplane, a derivative, yes, but a new airplane. And nine months from now, you’ll have an engi-

neered solution to it, to this issue.

And why is that the right call?’ ” The argument resonated, said Calhoun, who is under enormous pressure from both regulators and customers because of problems surrounding the Max-9 after one of those airplanes suffered a fuselage blowout while in flight last month.

“In my view, it was a sound, principled position to take,” he said of Duckworth’s argument. “I went home for the weekend, I talked to our customer, and you know who that is. Unbelievably constructive. And this is the right thing to do for aviation.

“So that is really how it happened, and it was that simple. But the passion and the argument that Senator Duckworth presented to me, I’m so glad I heard. Anyway, that’s what happened. The 7 will have to move until we get that engineered fix in place.”

Duckworth was unavailable for an interview.

The 55-year-old former congresswoman who was elected to the Senate in 2016 may be the junior senator from Illinois, but she isn’t taking a back seat.

“She’s not shy about saying what she thinks,” says Sam Whitehorn, a longtime aviation lobbyist and co-founder of Elevate Government Affairs in Washington who acknowledges he’s been on the opposite side of Duckworth on some issues. “It stirs the pot. It’s a good thing.

“It’s interesting to watch her.

Her background — her ability to say, ‘I’m an aviator; I get this’ — it’s a little bit different. She’s getting to be a force.”

Why Brunswick is attracting so many automotive people The quest for autonomy and electrification is spilling over into the marine industry

By Lindsay Chappell, Automotive News

LAS VEGAS — The car business isn’t the only transportation sector wrestling with questions about electric power and autonomous driving.

Pleasure boating is now going through the same technological upheaval as cars and trucks.

Automated steering, anyone?

In the water?

Auto engineers might have to squint their eyes to picture it, but

the marine industry is seeking the same sort of new-age solutions for its fishing boats, deck boats, ski boats, houseboats and cabin cruisers that automakers, component suppliers and robotaxi ventures are proposing for terra firma.

That might explain why so many automotive people are showing up at the biggest boat company in America, Brunswick Corp. of suburban Chicago.

“I’ve had several automotive guys come up and introduce

Brunswick’s stand at CES 2024. | BRUNSWICK

themselves to me since I’ve been standing here,” Brunswick CEO Dave Foulkes said as he stood

among the swirl of visitors to the company’s lively stand at CES 2024 in January. “Senior people,”

he clarified. “They said they like what we’re doing and were interested in being part of it.”

Brunswick’s stand was positioned conveniently in the middle of several big automotive company stands.

Foulkes, recruited from an 18year career at Ford Motor Co. to run Brunswick, said a transfer of technologies is taking place from automotive to boating. And it mostly relates to what carmakers already have been figuring out for the past decade about automated collision avoidance, torque vectoring, object detection and route See BRUNSWICK on Page 46 FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 3

Firm linked to Alden Global Capital emerges as a top delinquent tax buyer An entity with ties to the Chicago Tribune’s owner is getting into a different type of asset: unpaid taxes on local properties

By Rachel Herzog

While Alden Global Capital may be best known locally as the owner of the Chicago Tribune, an entity with ties to the firm has branched into a different type of investment: delinquent property taxes.

A venture that shares an address with a nonprofit led by Alden’s co-founder was a top buyer of unpaid taxes in the annual auction held by the Cook County treasurer’s office in January, buying about $1.75 million worth of delinquent taxes on more than 600 properties, according to data provided by the Cook County treasurer’s office under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. Including paying the taxes, interest and administrative fees, the firm spent almost $2.4 million to be the fifth-largest buyer in this year’s auction by number of properties purchased, records show.

The county’s tax auctions allow investors to bid on the right to pay overdue taxes on local properties; homeowners whose taxes were bought must repay them to the investors with a monthly interest rate of 1.5% as well as interest on the buyer’s investment and other fees to keep their homes, according to an informational brochure from the Cook County Clerk’s Office. That

enables buyers to make a profit over the redemption period, which can be extended up to three years after the date of sale.

While most of the properties are redeemed by their owners, the investors, through the courts, can take control of the small number that aren’t.

Alden’s interest not clear It’s not clear why Alden, which has attracted attention in recent years for its acquisition of Tribune Publishing, has become interested in Chicago-area delinquent taxes. Past research by the treasurer’s office found no indication that Alden or any company linked to the firm had participated before in “any significant way” in the annual tax sale, according to a statement from the office. An Alden representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Cook County tax-buying entity, Central Region Tax Auction LLC, shares an Englewood, N.J., address with a nonprofit whose vice president is Alden co-founder Randall Smith and was registered in Illinois in August 2023, according to state records. The venture’s manager is Rhys Smith, CEO at Englewood, N.J,-based real estate investment firm Acacia Asset Management Group and a former director at Connecticut-based investment

The Cook County flag | JOHN R. BOEHM

firm Twenty Lake Holdings, an Alden subsidiary, according to LinkedIn. Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

Twenty Lake Holdings, which has bought and sold newspaper properties — part of Alden’s strategy to squeeze cash out of its media holdings — as well office buildings and Greyhound bus stations, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Alden purchased Tribune Publishing, which operates the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, in 2021 and has been criticized for cutting newsroom staff to maximize profits.

The Tribune lost about 30% of its news staff since Alden first bought a stake in the company in late 2019, according to previously published reports. On Feb. 1, Tribune Publishing workers, including Chicago Tribune employees, participated in a oneday strike against Alden to demand fair wages and benefit protections.

The vast majority of properties Central Region Tax Auction LLC purchased the taxes on were residential, according to treasurer’s office records. Almost half were smaller, one-story residences, though the firm also bought con-

dominiums and two- to six-unit apartment buildings.

More than half of the properties the firm bought the taxes for were within Chicago city limits; the municipality where the venture bought taxes on the secondhighest number of properties was Harvey, in the south suburbs.

Overall, buyers purchased taxes on 7,517 local properties, according to treasurer’s office records. The total dollar amount of delinquent taxes purchased was $30.7 million; including fees, the buyers spent about $41.2 million.

Owner of offices in River North and the West Loop faces $39 million in foreclosure lawsuits The wave of distress sweeping through Chicago’s office market isn’t just coming for traditional high-rises

By Rachel Herzog

The owner of two loft office buildings has been hit with foreclosure lawsuits seeking a total of $39 million, a sign of financial distress in Chicago’s office market spilling beyond traditional Loop high-rises.

An affiliate of real estate investment manager Slate Asset Management filed Jan. 29 to foreclose on two Shopoff Realty Investments-owned properties, an eight-story, 87,270-squarefoot building at 900 N. Franklin St. in River North and a six-story, 81,289-square-foot at 224 N. Des Plaines St. in the West Loop.

It’s been a difficult couple of years for office landlords. The persistence of remote-work trends pushed vacancy at down4 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

town Chicago office buildings up to a record high of 23.8% at the end of 2023, and high interest rates made it tricky for building owners with debt to pay off mortgages. The wave of resulting foreclosures has come for downtown towers and suburban complexes alike, as well as other office buildings in Chicago neighborhoods outside the Loop.

The plaintiff is alleging that Shopoff defaulted on a $15.1 million loan secured by the North Franklin Street property and on $13.5 million worth of debt tied to the North Des Plaines Street building and owes a total of almost $25 million. Slate Asset Management’s real estate credit arm issued the loans in mid-2022, according to

900 N. Franklin St. | COSTAR GROUP

court filings.

The asset manager is also seeking more than $14 million

in damages incurred as a result of the borrower’s alleged breach of contract, according to the

court filings.

A spokeswoman for Slate Asset Management declined to comment on the suits. California-based Shopoff Realty Investments did not respond to a request for comment.

The buildings were almost fully leased when Shopoff bought the pair for $37 million in 2016, Crain’s reported at the time. That sale price reflected rapidly increasing rents in the two neighborhoods back then.

Now, 900 N. Franklin St. is 64.6% leased, and 224 N. Des Plaines St. is 75.5% leased, according to data from real estate information company CoStar Group.

The Real Deal Chicago was the first to report on the foreclosure cases.

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Hollywood’s ‘Oppenheimer’ moment puts a sobering UChicago tradition into focus The day the film earned 13 Academy Award nominations was also the day the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock was set to reflect that the world is now closer to apocalypse than it has been at any time before and ’50s, the group was heavy with nuclear scientists, but since the late 1970s, there has been a rising awareness that other kinds of catastrophe, ranging from global warming to biological threats such as COVID and, more recently, artificial intelligence, could lead to disaster, and thus the membership has been widened to include more diverse expertise.

By H. Lee Murphy

Early one Tuesday morning in mid-January, several high-profile film personalities were assembled in Hollywood to announce the nominees for the Academy Awards, and the documentary-like chronicle of the development of the atomic bomb and the advent of the Cold War that followed, “Oppenheimer,” was showered with a leading 13 nominations.

An hour later on that same day, scientists gathered at the National Press Club Broadcast Center in Washington, D.C., to reveal the latest setting for the so-called Doomsday Clock, a barometer of global military and political crisis maintained at the campus of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park since just after World War II. The setting is now 90 seconds to midnight, a symbolic metaphor suggesting that the world is now closer to apocalypse than it has been at any time in the history of the clock.

The parallel events were not lost on some observers. The film “Oppenheimer” follows Irish actor Cillian Murphy as the great physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who helped found the laboratory at Los Alamos, N.M., where the research and testing of the A-bomb was transferred soon after its pioneering start as the Manhattan Project in 1942 on the campus at UChicago.

BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTISTS

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Panel members

Rising awareness The Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which was founded in 1945 (by Albert Einstein among others) and came up with the idea of sponsoring and maintaining the clock two years later, was led in its formative years by Oppenheimer, who contributed regularly to the organization’s journal while spending the rest of his life warning governments around the world about the stark realities of nuclear annihilation.

With tense flashpoints spread today among North Korea and Ukraine and the Middle East, among other places, and the damage from global warming mounting, the Chicago Bulletin has steadily dialed up the Doomsday Clock recently.

“It’s been a very important year,” says Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. “The ‘Oppenheimer’ movie has landed at a moment when there is so much to worry about in world events. The power of our clock is that it presents an entrance ramp into the conversation among scientists and governments that we need to have to avoid apocalypse.”

Daniel Holz is a professor at 6 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

From left: Asha George, executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense; Herb Lin, scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford; Bill Nye, science educator; Rachel Bronson, Bulletin CEO and president; Alexander Glaser, co-director of Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security; and UChicago Professor Daniel Holz.

the University of Chicago in the departments of physics, astronomy and astrophysics, and he also serves as chairman of the Bulletin’s central Science and Security

a sense of what they are worried about. In recent years their worries have centered on climate change, and they’ve been quite well informed on that topic,”

“The power of our clock is that it presents an entrance ramp into the conversation among scientists and governments that we need to have to avoid apocalypse.”

— Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Board, a 17-member panel that votes regularly on where to set the Doomsday Clock. For the first time, this year Holz is teaching a class on campus called “Are We Doomed?” He notes that opinions on the possibility of nuclear war have shifted among his students in the wake of the film.

“I always poll students and get

Holz observes. “They were not very well informed about the dangers of nuclear exchange. The Cold War was old news for them.

But after seeing the movie they now realize the terror in these weapons, something they didn’t think much about before. Still, the instability in places like Iran and North Korea are mostly ab-

stract threats to them.”

They aren’t abstract to the Science and Security Board. “We grapple with the reality that thousands of weapons are on hair-trigger alert and the world could be evaporated inside of 30 minutes,” Holz says.

The Doomsday Clock has been reviled by some critics as unnecessarily alarmist, particularly in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the declaration later that year that the Cold War was over as nuclear stocks were being reduced. Back then, the Doomsday Clock was wound back to 17 minutes before midnight, its furthest from apocalypse ever.

What exactly is Holz’s Science and Security Board? For one, it has nine Nobel-winning scientists as sponsors. The panel itself has 17 members that meet in Chicago at least twice a year. In the ’40s

Panel members include government officials like Edmund G. Brown Jr., the former governor of California; Asha M. George, a former staffer with the U.S. House of Representatives specializing in public health issues who is currently executive director of the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense; Alexander Glaser, an associate professor in aerospace engineering who is the co-author of the 2014 book “Unmaking the Bomb”; Robert Latiff, a retired U.S. Air Force general; and Raymond Pierrehumbert, a Frenchborn distinguished professor of physics at the University of Oxford. Overall, the group is a mix of academics and personalities from government policymaking backgrounds. Some are supported by independent think tanks.

The clock might strike some as a subjective exercise, and it is in large part. Holz explains that the group does look at objective data, such as the temperature on the Earth’s surface last year (hottest on record) and the rise of nuclear stocks back toward Cold War levels. But all of that is blended with the opinions and personal observations of the board members themselves, often distilled through what Holz calls “vigorous debate” over a day or two into a consensus.

“There are some extreme personalities in our group, and people do get upset because the stakes are so high. But we all respect each other, and we come to agreement in the end,” Holz says.

A similar consensus — against future deployment of A-bombs — was reached at Los Alamos after Hiroshima and Nagasaki among physicists who built the bombs. But world leaders in succeeding decades either weren’t listening or were simply carried along by events beyond their control. Now nearly 70 years later, the Doomsday Clock still stands as a guidepost to the horrors of apocalypse on the campus of the University of Chicago. And plenty of people, including many “Oppenheimer” moviegoers, still pay attention to it.

This story appears in the ChicagoGlobal newsletter, a joint project of Crain’s Chicago Business and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

CHICAGO BOOTH INSIGHTS

Seven ways to land your first 100 customers ou can't start a startup if you can't sell. But stepping out — and risking rejection — is terrifying for, well, most everyone.

Here are seven proven tactics to grab those first 100 customers that might ease your fears and start you off right.

1. Give your product away for free. ◗ Before Cards Against Humanity

became a best-selling game, its creators gave it away online to download, print and play for free.

In fact, they still do. This is called a “freemium” business model. The only sales-y (and smart) thing about Cards' strategy: Downloaders could provide their email address if they wanted to be notified when a professionally printed deck became available. By the time Cards launched that deck on Kickstarter, the company had amassed thousands of interested customers and their email addresses.

2. Film a pitch video and post it. ◗ My 7-year-old daughter's Girl

Scout cookie pitch netted $774 in sales. A cute kid always helps, but this is exactly how the grooming product company Dollar Shave Club launched. The company's hilarious 2012 launch video is still racking up views on YouTube today.

3. Are you BFFs with an influencer? ◗ Or can you afford to pay one?

There are a lot of artful business decisions that made Stanley's Adventure Quencher Travel Tumbler go viral, but the main reason has nothing to do with Stanley, a more than 100-year-old brand. Credit instead goes to the three influencers who run The Buy Guide, an e-commerce blog and Instagram account. (More on this below.)

4. Land prominent press coverage. ◗ But beware, you must have a tru-

ly novel idea for reporters to write about your startup. Warby Parker landed early coverage in Vogue and GQ because of their thennovel price ($99), their then-novel online sales strategy and their then-novel try-on-by-mail program. Listen to Warby Parker's founders explain how they used public relations to jump-start sales on the podcast “How I Built This.”

5. Create an affiliate marketing and/or referral program. ◗ Back to the Stanley tumbler. The

Buy Guide founders knew their audience — moms — loved the product. So they approached Stanley with a proposition: Let us buy these at wholesale prices;

GETTY IMAGES

Y

we'll resell them and keep the profits. That strategy evolved into Stanley returning the cup to its online store and The Buy Guide getting a cut of sales that originated with its audience. This is called affiliate marketing. A similar strategy, which rewards customers instead of third-party promoters, is called a referral program. Every startup should have a referral program, and every startup should consider affiliate marketing.

6. Take pre-orders. ◗ This will help you figure out if you

have a good idea before you even build your product. Here's how: Build a simple website describing your product or service, promote it on social media and ask people to place pre-orders or sup-

ply their email addresses. Just like Tesla or Kickstarter projects. Put less than $1,000 of digital ad spend behind your posts if you don't already have a large audience.

This is called demand testing.

It's the quickest way to prove to a venture-capital firm that people want what you're selling, or to reach the opposite conclusion: Don't quit your day job. Harry's, a shaving products company, launched this way and ingeniously built a referral program into its pre-ordering process. Harry's founders shared that computer code online so other startups could replicate their winning strategy.

7. Sell. ◗ Most startups, whether they're

selling something that costs $9.99

Melissa Harris is CEO of M. Harris & Co., a Chicago-based marketing agency led by former journalists. She has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation since 2016, the year she graduated from Booth with her MBA.

Advice for small businesses and entrepreneurs in partnership with the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

or $999, begin with the founder approaching people in his or her own network. Great entrepreneurs know the sale doesn't end there; they continue to nurture their early customers and convert them into evangelists.

If you are uncomfortable with selling and want to start a company, you have two options: Find a co-founder who is comfortable, or get over it.

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 7

As ranks keep thinning, Walgreens taps pharmacy school deans for advice The retail pharmacy giant is bringing 17 deans, including UIC’s, together to advise them on a changing industry more time on the part of the job that matters most: providing personalized health care to patients.”

By Jon Asplund

Walgreens is bringing together the deans of 17 colleges of pharmacy around the nation in an advisory council to share ideas about how to increase the number of pharmacists and get them excited about working at Walgreens drugstores.

The Walgreens Deans Advisory Council comes at a time when demand for pharmacy services is increasing and the industry “is facing a pronounced labor shortage,” the Deerfield-based retailer said in a statement.

“Collaboration within the pharmacy profession has never been more important, and I’m grateful to the many academic leaders who have joined the deans advisory council as we work to transform the future of pharmacy,” Rick Gates, chief pharmacy officer at Walgreens, said in the statement.

Council member Glen T. Schumock, dean of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he thinks the group will be able to drill down even further with Walgreens than it has in the past and provide the company with honest, open feedback about what the company can do, and what schools can do, to move together.

Workforce in crisis The pharmacist workforce is currently in a crisis with fewer applications to pharmacy schools and “more jobs open than pharmacists to fill them,” he said.

Involvement in patient care

Pharmacy school applications were down 22% in 2022-2023 compared to the previous year and have decreased by more than 60% over the past decade. | BLOOMBERG

Pharmacy school applications were down 22% in 20222023 compared to the previous year and have decreased by more than 60% over the past decade, Walgreens said in the statement.

“Pharmacy schools produce students that are trained a a level that’s high above what they usually end up doing,” Schumock said, with about 80% of the UIC school’s students coming in with a bachelor’s degree and adding four years of pharmacy school on top of that.

“They spend those four years learning about medication,” he said. “They’re really the medication experts, they know more about medications than your average physician.”

Yet, most pharmacists don’t get to take an active role in prescribing medicine or working with patients, especially in the retail pharmacy world, Schumock said.

That’s got to change, he said.

There are ways to do more to get pharmacists practicing at the top of their license, with a great example being the ad-

ministering of vaccines, which largely began during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

“We are committed to addressing the issues head-on by changing the pharmacy operating model and refocusing our core business priorities,” Walgreens’ Gates said in an emailed statement to Crain’s. “We’ve been working on new initiatives and programs and look forward to taking our council members along on this journey. Our goal is to get to a place where our pharmacy teams can spend

Allowing pharmacists to be more involved in patient care will bring more people into the profession, UIC’s Schumock said.

UIC and Walgreens already partner on a program in which the school identifies and recruits high school students for a six-week program to introduce young people to the career, Schumock said.

The program brings high schoolers into a three-week program at the school, where they shadow pharmacy students in class and at UIC’s hospital and clinics and receive a pharmacy technician’s license, he said. Then they spend another three weeks working in a Walgreens store in their neighborhood.

“Most of them stay on and continue to work through their high school career,” Schumock said, noting the program is very successful in getting students to continue on to pharmacy school.

The council is sponsored by Gates and co-chaired by John Colaizzi Jr., vice president of pharmacy practice at Walgreens, and Angela Kashuba, dean of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the statement said. Walgreens’ Director of Pharmacy Affairs Lorri Walmsley will serve as the vice chair it said.

It will hold its first meeting in March, the statement said.

Union push comes to Chicago health care firm Tempus Laboratory workers aim to unionize at the company founded by billionaire Eric Lefkofsky

By Brandon Dupré

White-coat lab workers at Chicago precision medicine company Tempus, founded by billionaire Eric Lefkofsky, are organizing to form a union, another such effort in the health care industry, which has seen a recent surge in organized-labor activity.

Some 400 workers who use AI to research diseased cells at the company’s downtown Chicago lab have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union election. No date has been set for an election.

The workers, many of whom have advanced degrees, are seeking to be represented by the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers. In Chicago, that union represents thousands of auto mechanics 8 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

and airline workers at O’Hare and Midway airports.

In a statement, the workers’ organizing committee said it “is fighting for rigorous safety protocols, pay and benefits that align with the rest of our industry, a voice on the job, and to better the outcomes for the patients that Tempus serves.”

A spokesperson for IAM said Tempus declined to voluntarily recognize the union.

In an email to Crain’s, a Tempus spokesperson said the company respects “the right of our lab employees to choose whether or not to be represented by a union.”

“We continue to believe a direct relationship between our team members and their managers is the best way to address employees’ unique and individual

Inside Tempus’ Chicago office | TEMPUS PHOTO

needs and priorities,” the email said. “We appreciate the continued hard work of our laboratory staff, who are critical to our mission to make meaningful progress in the fight against cancer.”

Health care has seen a wave of recent organizing efforts.

Nurses, concerned about understaffing and pay, have exerted their collective power in Illinois and around the country.

Medical residents and fellows at Northwestern University recently voted to form a union, becoming the largest of its kind

in the Midwest.

The health care industry in general has seen a “chronic understaffing and overwork problem,” said Michael LeRoy, professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and the School of Labor & Employment Relations. “There’s an infectious enthusiasm for labor, especially when they see another health care group go on strike and then get a 25% increase in their wages.”

Since launching, Tempus has grown to over 2,000 employees and raised more than $1.4 billion from investors, according to data research firm PitchBook. In 2022, Crain’s reported that Tempus raised $275 million in a combination of equity and debt financing, selling shares to its existing investors for the same price per share as its previous fundraising round at the end of 2020, when it raised $200 million at an $8.1 billion valuation.

Cost estimates decline for Illinois’ immigrant health care programs as copays take effect

By Jerry Nowicki, Capitol News Illinois

Cost estimates for a pair of state-funded health care programs serving certain low-income noncitizens have declined by tens of millions of dollars in recent months as the state rolled out new copay and co-insurance requirements this month.

The Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults and Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors programs provide state-funded Medicaidlike benefits to individuals aged 42 and over who would otherwise be eligible for the federal low-income health care program if not for their immigration status.

That includes those in the U.S. without legal permission and those who have obtained a green card but not yet completed a fiveyear waiting period to earn federal benefits. Individuals who have applied for asylum or sanctuary in the U.S. — which includes many of the more than 34,000 migrants bused to Illinois from Texas in the last year-and-a-half — more likely qualify for other preexisting state or federal benefits.

Advocates for the programs contend they are not only lifesaving but also cost-saving in the long-run as they give individuals access to preventative care rather than making them reliant upon expensive emergency room visits to treat conditions that worsen due to lack of care. Opponents of the programs, namely Republican lawmakers, have criticized them as an expensive enticement for people illegally residing in the U.S. to relocate to Illinois.

The programs, originally launched for those aged 65 and older in 2020 then expanded in waves, became a sticking point in state budget negotiations last year when Gov. JB Pritzker’s administration projected their single-year costs to exceed $1 billion.

But current estimates now project the programs will cost $773 million in the current fiscal year. Those estimates, however, have declined by $60 million since August, the month following the Pritzker administration’s initial announcement of certain cost-saving measures.

Cost-saving measures Ultimately, the contentious budget negotiations ended last year with lawmakers allocating $500 million in funding to the program from the state’s General Revenue Fund and giving the Pritzker administration authority to limit program enrollment and costs.

The administration in turn paused enrollment in HBIA as of July 1 and in HBIS as of Nov. 6. The two programs now collectively serve about 69,000 people aged 42 and older, and enrollment remains paused.

In January, the administration also began moving enrollees to the

state’s Medicaid managed care program, which connects individuals with private insurers who contract with the state to oversee routine and follow-up health care.

The Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which administers the programs, expects the managed care transition to be complete in April.

After months of delays, the department announced that copays and co-insurance for certain services went live this month.

“Most services covered by the HBIA and HBIS programs … will continue to be free for customers, including primary care visits, prescription medications and vaccinations at a pharmacy or doctor’s office,” the department said in a news release. “The new copays and co-insurance will apply to the use of non-emergency hospital or surgical center services, like nonemergent elective surgeries, physical therapy and lab work.”

Enrollees may see a $250 copay per nonemergency inpatient hospitalization and a 10 percent charge for nonemergency outpatient services or care received from ambulatory surgical treatment centers. It’s a major difference from the federally funded Medicaid program, which does not require copays.

Whether individuals are subject to those copays and co-insurance requirements will depend on if they have already been enrolled in managed care and which managed care organization is serving them, according to the department. The state reimburses managed care organizations at a specified rate, giving the MCOs authority to charge copays or co-insurance without requiring them to do so.

CountyCare in Cook County, where most program enrollees are located, is waiving all copays and coinsurance requirements, per the department.

The department announced it no longer plans to issue a copay for emergency room visits.

The Healthy Illinois Campaign, a statewide coalition of immigrant and health care advocates, has pushed for an expansion of the program and fought any efforts to limit it or install cost-sharing.

The group’s director, Tovia Siegel, praised the administration’s decision not to charge a copay for emergency room care but said the other copays “place a significant burden on both providers and patients, limiting access to healthcare for Illinois’ immigrant community.”

The copays, advocates noted, are charged to medical providers

by MCOs, but the providers are required to collect them from patients, creating an administrative burden. As well, they warned that individuals may choose to defer certain “elective” procedures, such as a colonoscopy, due to the copay requirement, potentially

ISTOCK

The state-funded programs’ rapidly inflated costs were the subject of contentious budget negotiations last year

undermining the program’s preventative care goals.

“We urge the Department of Healthcare and Family Services and Managed Care Organizations to reconsider implementing these charges, which will generate a relatively small amount of money but can be the difference between life and death for low-income Illinoisans,” Siegel said in a statement.

Lower projections The programs’ cost estimates, meanwhile, have been on the decline amid the administration’s savings measures. In September, an HFS analysis estimated the programs’ 12-month cost to be $832 million for the fiscal year that ends June 30. But the department’s latest estimate, published

Jan. 9, now projects the programs will cost $773 million. In total, the state has spent nearly $330 million collectively on the programs in the first six months of the fiscal year, per the January estimate.

The department’s data shows average monthly costs for the programs decreased steadily between August and December, from $72.7 million to $45.3 million.

When the state announced its enrollment caps, it noted perenrollee costs were higher among the HBIA and HBIS populations “due to more prevalent, untreated chronic conditions and higher hospital costs.” With the caps in place, the program is now populated with individuals who’ve been receiving routine care, rather than a steady stream of new enrollees who are

more expensive to insure.

Thus, the per-patient monthly costs have also declined. In August, per-patient costs reached $1,232 for enrolled individuals aged 65 and older, $1,295 for those aged 55-64, and $844 for those aged 42-54. In December, those numbers declined to $778, $805 and $541, respectively.

Advocates pointed to those declines as evidence that the programs are accomplishing their intended goal of replacing costly emergency care with more costefficient preventative services.

“While there are several potential explanations, cost decreases in the HBIA and HBIS programs can be an indication that enrollees are receiving more preventative care and therefore needing less intensive, expensive care,” Siegel said. “However, the implementation of copays could threaten these gains as enrollees are dissuaded from receiving this cost-saving preventative care.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 9

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The migrant crisis has opened a rift between the mayor and would-be allies

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ight or wrong, fairly or unfairly, whether it’s a political stunt or a move by a red-state governor to give blue states a taste of a problem he’s dealt with for years, Chicago is being forced to confront the arrival of thousands of migrants seeking safety and opportunity.

The influx has been on a scale that could overwhelm the resources of any city, even the nation’s third largest. To manage it, Mayor Brandon Johnson, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and even President Joe Biden have put their heads together on more than one occasion to hammer out a response to the humanitarian crisis laid at Chicago’s doorstep.

A challenge of this scale can only be managed cooperatively. And that’s why an apparent disconnect that emerged this week between those county, state and federal players on one side — and the mayor on the other — is so deeply troubling. And why it doesn’t bode well for future efforts to shelter and feed the stream of asylum-seekers that is sure to continue rolling Chicago’s way this year as the city preps for August’s Democratic National Convention.

In a joint announcement released Feb. 15, Pritzker and Preckwinkle explained that state, county and city officials have determined an additional $321 million is required to fund the migrant response through the end of this year. Pritzker, who is set to release his fiscal 2025 budget next week, has pledged to cover the lion’s share, at $182 million. Preckwinkle, meanwhile, has promised to find $70 million in county funds for the effort.

If you’re doing the math, you may notice that leaves roughly $70 million unaccounted for. Also noticeably absent from the Feb. 15 announcement: the mayor.

Sources close to the situation say the mayor had previously signaled a willingness to scrape together $70 million in city funds to help fill the gap, only later to back away from the plan.

“The governor agreed to step up and cover more than half of this cost at $182 million,” Pritzker spokesperson Jordan Abudayyeh told the media following the funding announcement. “The county president also stepped up to cover an additional $70 million. You will have to ask the city what their plans are for the remaining $70 million that all parties have agreed is needed to fund this humanitarian response.”

In an unusually rowdy conversation with the City Hall press corps hours later, the mayor continually dodged reporters’ questions, refusing to confirm whether his administration had ever pledged to provide anything like $70 million. Instead, he deflected, complained the migrant crisis ultimately must be solved at the federal level, took shots at Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for putting asylum-seekers on Chicago-bound buses in the first place, and otherwise did what he is wont to do when speaking to the media: bemoaned the hostile and hurried tone of the questions, pontificated on manners — this time quoting the Nine Noble Virtues — bumptiously declared that no one questions his undying fidelity to the cause and otherwise obfuscated his way through a series of non-answers.

Observers were left wondering how the mayor could possibly think he could strike an agreement with the county president and the governor and then walk away from it as if nobody would notice. Granted, getting the City Council to sign on to an additional $70 million right now is a tough ask politically.

But the mayor had to have known that when he sat in the same room with Pritzker and Preckwinkle in early February and mapped out this funding plan.

What’s left in the aftermath is a series of personal relationships that range from strained to downright broken. Trust, already damaged between the governor and the mayor, has even deteriorated between the mayor and his longtime colleague, the county president. Much as we tend to think of government as a colossus, a bureaucratic machine, a faceless entity, the reality is that government is run by people. And people don’t like to be misled. Even in the roughand-tumble world of politics, good faith matters. Good faith is going to be needed more than ever in the months ahead. The stream of buses flowing northward from Texas may have slowed recently, but the pace is guaranteed to pick up as the world’s attention shifts to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention — and as Abbott and his allies seek to rub the Biden administration’s nose in the nation’s immigration issues.

If the mayor doesn’t mend the breach that just opened up before our eyes between himself, the governor and the county president, the migrant crisis plaguing the city can only go from bad to worse.

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PERSONAL VIEW

Are amateur college athletics facing extinction?

I

◗ E BRADEN-COLLUM/UNSPLASH

◗ Antitrust lawsuits have pierced s the model of a studentathlete — one who takes the previously impenetrable classes toward a degree, dedshield: For decades, the NCAA icates at least 40 hours a week wielded its antitrust exemption like toward their sport and plays for a shield, repelling challenges to its the university for the love of the control over athlete compensation game in exchange for a scholarand competition. But recent cracks ship — a quaint anachronism? in that shield, fueled by landmark With major television networks lawsuits like O'Bannon v. NCAA like ESPN and Fox signing mul- David J. and In re College NIL Litigation tibillion-dollar, multiyear rights Kaufman is a and Alston v. NCAA, have opened packages with basically two re- partner and the floodgates for further legal batmaining mega-conferences, co-chair of the tles. These rulings and lawsuits and college football and basket- corporate and have chipped away at the NCAA's ball coaches signing multiyear securities power, paving the way for athletes pay packages for tens of millions practice group to challenge restrictions on their of dollars, has the time finally at Thompson earning potential and freedom of come to allocate some of this Coburn. movement. One example is that relargesse to the athletes themcently, the judge in the NIL — selves, those who are actually generating name, image and likeness — litigation this revenue? case granted class-action status to thouHas the time finally come to recognize sands of current and former student-aththat the traditional amateur model is al- letes, potentially leading to billions of dolready on life support, if not already lars in claims and altering the entire NIL dead? landscape.

◗ Paying athletes has moved from a sti-

pend to a salary: In its first feeble attempt, the NCAA provided "full cost of attendance" stipends to athletes. But the recent Baker Proposal and the Follow Up Let-

Write us: Crain’s welcomes responses from readers. Letters should be as brief as possible and may be edited. Send letters to Crain’s Chicago Business, 130 E. Randolph St., Suite 3200, Chicago, IL 60601, or email us at letters@chicagobusiness.com. Please include your full name, the city from which you’re writing and a phone number for fact-checking purposes.

10 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

ter to Student Athletes would go even further. This proposal would enable schools, while complying with Title IX, to "pay" or invest up to $30,000 per year into "an enhanced educational fund" for at

Sound off: Send a column for the Opinion page to editor@chicagobusiness.com. Please include a phone number for verification purposes, and limit submissions to 425 words or fewer.

for thes filed fied sitie the as o cha hav sch blur athl oth sue stitu the any

PERSONAL VIEW

ATHLETICS From Page 10

least half of the schools' eligible student-athletes. While this new proposal initially was presented as a step toward equity, the plan raises a host of additional uncomfortable questions about the true nature of student-athlete compensation. Is this a gateway to full-fledged salaries, fundamentally altering the landscape of college sports? It will also obviously create a "Tier I" level of programs that can afford to fund such programs and other schools that cannot, which recognizes the obvious reality.

e e d f e 0 . n d d

Wild West unregulated world of endorsements: The introduction of NIL policies across multiple states has unleashed a new frontier in college athletics. Independent collectives, fueled by enormous donations from private donors and corporate sponsors, are vying for the endorsement rights of star athletes, creating a virtually unregulated, completely opaque system of financial incentives and rewards and competitive imbalances. An uneven environment, partial driven by charitable donations, has created a frenzied environment with schools literately bidding for star athletes through NIL deals. Without uniform regulation and uniform disclosure, money continues to flow to the superstar athletes and superstar programs. With some of these student-athletes already earning millions, a pay-to-play system has already arrived, thinly disguised as amateurism.

t n n

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sion of the core values of college sports: education, character development and community spirit.

Where things are headed in college athletics remains uncertain.

ment? Will schools finally share the largesse from these massive media rights agreements with their athletes? Will athlete compensation become commonplace, transforming the nature of intercollegiate competition? Or will the entire system crumble under the weight of legal challenges and financial pressures, paving the way for a new, unrecognizable model of amateur sports?

One thing is clear: The era of amateurism as we know it is completely over. The road ahead may

Has the time finally come to recognize that the traditional amateur model is already on life support, if not already dead?

Will the NCAA adapt and survive?

Will Congress, a new regulatory body, one or more states or a new industry trade group develop the regulations in this new environ-

be bumpy, but it also presents an opportunity for a much-needed dialogue between the various interests and players about the fundamental values of college athletics and the role they play in our society. Will we choose to preserve the spirit of amateurism, or will we embrace a new era of professionalized, commercially driven college sports? Will colleges simply become minor leagues for professional sports? The answer, it seems, lies not on the playing field, but in the regulatory bodies governing sports, in courtrooms and in the hearts and minds of those who truly care about the future of these American institutions.

◗ NIL collectives recognize the

f m y e e f c t e h d e m e s d -

n s, r r t

sports in college can attest.

Individually and collectively, these trends mark the end of amateurism in a college athletics. To deny that fact is merely a fantasy.

The traditional model, built on amateurism and strict NCAA control, is facing unprecedented challenges, due in part to the successes of football and basketball and the influx of billions of dollars. The rise of the transfer portal and failure of the antiquated bowl game folly is simply further evidence of the demise of the anachronistic system. While some view these changes as necessary steps toward player empowerment and fairer compensation, others fear the ero-

◗ Super-league conference con-

solidation: The college athletics landscape is also undergoing a seismic shift through conference realignment. With the demise of the Pac-12, only two real major conferences remain, and the potential merger of the Big Ten and SEC into a single super-conference would create a behemoth with unparalleled resources and media exposure, leaving other conferences scrambling for relevance. Already, Florida State is suing the ACC to figure out how to disengage to maintain its flexibility, as longtime rivalries and traditions and even contracts mean nothing anymore. This consolidation raises concerns about competitive equity, regional rivalries and the overall health of the intercollegiate sporting ecosystem.

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BRADEN-COLLUM/UNSPLASH

◗ Employee or athlete? Suing

for a new status: Accelerating these trends, several athletes have filed lawsuits seeking to be classified as employees of their universities, arguing that they deserve the same benefits and protections as other university staff. This legal challenge, if successful, could have drastic implications for their schools and the NCAA and further blur the line between student and athlete as they seek back pay and other benefits. One question at issue is how much control these institutions appear to exercise over the student-athlete's schedule, as any person who played high-level

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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

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ACCOUNTING

BUSINESS SERVICES

CONSTRUCTION

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

LAW FIRM

ORBA, Chicago

Zoro, Chicago

Clayco, Chicago

West Monroe, Chicago

ORBA, one of Chicago’s largest public accounting firms, welcomes Brad Garrett and Cindy Montalvo to the firm’s Audit Group. Brad joins as a Senior Associate, Garrett bringing several years of audit experience to the firm, using his skillset to supervise the work of audit staff, perform risk assessments, plan substantive audit procedures and prepare work papers.

Cindy joins as an Montalvo Associate working with clients in a broad range of industries including health care and food service.

She has experience working in financial, managerial and cost accounting, as well as managing accounts receivables and cash reconciliations for clients.

Zoro is proud to name Jason Garino as its new Chief Revenue Officer.

In his new role, Jason will have responsibility for our growth-driving marketing and pricing teams, while further positioning Zoro to holistically understand our customers by leading end-toend analytics capabilities. Jason’s breadth of operating experience, proven leadership skills and his keen ability to innovate make him a great fit to bring together and lead key growth-driving functions.

Clayco welcomes Shawn Dziedzic as Vice President of Operations, working out of Clayco’s corporate headquarters in Chicago. Shawn brings 27 years of experience in construction with a proven track record in numerous vertical markets including healthcare, student housing, entertainment, retail, hospitality, high-rise residential and commercial office. In his new role, Shawn will help lead general operations across all market sectors.

Larry Briski has been named West Monroe’s Healthcare sector leader.

He will tap his over 20 years of experience delivering resultsfocused programs for healthcare clients to provide guidance and leadership over two closely related healthcare subsectors—payer and provider.

Larry has deep strategy, operational, and technical experience which allows him to advise and guide his clients through the complex changes impacting the healthcare industry.

Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C., Chicago

BANKING First Bank Chicago, Northbrook First Bank Chicago, one of the five largest privately held banks in Chicago, proudly announces the promotion of Deb Elliott to SVP/Total Rewards. Deb designs, develops, and implements total reward strategies in compensation, welfare, and retirement benefits. She is also responsible for the development and ongoing evaluation of HR policies, procedures, and compliance. Deb joined the First Bank team in 1991.

BANKING / FINANCE American Community Bank & Trust, Oak Brook American Community Bank & Trust is pleased to welcome Steven M. Davis as Executive Vice President, Commercial Banking – Division Head.

A veteran commercial banking executive, Steve specializes in serving small to mid-size privately held businesses in the manufacturing and distribution sector. Steve will be developing a new commercial banking team in Oak Brook.

BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS Lake County Partners, Lincolnshire World Business Chicago announces the appointment of Kevin Considine, president and CEO, Lake County Partners, to its distinguished board of directors. World Business Chicago is committed to fostering inclusive and equitable economic development through business growth and expansion, workforce development, and community impact. World Business Chicago also promotes the Chicagoland region as a premier global hub for business and innnovation.

P012_CCB_20240219_v2.indd 1

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

BUSINESS SERVICES

West Monroe, Chicago

Zoro, Chicago Zoro is proud to name Irene Holman as its new Chief Financial Officer.

Irene has been a strong partner for the Zoro team over the last two years as the company grew to over $1B in revenue. Her collaborative leadership style, financial planning expertise and investor relations background will serve Zoro well as we continue to pave the path forward for our next stage of growth.

BUSINESS SERVICES Zoro, Chicago Zoro is proud to name Aimee Nolan as its new General Counsel.

In her new role, Aimee will lead the legal, product compliance, procurement, privacy & governance, risk & compliance teams.

Prior to Zoro, Aimee led legal teams supporting tech and ecommerce matters, data protection & security, global sourcing, real estate, marketing and communications, indirect procurement & IP. Aimee’s experience working on complex projects & key company initiatives position her well to lead Zoro’s legal team.

FINANCIAL SERVICES Third Road Management, Chicago Third Road Management, the leading fractional financial services company, is pleased to announce the hiring of Reed Anders as its Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. The former Gallagher Affinity CFO/COO will immediately impact Third Road Management’s aggressive growth plans and lead its finance department and operations team as the firm continues to grow and scale as a trusted partner for growthoriented businesses throughout the United States.

INFORMATION / DATA TECH Wavicle Data Solutions, Oak Brook

CONSTRUCTION America Demolition, Carol Stream American Demolition announces Jeremy Thorud as Partner and Chief Operating Officer.

As the new strategic leader of people and processes, Jeremy will directly report to the President, Maria Palafox and lead operations for the company. Thorud was Vice President for Heneghan Wrecking, a division of NorthStar for 6 years. Before joining Heneghan Wrecking he was VP/Chief Estimator at American Demolition for 14 years. Thorud has a bachelor’s degree in Construction management from Bradley University.

To order frames or plaques of profiles contact Lauren Melesio at lmelesio@crain.com

Vadim Yesepkin has joined Wavicle Data Solutions as Insurance Associate Practice Lead, in which role he will direct and champion Wavicle’s insurance industry data, analytics, and AI services. He brings more than 25 years of experience in building comprehensive and cutting-edge data and analytics environments for major property and casualty insurance companies. Previously, Yesepkin held progressive roles as a data and analytics leader at EPAM Systems, Capgemini, and Information Builders.

Keith Campbell has been named West Monroe’s Mergers & Acquisitions leader.

In this role, Campbell will grow and retain some of West Monroe’s most advanced capabilities and longest-tenured private equity client relationships. He partners closely across industries to create value for private equity firms that invest in core verticals. With nearly two decades of experience, Campbell has led more than 500 deals.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES West Monroe, Chicago Paul Horner has been named West Monroe’s Payer industry leader.

He will leverage his experience as the firm’s health payer sector lead in this new role.

He will continue his work enabling clients to transform by modernizing customer experiences, internal processes, systems architecture, and data and analytics. He is passionate about changing the landscape of the healthcare industry while aiding payers in transforming their organizations in a digital era.

REAL ESTATE Cawley CRE, Chicago Recently appointed CEO of Cawley CRE, Zach Pruitt brings a new vision to the well-known brokerage and property management company serving Chicagoland and the Greater Midwest. Pruitt joined Cawley CRE in 2018, serving as a Principal & Designated Managing Broker for the downtown office before being tapped to lead the 40-person firm. A 20-year industry veteran, Pruitt specializes in office, industrial, and urban infill and is known for recruiting, retaining, and developing a high-performance team.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES West Monroe, Chicago Kristin Irving has been named West Monroe’s Life Sciences industry leader. With a stellar track record for client satisfaction, Irving will leverage her entrepreneurial skills to serve and grow a critical sector that is expected to experience high growth. Irving has over 25 years of experience helping organizations drive strategy through multi-year business and technology transformations.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

INVESTMENT BANKING

West Monroe, Chicago

Prairie Capital Advisors, Oakbrook Terrace

Randal Kenworthy leads the firm’s rapidly growing Consumer & Industrial Products practice, helping clients reimagine, build, and operate their businesses at maximum profitability. With over 30 years of industry, consulting, and M&A experience, he has a proven track record of delivering strategic and sustainable solutions. His combination of expertise in manufacturing, smart products, and IT strategies has led to trusted advisor relationships globally, including Asia, Europe, and North America.

Prairie Capital Advisors, Inc., a leading corporate advisory and investment banking firm, is pleased to announce the promotion of Tom DeSimone to Managing Director. Tom joined Prairie Capital Advisors in 2011 and is a shareholder of the firm. He has extensive experience in advising middle-market companies on ESOP transactions, M&A, financial opinions, corporate valuation and other financial advisory services.

Will Guthrie is a Partner at Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C. in the Corporate Practice Group. He represents clients in mergers and acquisitions, private Guthrie equity transactions and commercial transactions. Previously, Will was at Kirkland Ellis where he specialized in mergers & acquisitions and private equity.

Earlier in his career, he was Assistant General Counsel at Kearney, a Kugler global consulting firm.

Matthew Kugler is an Associate at Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C. and is a member of the firm’s Estate Planning practice group. Prior to joining the firm, Matthew worked an associate at Handler Thayer, LLP where he specialized in M&A tax law.

TECHNOLOGY Hyzon, Bolingbrook Stephanie Mudgett has been named Head of Global Communications and Branding for Hyzon where she will lead the company’s communications functions, including branding and marketing, as well as the development and execution of the company’s internal and external messaging. Mudgett is an industry veteran with 35 years of communications, branding, and public relations experience, including more than 30 years at The Boeing Company as both an employee and consultant, where she led global communications and branding efforts for airplane programs and executive communications. She is the owner of Easton Communications, and has served as Vice President of Communications for WestRiver Group (WRG), and as a senior consultant at Fearey.

2/13/24 4:14 PM

CHICAGO’S MIGRANT CRISIS RAISES QUESTIONS OF EQUITY

Eréndira “Ere” Rendón, vice president of immigrant justice at The Resurrection Project

GEOFFREY BLACK

IMMIGRATION

City’s humanitarian response to new arrivals underscores immigration inequalities | By Judith Crown

G

onzalo Garcia arrived in Chicago from Mexico 30 years ago and has worked, paid taxes and raised a family. He’s also undocumented. And he can’t help but be incensed when he sees a new wave of immigrants arrive with a path to obtain a work permit and, potentially, to citizenship.

“I think about how difficult my life was, especially in the beginning, without having that work permit,” Garcia says in Spanish through a translator. “It’s sad to see that we are not being awarded anything.”

The migrant crisis has brought to light inequality in the way immigrants are treated. Members of the city’s undocumented Latino community like Garcia are angry when they see newly arrived immigrants

from Venezuela able to obtain work permits, which gives them access to betterpaying jobs.

Other communities are infuriated, too, pointing out that public funding to shelter and feed migrants is money that might otherwise be used to further address the city’s daunting social problems, such as homelessness, mental illness and poverty.

How is it that new arrivals are assigned to city shelters while there are tent camps in Humboldt Park and Columbus Park and along the Eisenhower Expressway?

“The immigration system is not equitable,” says Jose M. Muñoz, executive director of La Casa Norte, which serves youth confronting homelessness. “It never has been.”

Federal immigration rules reflect a response to world crises, so the outcomes often appear arbitrary and inconsistent.

Refugees from Ukraine received parole, a status that enabled them to fly in and apply for work permits. There are no blanket protections for migrants from Venezuela.

Those who arrived before July 31, 2023, can apply for a status that protects them from deportation and enables them to obtain a work permit. But migrants who arrived in August or later face a more difficult path. The federal government has extended some protections to refugees amassing at the Southern border — not just from Venezuela, but also from Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba.

Incumbent undocumented workers

don’t begrudge work permits and services for the newer arrivals, says Eréndira "Ere" Rendón, vice president of immigrant justice at The Resurrection Project, a nonprofit. “Our ask is, we deserve it, too,” she says. “Why can’t we apply for parole? Why don’t we get work permits?”

There’s also anger directed at the federal government for not picking up the funding slack. The state of Illinois has provided or committed more than $600 million to migrant care, including direct funding to the city of Chicago. The city spent more than $275 million last year, drawing from a mix of federal, state and local funding. It budgeted $150 million for this year, but hopes See MIGRANTS on Page 14

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to land more federal and state dollars, a city spokesman says.

“This is money we’re forced to use because of a federal emergency,” says Ald. William Hall, 6th. "The federal government needs to step up, otherwise it will break metropolitan cities and suburbs,” he adds.

The inequity riles Hall’s South Side constituents. “They’re saying, ‘How are you finding $50 million for migrants, and you couldn’t come up with $50 million when the schools closed (10 years ago)?’ ” he says.

A divide across communities An estimated three-quarters of the 34,000 migrants who have landed in Chicago since August 2022 are from Venezuela.

Not all have a path to obtain a work permit, but some do. If they arrived before July 31, 2023, they were afforded temporary protected status, or TPS, which enables them to live and work in the U.S. legally. A smaller number may have been approved for parole before entering.

The Resurrection Project, which works with government agencies in assisting migrants, estimates that of the more than 15,000 migrants in shelters, roughly 3,500 are eligible for permits. As of mid-January, more than 950 received work authorizations through the nonprofit’s help, although the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services has approved 1,800, Rendón says. Migrants also are getting help from other organizations.

Most Venezuelans crossing the border since July 31, experts say, are asylum-seekers who are protected by international law. They have a year to apply for asylum and can apply for a work permit 150 days after their application is filed. There’s no assurance that migrants in the end will win their cases, which are decided based on a seeker’s particular circumstances. What is certain is that the process moves slowly as the administrative system and courts are exceedingly backlogged, immigration experts say.

That recent immigrants have a path to work permits irks undocumented Chicagoans from Mexico who have worked in the shadows for years, if not decades. “We hear they can’t work because they don’t have a permit,” Rendón says.

“We’ve done it forever.” Undocumented immigrants traditionally have found work in factories, restaurants, health care, and doing domestic and landscape work.

The big difference is that the new immigrants aren’t hiding.

They cross the border and declare to U.S. Customs & Border Protection officials their intention to seek asylum. In contrast, many Mexican immigrants arrived undetected or overstayed a visa in what is now regarded as “unlawful presence.” Rendón’s family arrived from Mexico with no money and few personal belongings.

14 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

The migrant crisis has brought to light inequality in the way immigrants are treated. | GETTY IMAGES

“We couldn’t ask for help because we were undocumented,” she says. “You don’t tell the government you’re here.”

The discrepancy in treatment also upsets U.S. citizens who are married to undocumented spouses. “To see new arrivals automatically getting TPS, parole or work authorization — the protection our spouses have not had — it’s a slap in the face,” says Ashley DeAzevedo, president of Philadelphia-based American Families United, a nonprofit that seeks legislative protections for families where a spouse is vulnerable to detention or deportation.

U.S. citizens often try to sponsor a spouse for citizenship but run into roadblocks, either because they crossed into the U.S. illegally years ago or signed, perhaps inadvertently, paperwork claiming to be a U.S. citizen. American Families United hopes to extend a rule that offers parole to undocumented members of military families to all undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens.

“People are missing how separate the new immigrant community is from the long-term immigrant communities,” says Megan, a social service worker from Waukegan who has been married to an undocumented spouse from Mexico for 20 years and asked that her full name not be published. “There is a divide.”

Businesses represented by the Chicago-based American Business Immigration Coalition are advocating for an expansion of work permits for long-term undocumented residents. The coalition represents 1,400 businesses and business associations nationally.

In Illinois, the coalition counts heavy hitters in its leadership, including Craig Duchossois, executive chair of The Duchossois Group; industrialist Lester Crown; Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments; former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker;

and Ellen Rudnick, senior adviser on entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The organization has sought comprehensive immigration reform in Congress. But because that’s politically a remote possibility, the coalition is focusing on administrative action that would expand work permits for the longterm undocumented, says American Business Immigration Coalition Executive Director Rebecca Shi. Undocumented workers who have been here feel slighted that Venezuelans are getting work permits that they cannot get, says Sam Toia, president of the Illinois Restaurant Association.

The association wants undocumented workers who have been in the U.S. to gain the same access to work permits, and there’s a good business reason, he says. With unemployment below 4%, restaurants are hungry for workers.

Dishwashers are starting at $18 and $19 an hour, well above minimum wage, Toia adds.

Business leaders and immigration advocacy organizations have urged President Biden to provide work permits and expand humanitarian parole, especially in light of labor shortages in several industries. But the White House has gone radio silent, even with requests for meetings from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, says U.S. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Ill. “That’s troubling,” he says.

He’s among lawmakers seeking more federal support for the migrant crisis. Federal resources are concentrated at the Southern border but haven’t followed migrants on their journeys to Chicago and other large cities that have accommodated them — a particular challenge in the dead of winter.

“The level of support for Chicago, New York, Denver and Houston is

totally inadequate,” Garcia says.

“That’s exacerbating the tensions in the immigrant community and with other communities as well.”

As of late January, the prospect of a bipartisan deal that would have tightened the border but also added resources to aid migrants already here was in jeopardy. The Biden administration was seeking $1 billion in grants to local governments and nonprofits for temporary food, shelter and other services, as well as more officers to speed the issuance of work authorization documents. The immigration reform package, in turn, was being linked to aid for Ukraine and Israel. Those fragile talks were torpedoed last month by former President Donald Trump, who is adopting immigration as a cornerstone of his campaign to win a second term.

Sustainability and equity In the absence of federal dollars, lllinois, Cook County and Chicago have reallocated money for shelters, food, transportation, medical assistance and legal support for incoming migrants. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson tapped $95 million in federal COVID-19 funds to shelter migrants. Illinois has offered services for victims of terrorism and trafficking, and last year extended six months of rental assistance for migrants going through Chicago's shelter program, although that was reduced to three months in November.

Could the hundreds of millions of dollars being funneled to migrant care be better used to focus on long-term problems like addiction, mental illness and homelessness?

In Oak Park, village board member Cory Wesley questioned the spending of $300,000 per month to shelter and support 162 asylum-seekers who were brought to the village by volunteers and activists who saw them shivering outside a police station in the

Austin neighborhood.

That translated to more than $2,000 a month per person, Wesley noted at a village board meeting in November. Universal basic income programs pay people in poverty $500 or, at most, $1,000 a month, he said. “I don’t see how it’s sustainable, and I definitely don’t see how it’s equitable,” he said.

The lack of investment in our Black communities is still a reality,” says Oak Park Village President Vicki Scaman. She says it’s no wonder that people are cynical, watching local governments spend hundreds of millions for migrants and what feels like leftovers being allocated to support those who are homeless and others in need. Still, the role of a municipality is to keep people safe.

“In a practical way, we can’t ignore hundreds of people who don’t have a place to sleep except outdoors,” Scaman says.

Although Chicago residents grumble about the amount of resources being spent , the idea that the city isn’t helping people because of the migrant crisis is not true, says 6th Ward Ald. Hall.

Much of the funding for migrants comes from the state, which couldn’t be repurposed for city services.

One bright spot: The Black- and women-owned Hyde Park Caribbean restaurant 14 Parish recently received a yearlong multimilliondollar city contract to supply meals to 7,000 migrants in South and West Side shelters. That’s a breakthrough, Hall says, adding, “When you think of crises like Hurricane Katrina, there were no opportunities for minorities whose neighborhoods were impacted to participate in rebuilding.”

While tent camps are a visible reminder of the disparate ways federal, state and local government addresses emergencies and social needs, there is help available for unhoused people, Hall says, pointing to the Chicago Department of Family & Support Services and nonprofits such as the Night Ministry and La Casa Norte.

Some of the unhoused may initially refuse help, says Lynda Schueler, CEO of Housing Forward, which serves homeless people in the western suburbs.

They may be suffering mental illness, addiction, loss of a job or a family member, she says. And it may take weeks or months for a skilled case worker to convince a person in a tent camp to accept services. Helping migrants is a more straightforward process, with emergency housing and food, followed by help in school enrollment, legal advice and health care.

“We’re seeing an unprecedented focus on the unhoused,” says Muñoz of La Casa Norte. “But we’re still not investing in social services to the point where we can eliminate homelessness.” The crisis has shown that government can react quickly to address an emergency with specific services within a prescribed timeline.

“When the political will exists to end homelessness, it will happen,” he says.

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Oak Park puts tensions aside to feed and house migrants Venezuelans sent to Chicago received a much warmer welcome in the village just west of the city

By Judith Crown

A group of Venezuelan migrants were shivering on a cold Halloween night outside the Chicago Police Department's 15th District station in Austin when a group of volunteers and activists brought them to Oak Park's Village Hall.

In taking the matter into their own hands, the activists roiled the liberal-minded community. Where would the migrants stay? The village of Oak Park hadn’t planned to host migrants and didn’t have the infrastructure that city and state funds had established in Chicago.

How would the village fund their support? Would that detract from services to village residents?

Over successive board meetings, Oak Park trustees would debate the obligations of a municipality and the question of equity.

There’s no question that the volunteers forced the hand of village trustees. The volunteers haven’t publicly identified themselves, although they update the village on their efforts via email and social media postings. During an early November debate over whether to enact an emergency declaration, Oak Park trustee Ravi Parakkat said the situation felt like an "ambush." Lucia Robinson, another village trustee, worried about the strain on village staff.

Multiple partners assembled Nevertheless, Oak Park mobilized. On Halloween night, Village President Vicki Scaman called the pastor at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church and the congregation sheltered more than 100 migrants.

Subsequently, the village arranged with The Carleton of Oak Park Hotel and West Cook YMCA to house more than 150 refugees.

And Oak Park contracted with the nonprofit Housing Forward, which serves homeless people in the western suburbs, to work di-

Vicki Scaman, Oak Park village president

Migrants arrive at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Oak Park on Nov. 1, 2023, where they were given shelter. | GETTY IMAGES

rectly with migrant arrivals.

During a heated six-hour meeting over funding, Oak Park trustee Cory Wesley argued that supporting the influx of migrants was costing the village more than $300,000 a month, or $2,000 a month per person. Universal basic income programs typically pay $500 a month, or $1,000 at most, he pointed out. “I don’t see how it’s sustainable, and I definitely don’t see how it’s equitable,” he said.

Scaman said in an interview that she didn’t challenge Wesley’s assertion because “the lack of investment in our Black communities is still a reality, even as Oak Park is known for putting dollars behind social services and sup-

porting homeless people.” In the end, the village had no choice — it was not going to ignore hundreds of people who needed a place to sleep, she says.

Ideally, advance notice would have enabled Oak Park to plan ahead and be more efficient. “But whenever you’re dealing with a crisis, it’s always going to cost more money, says Lynda Schueler, CEO of Housing Forward. “Nobody planned or budgeted for this.

The village is not a (social) service provider.”

Scaman says Cook County is reimbursing the village for monthly expenses of more than $300,000.

“At this point, we’re going to see all the money we invested,” she said.

At its Jan. 23 meeting, Oak Park trustees authorized staff to pursue a grant of $1.9 million through the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus. The village received notice the following week that grant was approved. The funding will be used to provide aid to asylum-seekers through June 30. That will enable the village to continue helping migrants in a different shelter because asylum-seekers staying at the Carleton and West Cook YMCA must leave by the end of February.

Volunteer task force Meanwhile, volunteers continue to help migrants through a task force supported by the Communi-

ty of Congregations that aims to help migrants find permanent, affordable housing. That won’t be easy, given Oak Park is not an inexpensive place to rent or buy. The task force, through its website, asks for donations to the Community of Congregations or direct support of families, help from landlords or assistance with fundraising.

A key question Oak Parkers are debating: Is the support through volunteers as good as they would receive in the Chicago shelter system, which is funded to provide not just temporary lodging, but also three months of paid rent and other services? Once migrants leave Chicago, they lose their spot in the shelter system, Schueler says.

However, they are receiving a more personal, tailored and handson response in Oak Park, she says.

Migrant children are enrolled in Oak Park schools. Village and Housing Forward staff are trying to ascertain if incoming migrants want to remain in the Chicago area or go elsewhere in the country.

“It’s a heavy lift for the volunteers,” Schueler adds. “They have day jobs. They’re doing the best they can with resources they have.”

Migrants have three routes to get permission to work For asylum-seekers, it’s a long and complicated process to reach self-determination and financial independence

By Judith Crown

Since August 2022, Texas and other U.S. states have sent more than 34,000 migrants to Chicago.

They arrived with little to nothing and in desperate need. Many want to work legally, but that requires getting government-approved permissions. The migrants often need help navigating a process that takes time and is complicated.

The Resurrection Project and other nonprofits are helping migrants apply for work permits in Chicago. Migrants are eligible for a permit if they have temporary protective status, parole status or have been in the country 150 days after filing a petition for asylum.

Here are the three routes migrants can take to employment.

Temporary Protective Status (TPS) ◗ TPS is a temporary status grant-

ed by the U.S. secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to individuals unable to return home safely due to civil war, natural disaster or other conditions. ◗ TPS gives workers a temporary right to remain in the U.S. and apply for a work permit, also called an Employment Authorization Document. ◗ The U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services last year redesignated the status for Venezuelans who

have lived in the U.S. since July 31, 2023. (Venezuela previously was designated in 2021). Fifteen other countries are designated for TPS, including Nicaragua, Haiti and El Salvador. ◗ TPS doesn’t automatically provide a path to permanent status. However, some TPS holders may be eligible to adjust their status through their families or employment.

Parole ◗ Parole is an authority the gov-

ernment can use to allow noncitizens to enter and temporarily remain in the U.S. Parole under immigration law is different from the concept of parole used in the criminal justice system.

◗ Individuals outside the U.S. may

be able to request parole based on humanitarian or public benefit reasons. Parolees are eligible to apply for work permits. ◗ The government has been granting advance travel authorization for up to 30,000 noncitizens each month from Venezuela, as well as Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua. However, the system has been oversubscribed and backlogged. Parole has also been granted to Ukrainian refugees displaced by the Russian invasion. ◗ Some parolees are eligible to apply for permanent status. ◗ The government may grant parole in place (immigrants already in the U.S.) for members of the

military or military families.

Asylum ◗ An asylum-seeker is someone

who has fled their home country in search of safety and protection.

They must be able to demonstrate that they were persecuted in their home country due to race, religion, political opinion or other factors. ◗ Seekers are supposed to apply for asylum within a year after arriving in the U.S. ◗ They may apply for a work permit 150 days after filing an asylum claim.

Sources: U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services; U.S. Department of Justice Immigrant & Employee Rights Section FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 15

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Chicago has a chance to stand up for human rights T and Austria and expelled exas Gov. Greg Abthe newly stateless into bott has no regard neighboring countries. for the lives or The Nazis wanted to push well-being of desperate the democratic governfamilies fleeing violence ments of Central and and devastation. He has Western Europe to abandirected Texas officials to don their commitment to install dangerous barriers of concertina wire in the Susan Gzesh universal human rights Rio Grande. His Texas teaches human by forcing thousands of helpless, stateless people Rangers blocked the fed- rights as an across their borders. Is eral Border Patrol from instructional rescuing a drowning professor at the that something we want to see here? mother and her children. University of Since the summer of Recently he made a veiled Chicago. She is threat about shooting bor- of counsel with 2022, Chicagoans have not seen the migrants as der crossers. And he con- Hughes Socol tinues to send migrants to Piers Resnick & unworthy of our care and concern. ChicagoChicago by bus and by air Dym. ans have volunteered by to create chaos here before the hundreds to provide the Democratic National Convention. Granted, Texas is food, clothing, and legal advice. overburdened with new arrivals, The city has spent millions of but using these families as pawns dollars to shelter the families in a political game is unacceptable. and provide for their basic needs.

But Abbott may be winning, as Given my family history, I don’t deploy Holocaust analogies light- cracks appear in our welcoming rely. However, the German-Jewish sponse. Mayor Brandon Johnson philosopher Hannah Arendt made and Gov. J.B. Pritzker are feuding me realize that Gov. Abbott is tak- about money and services. Neighing a page from the Nazis’ play- borhoods where the families are book. As Arendt related in her sheltered are pushing back as they 1951 "The Origins of Totalitarian- see beggars on their streets. CPS ism," before the Nazis began mass schools struggle to accommodate killings of Jews, they denational- Spanish-speaking children without ized Jewish citizens in Germany adequate bilingual staff. And

taxpayers are beginning to rebel at announcements like a new a $56 million catering contract to feed migrant families. Chicago is in danger of losing our humanity.

So how do we get out of this problem? How can the new arrivals become self-sufficient and regain lives of dignity? The White House has allowed many migrants to apply for work authorization and should provide more funding to accelerate that program. The White House should also allow the new asylum seekers access to longestablished procedures that deal with tens of thousands of legally admitted refugees each year. The U.S. accepts around 100,000 preapproved refugee entrants each year through the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Federal funding provides those families with transportation to the city where they will receive support from a designated social services agency, funded to provide housing, medical care, English lessons, and educational guidance for their children.

We all (Texans and Chicagoans) need a program to disperse admitted refugees across the country.

(Why else would there be Hmong and Somali communities in Minnesota?) When refugees are given work authorization and vocational

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Two years ago, Chicago absorbed 30,000 Ukrainian refugees “paroled” into the U.S. and given support by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. | GETTY IMAGES

assistance, they do not remain in a posture of total dependency.

Two years ago, Chicago absorbed 30,000 Ukrainian refugees “paroled” into the U.S. and given support by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. They have seamlessly integrated into our city.

Ukrainians are white, a fact that played some role in their acceptance. But a diverse city like Chicago would more likely welcome

This is the moment for the city to build a bigger ‘we’

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federal level we support ast May I attended a a pathway to legalization community meeting for the 11 million undocabout the proposed umented people in the migrant shelter in South country and an asylum Shore. The heated atmosystem that centers the sphere brought out the dignity of migrants as frustration felt by longthey seek safety in the time residents over lack of United States. At the state support for their neigh- Lawrence and local level, we orgaborhoods. “Why them but Benito is nize to protect imminot us?” was a common executive grant communities from question. director at the deportation and ensure As a Woodlawn resident Illinois Coalithat public programs are for the past 23 years, this tion for Immiopen to all regardless of sentiment was dishearten- grant and immigration status, often ing but also understand- Refugee Rights, under the banner of able. I have seen schools a Peace Corps making Chicago a welshuttered, mental health alum and the coming city and Illinois a centers closed and grocery son of immiwelcoming state. stores move on. The de- grants from the But our welcoming cades-long disinvestment Philippines. values are being weapin South Shore is evident in other predominantly Black neigh- onized by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, and the “us or them” resentborhoods and all across the city.

My organization, the Illinois Co- ment demonstrated at community alition for Immigrant and Refugee meetings in South Shore, Brighton Rights, has long advocated for Park, and elsewhere in the city and solutions for the broken immigra- suburbs is central to his plan. As tion system that has impacted Abbott continues to cause chaos many in our communities. At the through uncoordinated bus drop-

16 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

The number of new arrivals has challenged a social service infrastructure that was already insufficient in meeting the needs of many residents in Illinois. | GETTY IMAGES

offs and disregard human life at the Southern border, local advocates, civic leaders, and elected officials here in Chicago and Illinois are scrambling to provide care and find answers. While critical, relief from the federal government is mired in partisan gridlock that prevents meaningful policy solutions from moving forward.

System challenged Immigrant rights advocates have

had to adjust and quickly learn about the housing system and homelessness. We acknowledge that African Americans comprise the majority of the unhoused and people in shelter, with the housing needs of new arrivals compounding an already strained system. In addition, the number of new arrivals has challenged a social service infrastructure that was already insufficient in meeting the needs of many residents in Illinois.

Venezuelans if they were helped with real financial support.

While the White House is negotiating a possible deal to control the border, it ought to look to this well-established refugee assistance program as a model. Otherwise, Abbott will succeed in damaging our democracy — if Chicagoans come to believe in the cynical claim that universal human rights do not exist.

Providing housing and meeting immediate needs just for new arrivals was never the final goal.

While the challenges of the moment have caused some division in our communities, these challenges have also led organizations like ICIRR to strengthen partnerships with existing allies and build solidarity with new organizations as we fight for resources that benefit all of us.

This is a moment to build a bigger “we” to support everything that our communities need in Chicago and throughout Illinois. Yes, we can remain a welcoming state and declare housing as a human right for all people. Yes, we can support the programs that help migrants get on their feet, while also investing back in the communities that have seen so much taken away over decades.

By no means does everyone in our communities feel the same way, and we will certainly face challenges in the coming months as state and local leaders talk of budget crunches and cutting back.

But regardless, we have 30,000 new neighbors here in Illinois, and many more whose basic needs were not being met before the first bus arrived from Texas.

Rather than give in to the division that Gov. Abbott is trying to create, we must build a bigger “we” to ensure the safety and opportunity that all communities deserve.

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Balancing resources for migrants and unhoused Chicagoans

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and provide comprehenomelessness is a sive care to both populapressing concern tions. By addressing in our society that trauma, we can help indibecomes even more viduals on their path to complex for Chicago recovery and stability. when considering the Migrants often face leneeds of migrants who gal and regulatory barriare brought to a sanctuers that prevent them ary city only to find themselves without a home. Carol J. Sharp from accessing necessary To provide effective and is president and healthcare and addiction treatment. To address equitable homelessness CEO of The this issue, policymakers services, it is essential to Night Ministry and service providers address the disparate in Chicago. must advocate for incluchallenges faced by both migrants and our longtime un- sive policies that remove these barriers and ensure migrants can housed neighbors.

Both migrants and our un- access the support they need housed neighbors are consistently without fear of legal consequencexperiencing trauma, which can es or deportation. By creating a contribute to their vulnerability safe and welcoming environment, and exacerbate their challenges. we can promote equitable outHomelessness affects individuals comes for both migrants and unfrom various backgrounds, but housed residents. In the words of migrants face additional hurdles the American Civil Liberties in accessing support services due Union, they can begin to contribto their legal status coupled with ute to our overall economic growth by “forming new businesslimited resources.

Homelessness services must pri- es, spending their incomes on oritize trauma-informed care, rec- American goods and services, ognizing the particular experienc- paying taxes, and raising the proes and needs of individuals who ductivity of U.S. businesses.” have endured various traumas, including displacement, violence, Fair and equal distribution dangerous weather conditions, To achieve equitable balance, it abandonment, life-threatening ill- is essential to ensure the fair and nesses and assault. Integrating ac- equal distribution of resources cessible mental health support among migrants and unhoused services into homelessness ser- neighbors. Government agencies vices is necessary to address the have access to funding and infraunderlying triggers of addiction structure, while nonprofits often

Homelessness affects individuals from various backgrounds, but migrants face additional hurdles in accessing support services due to their legal status coupled with limited resources. | GETTY IMAGES

have specialized knowledge and expertise in working with marginalized populations. By pooling resources, we can create comprehensive programs that address the immediate needs of migrants and homeless individuals, as well as provide long-term support for their integration into society. Collaboration between community organizations, healthcare providers and government agencies is

crucial to delivering comprehensive support services to both populations. Organizations like The Night Ministry provide accessible shelters, healthcare services, and addiction treatment resources that are culturally sensitive and tailored to the diverse backgrounds of our neighbors.

In Chicago, we should all be able to live in safety and with the freedom to prosper. Homelessness can

be eliminated for both newcomers and long-term residents when government, corporate, religious and nonprofit leaders collaborate to guarantee that everyone has access to a safe and reasonably priced place to live. Through collaboration, advocacy and a commitment to treating individuals fairly, we can work toward a society in which everyone has the help they need to overcome homelessness.

Seeing immigrants as a boost rather than a burden

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now. Nationwide, there is ike many communia backlog of 3.2 million ty organizers in the cases in immigration immigration justice court, 211,000 in Illinois movement, I am closely alone. We have spent milwatching reports on the lions of dollars over the Senate Supplemental Bill, years in making the bora bill that, according to ders impassable and our the National Immigrant Justice Center, introduces Betty Alzamora processes hard to navidrastic and severe restric- is a community gate, without acknowltions on asylum, increas- organizer based edging that our borders are porous, and no match es the likelihood of mass in Forest Park to the drive and determidetentions and deporta- and a board nation of the humanitaritions, shuts many people member with an migrants seeking refout from their right to ap- Indivisible uge in the U.S. ply to for asylum under Chicago What is important in the obligations of the In- Alliance. this moment is to ternational Refugee Convention, and adds danger, com- change the narrative and shift plexity and unpredictability to the the paradigm: We can all advomanagement of border operations. cate for a more just, humane and Politically, this bill is unlikely effective immigration system. to see the light of day in its cur- We can all work toward resettlerent iteration. It serves to add ment of our newest neighbors in fuel to already volatile discus- Chicago while seeking long-term sions on border security during humanitarian solutions for asylum claims that preserve the digan election year. nity and rights of all people.

Backlog of cases Immigration benefits this counHistorically, an increase in de- try. This conversation must be tention and border expulsions has about opportunities to deepen, not decreased the number of peo- enrich and strengthen the fabric of ple coming to our borders over the our multicultural nation without last 15 years, and it won’t do so resorting to fear-based arguments.

Immigrants have been in Illinois and the U.S. for decades, providing a bedrock of labor and billions of dollars in tax revenues. According to economist Paul Krugman, the strength of the U.S. economy can be attributed to the growth of the labor force, which has helped to suppress inflation. The U.S. currently has high rates of employment, and at the same time a significant labor shortage. Expediting and expanding employment authorizations for all immigrants would continue to fuel the growth of the economy, while helping toward the longterm sustainability of Social Security, Medicare, and other institutions.

I'm an organizer for the Oak Park Task Force resettlement mission, a mutual aid effort that has brought many elements of civic society together to give 200 migrants help in their new path.

Beyond these hyper-local efforts, we can also advocate for centralized and coordinated clearinghouses of resources at the federal, state, and local levels that can better distribute resources while providing intentional guidance

Nationwide, there is a backlog of 3.2 million cases in immigration court, with 211,000 in Illinois alone. | GETTY IMAGES

in building lasting infrastructure. We each can learn from the entrepreneurial spirit of all advocates in the field.

Nonpartisan solutions centered on humane policies and safe, dignified care can be derived to provide protections for all immigrants, which will help

Illinois and the nation thrive with their multifaceted contributions. Continuing the work means protecting the human right to asylum in the U.S., while pursuing alternative and more humane approaches for the migrants who will continue to come to our borders.

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 17

Springfield poised to revisit biometric privacy law that’s sprouted hundreds of lawsuits Business groups have long sought changes to a statute that’s led to some big-money settlements Nearly a year ago, the Illinois Supreme Court asked the General Assembly to clarify a 15-yearold law that’s led to hundreds of lawsuits and several high-dollar settlements with companies alleged to have illegally collected Illinoisans’ biometric data.

Now, Democratic leaders in the legislature appear ready to revive talks to reform the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, or BIPA, after business groups poured cold water on the majority party’s ideas last spring.

State Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, a high-ranking member of the Senate, said the proposal he filed this week strikes a balance between business groups’ concerns over the law and its original intent.

“We think that the security restrictions embedded in (the law) are very important and we want to keep them in place, but we do want to address the way liability accrues so that businesses are not unfairly punished for technical violations of the act,” he said.

The law has made Illinois the only state that grants residents a private right to sue over businesses’ improper collection and mishandling of biometric data — whether they are an employee or a customer. A business can violate BIPA by not getting written consent from customers or employees for the data being collected, not having a storage policy in place or not properly protecting the data.

When BIPA became law in 2008, it was a novel concept meant to guard against technologies that, at the time, were still

JOHN R. BOEHM

By Hannah Meisel, Capitol News Illinois

mostly the stuff of science fiction.

But as more and more companies began using technology like fingerprint and facial scans to identify customers and workers, it’s been the basis of hundreds of lawsuits across the state.

Upwards of 2,000 suits have been filed under BIPA since roughly 2018, resulting in a few highprofile settlements — including a $650 million class-action payout from Facebook in 2020. The social media giant paid more than 1 million Illinoisans roughly $400 each.

Pushing for change Business groups have been pushing for changes to the law for several years, arguing that companies don’t store actual biometric data, but rather convert it to a string of numbers that would be all but impossible to link back to a specific fingerprint or facial scan.

But industry groups’ worries were amplified last winter after the state’s high court issued a pair of

rulings that strengthened the law.

First, the court ruled unanimously that BIPA had a five-year statute of limitations – not the one-year limit sought by business groups.

Two weeks later, the court ruled 4-3 that each time a company improperly collected biometric data markers amounts to a separate violation of the law. In that case, fast food chain White Castle estimated it would be on the hook for up to $17 billion in penalties as the law provides for $1,000 in damages for “negligent” violations or $5,000 for “reckless” or “intentional” violations.

Cunningham’s Senate Bill 2979 would change BIPA’s violation accrual so that each initial collection of a fingerprint or other biometric data would amount to one violation, rather than a violation occurring for each individual scan. Employees might scan their fingerprints dozens of times per shift if they’re unlocking doors or cabinets with those scans.

The senator said that under his proposal, some “back-of-theenvelope math” indicates the change would dramatically reduce White Castle’s estimated $17 billion penalty down to anywhere between $10 million and $50 million.

“Some would call (the current understanding of violation accrual) annihilative liability,” Cunningham said. “It would essentially annihilate the business. It would cease to exist.”

In the White Castle decision last February, the majority was clear that it wasn’t ruling on the question of damages specifically, which means the legal question of how damages can accrue under BIPA is still unsettled. And while most BIPA cases are settled before ever going to trial, critics say the threat of high-dollar damages translates to similarly expensive settlements.

But the court did “respectfully suggest” the General Assembly review BIPA “and make clear its intent regarding the assessment of

damages under the Act.” Cunningham said his proposal answers that call. Business groups pushed back against a previous fix the senator floated last spring, which would have addressed the violation accrual issue but increased the damages for negligent violations from $1,000 to $1,500. He said he heard the business groups’ concerns, leading him to drop that part of his proposal.

“We appreciate Sen. Cunningham’s leadership and look forward to working with him on this important issue,” the business group coalition said in a statement.

State Rep. Ann Williams, DChicago, a key backer of BIPA, also supports Cunningham’s proposal.

She’d previously been noncommittal to changing the law in the wake of the state high court’s rulings but said she’d pre-filed to be the measure’s House sponsor this year should it pass the Senate.

She said she’d like to see a solution that makes it easy for employers to follow the law while still protecting people’s data privacy.

“My main concern is to ensure that we keep the basic premise of the law intact,” Williams said. “I have no problem reassessing the damage structure to make it more palatable for businesses to comply.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.

Museum hotel in River North hits the market The Ontario Street property is going up for sale as downtown sees few hotel deals

By Rachel Herzog

A hotel with an art gallery in River North has hit the market as the hospitality sector continues its recovery from the pandemic.

Junius Real Estate Partners, a real estate investment boutique within JPMorgan Chase, has hired brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle to seek a buyer for the 297-room, 16-story 21c Museum Hotel at 55 E. Ontario St., according to a marketing flyer.

The Ontario Street property is hitting the market as Chicago’s hospitality industry continues its recovery from the pandemic.

Across hotels in the central business district, revenue per available room — a key performance metric that accounts for 18 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

both room rates and occupancy — averaged $148.29 during the 12-month period ending in November, according to data from real estate information company CoStar Group. That’s up slightly from the average during the same period in 2019, before COVID-19 upended the market, but it’s still below the prepandemic level when accounting for inflation.

There have been few hotel sales, as high interest rates created a deep freeze in commercial property transactions. Nationally, hotel sales were down 47% year-over-year in 2023, according to data from research firm MSCI Real Assets.

The 21c Museum Hotel is being offered for sale unencumbered of brand, meaning the

new owner could reposition the property and court other hotel brands seeking a presence near downtown. A representative for 21c Museum Hotels, a chain of boutique properties that offer curated art shows within the hotel, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Chicago is the largest city with a 21c Museum Hotels location; the other locations are in cities including St. Louis and Cincinnati, according to the chain’s website.

The listing doesn’t include a sale price. Junius paid $83.1 million in 2018 for the property, then the James Hotel, Crain’s previously reported. The building was constructed in 1927 and underwent major renovations in 1985 and 2006. The

Louisville-based boutique hotel chain took over management of the hotel in 2018, and it reopened as a 21c Museum Hotel in February 2020 after a $33.5 million renovation and repositioning, according to marketing materials.

Still, JLL is playing up a new owner’s opportunity to upgrade the lobby-level gallery space and 7,000 square feet of meeting and event spaces on the second floor to drive up group occupancy and average daily rate, a measure of the average paid for hotel rooms booked in a given time period.

Adam McGaughy, John Nugent, Mark Jindra and Nick Sullivan in the JLL Chicago office are marketing the 21c Museum Hotel for Junius.

55 E. Ontario St. | COSTAR GROUP

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW The 141 lawyers who make up our latest class of Notable Women in Law practice across a wide range of specialties, counseling clients from small businesses to giant multinationals, from families to corporate boards. They serve as mentors and guiding lights for other women in their firms and bring their expertise to their communities and nonprofits outside the office.

They’re steering multibillion-dollar deals, earning high-dollar awards and securing outcomes that can’t be measured in money. And they’re all making their mark on the law. — By Crain’s Staff METHODOLOGY: The individuals featured did not pay to be included. Their profiles were written by Crain’s staff, with assistance from Claude.ai, using the nomination materials submitted. This list is not comprehensive. It includes only individuals for whom nominations were submitted and accepted after a review by editors. To qualify for this list, nominees must live and work in the Chicago area, serve in a senior role at a law firm with at least 10 professional staff and have practiced for a minimum of five years. Their work with clients or pro bono projects must have a measurable impact; they must demonstrate leadership in professional organizations and civic or community initiatives; and they must serve as a role model or mentor to other attorneys and promote inclusive practices in the workplace.

Amanda Amert

Amy Andrews

Dana Armagno

Jennifer Ashley

Chair, ERISA litigation group Willkie Farr & Gallagher

Partner Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila

Operating shareholder Vedder Price

Partner Salvi Schostok & Pritchard

As chair of Willkie’s ERISA litigation group, Amanda Amert helped grow the Chicago office from six to nearly 90 lawyers since its 2020 opening. Half the office’s partners are women, and one-third of associates are diverse. In 2021, she won a class action on behalf of Aon after a federal trial and prevailed at the 7th Circuit in her most prominent ERISA case, Hughes v. Northwestern. She’s chair of the Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Family Services and mentors younger colleagues. Honored in 2022 by Chicago Debates for influential leadership, Amert is also a member of the Economic Club.

Amy Andrews has more than 20 years of experience representing Fortune 100 corporations in high-stakes disputes. Her advocacy has helped clients avoid litigation and protect assets in complex cases involving discrimination, securities fraud, contracts and fiduciary duties. Recently she successfully led teams that achieved complete dismissal of over 70 discrimination claims against a Fortune 500 client and eliminated all class claims in another discrimination suit. Dedicated to pro bono work, Andrews represents asylum-seekers and people with disabilities. She’s also on the governing council of Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center.

As Vedder Price’s first female operating shareholder, Dana S. Armagno has implemented key strategic initiatives, including new leadership training, mentoring programs and expansion into Dallas and Miami. Instrumental in major technology rollouts, Armagno oversaw Vedder’s 2023 Miami office launch, enabling the firm to serve relocating clients and recruit top legal talent. She assists fundraising efforts for the University of Illinois, Anderson Humane animal shelter and Mother McAuley High School, where she’s on the board of directors. In 2023, Armagno became a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.

A partner at Salvi Schostok & Pritchard since 2014, Jennifer Ashley focuses on personal injury and wrongful death, securing over $70 million for clients. Her $16 million settlement for a motorcyclist injured in a collision was the highest leg amputation settlement in Lake County.

Other successes include a $1.8 million settlement and $1 million verdict in two cases involving semitruck collisions.

Ashley has been on the board of the Lake County Bar Foundation for eight years and is currently the fundraising chair.

Heidi Azulay

Julie Bauer

Nicki Bazer

Diane Bell

Partner Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner

Of counsel, pro bono litigation Winston & Strawn

Partner Franczek

Office managing partner Ice Miller

Nicki Bazer, a senior partner at Franczek, has handled major cases for Chicago institutions and consistently takes on pro bono cases, recently helping transgender students and people with disabilities navigate the legal system. She served as counsel for the Chicago Park District in investigations involving sexual harassment, represented Chicago Public Schools during bargaining agreements with the Chicago Teachers Union, and has represented the University of Chicago as primary legal adviser to its Charter School and Laboratory Schools.

As a partner at Ice Miller, Diane Bell’s focus has been on M&A transactions, representing private-equity clients in all stages of their investment cycles, from acquiring a new portfolio company through exit. Her dedication has led to leadership roles; she was named the firm’s Chicago managing partner on Jan. 1. In her three years with Ice Miller, Bell has been active in a number of the firm’s committees and twice co-chaired the Chicago summer program.

She serves on the national board of directors for the Lambda Legal Defense & Education Fund.

With more than two decades of experience, Heidi Azulay is a real estate and finance attorney and a member of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner’s sports and marketing group. Azulay oversaw a $430 million financing involving senior- and independent-living facilities across the country, resolving issues in multiple practice areas. During the past five years, she grew and further integrated one of her private company clients to become a multimilliondollar-a-year client for the firm. Azulay serves on the American Lung Association’s local leadership board.

As of counsel for pro bono litigation at Winston & Strawn, Julie Bauer leverages 38 years of experience to advance impact litigation and provide associates with critical trial opportunities. She worked on a team that in 2022 secured a victory enabling HIV-positive military service members to deploy and commission as officers. Though her team lost a recent excessive force claim against police in California, Bauer considers it a success because of the courtroom experience it gave young partners and associates, and for highlighting the firm’s willingness to pursue challenging pro bono cases. She teaches trial advocacy and serves on the Illinois Supreme Court Commission as an Access to Justice Forms Committee member.

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 19

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Valerie Breslin Montague

Karin Berg

Carolyn Blessing

Debra Bogo-Ernst

Matea Bozja

Partner Blank Rome

Partner Locke Lord

Karin Berg is a founding partner of Blank Rome’s Chicago office, which has grown to 30-plus attorneys and staff, and a member of the finance practice group. She has more than 20 years of experience in all aspects of loan dealmaking, from structuring and negotiation to documentation and deal closure. Berg serves on the firm’s Well-Being Committee and is active in the BR Women Initiative, working to advance gender equity at Blank Rome and beyond. Through World Relief, Berg represents refugees, immigrants and asylum-seekers pro bono.

Carolyn Blessing, a partner at Locke Lord and hiring partner for the Chicago office, focuses her practice on intellectual property pharmaceutical matters, Hatch-Waxman litigation and FDA counseling.

She’s expanded her practice with more FDA regulatory work counseling clients regarding compliance and deadlines for cosmetic products. Blessing works with the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law, currently as co-chair of the national board; is co-chair of professional development for Chicago Women in Intellectual Property; and in 2023 received the Alta May Hulett Award from the Chicago Bar Association for significantly contributing to the advancement of women in the legal profession.

Chair, national class-action litigation group Willkie Farr & Gallagher

Partner Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom

In a precedent-setting win in 2018, Debra Bogo-Ernst defeated a potentially massive class action in Tomeo v.

Citigroup in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the first major defense win on class certification in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act context. Last year, she defeated class certification and won summary judgment in a bank fee case for Simmons Bank in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. At Willkie, Bogo-Ernst is a leader as hiring partner, women’s committee co-leader and nationwide class-action litigation group chair. BogoErnst serves on the board of Metropolitan Family Services.

Matea Bozja is a real estate partner in Skadden’s Chicago office, representing clients in real estate transactions with a focus on REIT deals. She played an integral role in major deals like GIC’s $4.4 billion acquisition of Summit REIT in a joint venture with Dream Industrial REIT and GIC’s $15 billion take-private acquisition of Store Capital. At Skadden, she serves on the Chicago DEI and well-being committees and spearheads summer associate initiatives. For nearly a decade, Bozja has been involved with Chicago Volunteer Legal Services, serving as a guardian ad litem and helping plan an annual fundraiser.

Valerie Breslin Montague has more than 20 years of experience practicing in health information privacy, with specialties including data breaches, investigations and transactions. Notable achievements include guiding a health system through federal and state data breach inquiries without penalties and representing longtime client RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit focused on forgiving medical debt, in its continued expansion. Montague was named Best Lawyers’ 2022 Lawyer of the Year in Chicago for health care law. She serves on the Women Leading Privacy Advisory Board for the International Association of Privacy Professionals and is an incoming 2024 board member and education committee chair for the Illinois Association of Healthcare Attorneys.

Samantha Breslow

Leah Bruno

Meridith Cannon

Rachel Cannon

Partner HMB Legal Counsel

Partner and office managing partner Dentons

Cindy Caillavet Sinclair Partner Latham & Watkins Cindy Caillavet Sinclair, a partner at Latham & Watkins and a member of its banking practice, advises major companies on complex finance deals. Her expertise across sectors including hospitality, retail and natural resources makes her a trusted adviser for clients including Hyatt Hotels, Bass Pro Shops, and CenterPoint Properties.

Despite volatile conditions during the pandemic, Caillavet Sinclair guided Hyatt’s $2.7 billion acquisition of Apple Leisure Group. She was also key in Latham’s work on Webhelp’s $4.8 billion merger with Concentrix. Caillavet Sinclair serves on Latham’s Women Enriching Business Committee and participates in Northwestern Law’s alumni student mentorship program.

Member Clark Hill

Partner Steptoe

As a seasoned corporate attorney, Meridith Cannon is the chief problem solver for major brands, financial services groups, nonprofits, family-owned businesses and construction firms. She manages a seven-figure book of business, overseeing 20-plus lawyers across practice areas including employment, IP, tax-exempt organizations and cybersecurity. A skilled negotiator, she secured restructures and new opportunities, and pivoted plans during the pandemic.

Cannon is a member of the Provisors Chicago mergers and acquisitions group executive committee and a member of the advancement committee at DePaul College Prep.

Rachel Cannon is a trial lawyer at Steptoe focusing on litigation, investigations and white-collar defense. She works on some of Steptoe’s largest matters and previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago, where she supervised the bankruptcy fraud program. One of Cannon’s biggest wins in the last five years involved helping a client secure the dismissal of high-profile federal charges after a multiyear court battle.

She also recently helped a disabled nurse sue her employer for discrimination and secure a sizable settlement. Cannon is on the board of the Chicago Bar Foundation and the women’s boards of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Joffrey Ballet.

As state and local tax counsel at HMB Legal Counsel, Samantha Breslow advises clients on tax litigation and controversies involving corporate income tax, sales and use tax, franchise tax, gross receipts tax and unclaimed property. She successfully resolved a client’s Florida sales tax appeal, reducing liability by 75% by arguing equipment use was a nontaxable service. Breslow is on the board of directors and chairs the administration committee for the Chicago Tax Club and serves as chair of the State & Local Tax Council for the Illinois State Bar Association. At 36, she’s one of the youngest HMB partners.

Leah Bruno, Dentons’ Chicago managing partner since 2017, co-led a national team in an arbitration win for International Fruit Genetics that cleared the way for a more than $1 billion M&A deal, the largest ever in its industry. She’s been a commercial litigation partner since 2006, and in 2022 she joined Dentons’ U.S. regional board. Bruno has worked on reproductive rights cases nationally, co-leading Dentons’ Dobbs response task force and handling pro bono litigation matters in reproductive health care. An ACLU cooperating counsel for more than 20 years, she is also an Illinois chapter board member.

Partner Nixon Peabody

20 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

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Lindsey Paige Markus | Notable Woman in Law “It is my great privilege to be named by Crain’s as a Notable Woman in Law and I am honored to be among such accomplished practitioners in the legal industry.

We stand on the shoulders of women who came before us. I am humbled to work with such extraordinary women attorneys at Chuhak & Tecson who are making meaningful contributions to the industry today and are shaping the practice of law for all attorneys of tomorrow.”

Lindsey Paige Markus is a shareholder at Chuhak & Tecson and heads the firm’s 24-attorney trust and estates practice group.

Licensed in Illinois, New York and Florida, Lindsey has a national practice working with business owners and families to formulate succession plans, minimize taxation and leave meaningful legacies to loved ones and charities. Her book, A Gift for the Future – Conversations About Estate Planning, was rated #1 Best Seller in Legal Self-Help and #1 New Release in Estates & Trust Law; Business Law and Tax.

ADRIENNE M. ARLAN

CHRISTINE A. BARONE

KIMBERLY T. BOIKE

REBECCA M. CERNY

HANNAH M. CLARK

CARRI A. CONLON

ASHLEY C. COPPOLA

PHYLLIS K. FASEL

MISSY TURK FIRMAGE

MARKEYA A. FOWLER

JULIE F. GARDNER

LORETTO M. KENNEDY

AMANDA E. LOSQUADRO

CHRISTINA M. MERMIGAS

MALLORY A. MORENO

AGNES A. PTASZNIK

MARGARET M. SALINAS

JANET WAGNER

MOLLY A. WARD

ANNE M. WOLNIAKOWSKI

Aviation | Corporate | Condominium & Common Interest Community Associations | Elder Law Employment | Estate Planning & Asset Protection | Estate & Trust Administration & Litigation Financial Services | Health Law | Litigation | Nonprofit & Tax Exempt Organizations Real Estate | Tax & Employee Benefits chuhak.com

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NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Susan Capra

Linsey Cohen

Partner Clifford Law Offices

Managing partner Gould & Ratner

As a partner at Clifford Law Offices, Susan Capra focuses exclusively on complex medical negligence cases involving catastrophic injuries, especially those related to obstetrics and pediatrics. An attorney as well as a registered nurse, and with a background working at a children’s hospital, she now advocates for injured infants and children.

Over the past five years, Capra has brought more than 20 successful obstetrical/ gynecological and pediatric medical malpractice cases to resolution, including multimillion-dollar verdicts and settlements. She has worked in her community helping seniors and children with developmental disabilities and facing hunger, and volunteers with the USO.

With 25 years’ experience in real estate law, Linsey Cohen advises clients on complex deals, representing developers, owners, investors, property managers and entrepreneurs with property interests in Chicago and throughout the United States.

A recent big win was leading the firm’s real estate team to an extraordinary result, reviewing nearly 50 leases in one week to meet a client’s tight deadline in an acquisition — work that ordinarily takes several weeks. Cohen serves on the board of the Zacharias Sexual Abuse Center and is involved in industry groups including the International Council of Shopping Centers and Commercial Real Estate Executive Women’s Chicago chapter.

22 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Carla Colaianni

Kimberly M. Copp

Christa Cottrell

Am

Co-chair, medical negligence practice area Smith LaCien

Partner and gaming industry group co-chair Taft Stettinius & Hollister

Partner Kirkland & Ellis

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Carla Colaianni, a plaintiff’s trial lawyer and co-chair of Smith LaCien’s medical negligence practice, concentrates on medical malpractice, birth injury and personal injury cases. She currently represents children injured by unsafe baby formulas and birth trauma, as well as a student who was assaulted on a college campus. She was part of a team that recently resolved 800-plus cases for victims of ethylene oxide exposure in Willowbrook.

Colaianni began her career as a vocational training instructor at a Chicago-based refugee resettlement agency, where the injustices her students had experienced inspired her to become a lawyer.

Kimberly M. Copp co-chairs Taft’s gaming group, advising clients on all aspects of gaming law. Her expertise helps states and cities implement gaming regulations and conduct selection processes for licenses. Copp assists operators, manufacturers and investors on licensing, mergers and acquisitions, compliance and financing. She represented Maryland’s sports wagering commission on licensing and inclusivity efforts. Copp represents Full House Resorts on its Waukegan casino and worked with its lobbyist team to amend the Illinois Gambling Act to extend the time FHR may operate its temporary casino.

She frequently presents at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas/University of NevadaReno’s executive development program for casino executives.

Kirkland partner Christa Cottrell is a trial lawyer representing clients in commercial and class-action litigation, with an emphasis on antitrust, employment and commercial contract disputes.

Her clients include Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, Abbott Laboratories, AbbVie and IBM. She acted as a lead counsel in landmark multidistrict litigation for 3M. Cottrell also was a lead counsel in a billion-dollar lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to fix the Georgia Dock pricing index, which was dismissed at summary judgment. At Kirkland, she serves on recruiting and mentoring committees and helps train new litigation associates. Cottrell has also served on the board of the Center for Conflict Resolution.

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Amber Cox Partner Laner Muchin Laner Muchin partner Amber Cox has 17 years of experience in counseling clients on a range of employment and compliance issues related to federal, state and local employment laws. In one major win, Cox and her team secured an injunction to prevent a strike by certain critical care workers affiliated with a university health system. Last year, she won several arbitrations on behalf of her unionized clients. Cox is a member of the American Bar Association and frequently speaks on employment law topics at local and national conferences.

Megan Cunniff Church Partner MoloLamken MoloLamken partner Megan Cunniff Church’s clients include a former cryptocurrency executive sued by the CFTC and a former precious metals trader charged by the Department of Justice. Wins include an acquittal in a campaign finance prosecution following a jury trial in federal court in Washington, D.C. She also conducts internal investigations of publicly traded companies, public agencies and nonprofit entities. Church volunteers as guest faculty at the University of Chicago Law School’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic and teaches rules on criminal and civil discovery to new investigators and lawyers at the training academy of Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

Bryna Dahlin

Blair Dawson

Tiana Demas

Partner, chair of cannabis industry group Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff

Member McDonald Hopkins

Partner Cooley

Blair Dawson works with a 21-member team at McDonald Hopkins that specializes in data privacy and cybersecurity consulting and incident response. Over the past five years, she has focused on building a robust incident response practice to help clients address evolving cyber threats and navigate complex regulations. Dawson played a key role last year in maintaining and expanding client relationships while assisting new cyber insurance carriers.

She serves on the boards of The Cyber Helpline and the ACLU’s Next Generation Society, mentors with Women in CyberSecurity and teaches cybersecurity and incident response at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Tiana Demas, a partner in Cooley’s Chicago office, focuses on complex cybersecurity, data and privacy issues, litigation and white-collar criminal defense. With 20 years of legal experience, including handling national security and cybercrime cases as a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, she has secured major wins for clients. These include the complete dismissal of consolidated right-of-publicity class actions against Dotdash Meredith and the dismissal of a Video Privacy Protection Act case against the company.

Demas’ pro bono work includes working with the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center, where she recently helped an Ecuadorian asylum-seeker get a rehearing.

As chair of Benesch’s cannabis industry group, Bryna Dahlin relies on 20-plus years of experience advising businesses — from growers and retailers to investors — on licensure, company formation, financing, transactions, IP and regulatory compliance. She’s secured millions of dollars in partnerships and mergers and investments, and guided companies through legalization and record growth. She and her team recently persuaded Ohio regulators to expand allowable products, leading to more choices for medical patients. Dahlin serves as pro bono counsel to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws Chicago chapter and is a founding member of the Illinois Cannabis Bar Association.

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 23

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Jennifer DePriest

Tara Devine

Managing partner, Chicago office Reed Smith

Managing partner, Lake County office Salvi Schostok & Pritchard

As managing partner of Reed Smith’s Chicago office, Jennifer DePriest manages more than 120 attorneys and staff. An IP partner and trial lawyer, her verdicts for clients include a $66 million jury verdict for an LED manufacturer in an international trade secret case. DePriest recently obtained significant sanctions in federal court for a medical imaging equipment manufacturer. Her pro bono work with the Chicago-based National Immigrant Justice Center has helped refugees obtain asylum in the United States. In 2021, the Chicago associates honored DePriest with the Theresa L. Davis Mentorship Award for her commitment to associate mentorship, pro bono service and the careers of diverse lawyers.

Tara Devine focuses on injury, negligence and liability cases.

Since becoming Salvi Schostok & Pritchard’s first female partner in 2011, she has secured more than $237 million for clients, including 26 cases exceeding $1 million. In 2022, Devine won a $1.8 million verdict for a sexual assault victim. She also set a Walworth County, Wis., record with a $4.5 million settlement for a school bus crash victim.

Devine was 2022-23 president of the Lake County Bar Association and is a member of the Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Jury Instructions in Civil Cases and the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association board of managers.

24 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Jennifer Dillon

Molly S. DiRago

Amy Doehring

La

Senior partner Schiller DuCanto & Fleck

Partner Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders

Managing partner, Chicago office Akerman

Par K&L

Molly DiRago handles litigation in areas including redistricting and gerrymandering, antitrust, sexual assault cases against institutions and consumer fraud. She also focuses on privacy law, particularly compliance with Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. DiRago and her team got a win in Wisconsin state court for Kolmar Americas in a complex corporate veilpiercing case. She also played a pivotal first-chair role in winning a high-profile New York redistricting case. Among her pro bono work: representing the first plaintiff to go to trial under the Illinois Department of Labor’s Victims’ Economic Security & Safety Act and guiding the National Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s privacy policy update.

Akerman board member Amy Doehring serves as managing partner for the firm’s nearly 100-lawyer Chicago office and co-chairs Akerman’s probate and fiduciary litigation practice. In her complex litigation practice across industries, Doehring has tried 22 cases and advises fiduciaries. For a nonprofit hospital client, she secured a $6 million-plus property tax exemption refund after a decadelong legal battle.

Doehring is a member of the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women executive board and the National Immigrant Justice Center’s leadership board, where she’s been involved in more than a dozen asylum and U Visa petitions.

Jennifer Dillon, equity partner at Schiller DuCanto & Fleck, leverages more than 25 years of experience in complex, high-net-worth divorce and family law cases. Known for her financial litigation expertise, she handles matters involving extensive business valuations and high-conflict custody disputes. Dillon, who served as head of Schiller’s recruiting committee for several years, currently co-chairs the firm’s paralegal program. She volunteers with the Kane County Law Library & Self-Help Legal Center’s divorce and family law help call-in service. Dillon is a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, is trained in collaborative law and mediation, and is a certified arbitrator.

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K&L Gates partner Lauren Donahue advises clients on complex civil litigation, government investigations and merger enforcement matters involving antitrust claims. In 2022, she got a full indictment dismissal for Koch Foods in a DOJ price-fixing investigation.

In the past year, Donahue guided a $10 billion merger of two Midwest health systems.

She’s a committee member of the firmwide Women in the Profession group and chairs both the Chicago office’s Women in the Profession and Associate Development committees. She co-chairs the Chicago Women in Antitrust Network, has represented asylum-seekers with the National Immigrant Justice Center, and serves as a pro bono attorney for Illinois’ Torture Inquiry & Relief Commission.

A founding partner at Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres, Lisa Duarte leads a team of lawyers in government and regulatory matters. In the past year, she’s been instrumental in expanding Croke Fairchild through a number of boutique firm acquisitions. Duarte previously was the Pritzker administration’s first assistant deputy governor for budget and economy, overseeing $1 billion in CARES Act funding and playing a key role in the state’s COVID-19 response. She is a founding member of the Chicago City Council Latino Caucus Foundation and serves on the boards of the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Choose Chicago and the Latino Victory Fund.

Elizabeth Ebersole

Jessica Fairchild

Partner Baker McKenzie

Founding partner Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres

Baker McKenzie global employment and labor law group partner Elizabeth Ebersole guides multinational employers on domestic and international employment matters related to transactions and integration.

She also advises on issues including personnel policies, employee handbooks, offer letters, employment contracts, restrictive covenants and cost-cutting measures. She co-led teams representing Becton Dickinson in its spinoff of Embecta and Abbott Laboratories’ $890 million acquisition of Cardiovascular Systems. A former Brookfield Zoo associates board member, Ebersole co-chairs BakerWomen in Chicago, advancing gender equity, and captained the firm’s 2022 election protection initiative in partnership with the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Under Law.

A Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres co-founder, Jessica Fairchild has helped grow the firm to more than 65 attorneys since its 2019 launch, leading recruiting and serving as co-chair of the management committee and co-head of the corporate group. Her work focuses on M&A, VC and other corporate transactions. Under her leadership, Croke Fairchild has increased diversity, with 54% women/diverse attorneys and an overall staff that’s more than 55% female, becoming the largest Women Business Enterprise-certified law firm in Chicago. Fairchild is on the board of the nonprofit Gorton Center, the board of advisers of the Executives’ Club and the mentoring committee of the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois.

Christine Fernandez Owen Partner Norton Rose Fulbright Christine Fernandez Owen, co-leader of Norton Rose Fulbright’s 20-person renewable energy team, advises developers, owners, operators and service providers of wind, solar and energy storage projects. She facilitated a nearly $7 billion transmission line project in just over 30 days, a deal that will save New York residents and businesses $17.3 billion and provide 20% of New York City’s power supply. Owen was recently Chicago chapter board president of the nonprofit Women of Renewable Industries & Sustainable Energies, is co-chair of the University of Texas Continuing Legal Education Renewable Energy Institute and is an adjunct professor of clean energy law at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law.

LEAD. INSPIRE. ELEVATE. Tonya Newman

Sonya Rosenberg

Congratulations to Tonya Newman and Sonya Rosenberg on their well-deserved recognition in Crain’s 2024 Notable Women in Law. As trailblazers and role models, these women are dedicated to supporting and guiding others through inclusive leadership and community involvement.

Neal Gerber Eisenberg takes pride in its legacy of spearheading women's advancement in law firms, supporting their professional growth through tailored programs, training, and advocacy for leadership roles within the firm. Explore our dedication to advancing women in the legal profession, visit nge.com/womenatnge

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 25

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Laura Ferrell

Linda Fine

Leslie Fineberg

Tacy Flint

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Partner Latham & Watkins

Managing partner Buckley Fine Law

Managing partner Nottage & Ward

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Partner Akerman

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Laura Ferrell, a Latham & Watkins partner in the investment funds practice, is an asset management attorney advising private fund sponsors on SEC examinations, enforcement actions and M&A deals.

With deep expertise in the increasingly complex regulatory landscape, she has represented Sculptor Capital Management on its nearly $720 million acquisition by Rithm Capital and has advised Ares Management, New Heritage Capital, Global Infrastructure Partners, Coinbase and Onex Credit on significant transactions and fund formations. Ferrell serves as a court-appointed guardian ad litem, representing children in situations where guardianship issues are disputed.

As managing partner and chair of the estate planning practice at Buckley Fine Law, Linda Fine focuses on planning for high-net-worth clients, business operation and succession planning, and estate and gift taxation. Her expertise includes complex trust and estate administration, facilitating a $100 million endowment to a medical institution and guiding a family worth more than $200 million through taxes and succession planning. Fine co-authored a chapter in the 2022 edition of the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education’s “Asset Protection Planning” and volunteers for the Business INCubator entrepreneur program at her local high school. She’s also on the Barrington Area Chamber of Commerce board.

A family law attorney since 1991, Nottage & Ward Managing Partner Leslie Fineberg began her law career as a Cook County assistant state’s attorney focusing on issues involving parentage, support, domestic violence and enforcing judgments for dissolution of marriage. Since entering private practice in 1997, Fineberg has been appointed as a special assistant attorney general on numerous cases. She is a certified mediator, with years of trial experience that supplement her negotiation skills in cases that are often complex, involving matters including child custody and marital property considerations.

Among the nonprofits she supports is Friends of the Chicago River.

An appellate litigator, Tacy Flint wins high-stakes judgments for clients nationally, arguing complex cases on antitrust, consumer, ERISA, federal pre-emption and First Amendment issues. As deputy head of Sidley’s 150-lawyer litigation group, she supervises and mentors dozens of associates.

In 2020, Flint delivered what a legal scholar called a “momentous” 6th Circuit decision recognizing a constitutional right to literacy. She also led the team that defeated an attempt to halt construction on the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park. Flint serves on the board of the Adler Planetarium and is chair-elect of the board of the NALP Foundation for Law Career Research & Education.

Meg George, a member of Akerman’s executive committee, contributes to the firm’s governance, compensation and policy decisions. She leads Akerman Strong, an initiative promoting staff mental, physical and financial health. George oversees real estate and municipal law matters, managing projects like Bally’s acquisition of the Chicago Tribune Publishing Center and its temporary casino at the Medinah Temple, and the $1 billion redevelopment of Chicago’s Union Station.

George works pro bono on the expansion of Chicago’s first anaerobic digester for Green Era and handles zoning and development for Illinois Walmart facilities. She was a member of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s transition team and serves on the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum board.

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Congratulations to

Sheryl Jaffee Halpern, Camille Khodadad & Courtney Mayster for being selected as Notable Women in Law by Crain's Chicago Business.

We honor three of our best for making our firm and our communities more vibrant and inclusive places to work and live.

muchlaw.com

26 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

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Deborah Gersh Partner Ropes & Gray Deborah Gersh co-chairs Ropes & Gray’s health care practice, advising industry clients on transactions and regulatory compliance. She is a leading health care privacy practitioner, handling matters involving online data tracking technologies and advising clients on the emerging regulatory landscape. She also focuses on the implications of AI use. She advised Northwestern Memorial Healthcare on reopening during the pandemic and represented Advocate Health in the first-ever U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office for Civil Rights compliance inquiry related to AI technologies, ultimately settling a potentially multimillion-dollar enforcement action with no fine, penalty or further action. Gersh serves on George Washington University Law School’s dean’s advisory board.

Katherine “Katie” Gillespie Partner Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton As co-leader of Sheppard Mullin’s 100-plus-attorney energy, infrastructure and project finance team, Katherine “Katie” Gillespie represents sponsors and financers of the country’s largest renewable deals, including wind, solar and storage projects. Among her clients: NextEra Energy Resources, the world’s largest generator of renewable energy.

Under Gillespie’s leadership, the energy team has closed more than 14 gigawatts of renewables projects. Gillespie and her team are also involved in first-in-kind opportunities available under the Inflation Reduction Act like tax credit transfers, spurring renewable energy development.

Jeanne Gills

Barbara Grayson

Kelly Greco

Partner Foley & Lardner

Partner, private wealth group Midwest chair Willkie Farr & Gallagher

Shareholder Polsinelli

Jeanne Gills is an intellectual property attorney with an electrical engineering background who acts as lead trial counsel in patent, trade secret, trademark, copyright and unfair competition litigation.

Gills has achieved significant wins in IP disputes with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, representing CVS, Walmart, Fashion Nova and Albertsons. She was only the second Black member of the firm’s national management committee and the first Black member of its compensation committee, which she chairs.

Gills is on the Chicago State Foundation board and its investment committee and is a founding member of the Black Patent Network and the Chicago Black Partners Alliance.

Barbara Grayson, partner and Midwest chair of Willkie Farr & Gallagher’s private wealth group, has spent over two decades advising influential families like the Crowns on taxes, estate planning and wealth transfer. She also structures substantial charitable gifts and advises charitable foundations. Grayson helped launch Willkie’s Chicago office in 2020, leading it to over 90 attorneys. Last year she received Corporate Counsel’s Women, Influence & Power in Law Award for her professional achievements and helping to advance diversity. She is on the Chicago Zoological Society board and the councils of Goodman Theatre and the Lyric Opera, and is a member of the Economic Club.

Kelly Greco focuses her real estate practice on advising developers, owners, investors, landlords and tenants on retail developments, multifamily assets, student housing, industrial assets and cannabis transactions. Over the last year, she completed more than $870 million in transactions and was outside general counsel for firms including a Chicago-based real estate investment company with a $10.8 billion portfolio. Greco represented Clear Height Properties in acquiring 1.4 million square feet of industrial space in a $100 million-plus joint venture. She’s on the board of Commercial Real Estate Executive Women of Chicago and is a member of the house council for the Ronald McDonald House near Lurie Children’s Hospital.

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 27

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Melissa Grim Partner Honigman Melissa Grim is a member of Honigman’s board and leads the employee benefits and executive compensation practice group, managing a multimillion-dollar client portfolio with a team of six attorneys serving over 100 corporate clients. Grim chaired an internal task force responding to the Dobbs decision, organizing employee town halls and advising leadership.

A specialist in investigations involving federal agencies, she secured a multimillion-dollar settlement with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and a no action letter from the U.S. Department of Labor for clients in the past six months.

Grim is vice chair of the international M&A and joint venture committee of the American Bar Association’s International Law Section.

Kerryann Haase Minton Managing partner, Chicago office Michael Best & Friedrich Since 2008, Kerryann Haase Minton has led operations and strategy for Michael Best’s Chicago office, leading to a 62% increase in the number of professionals. As a management committee member, Minton helped open 13 offices and add two entities during her terms. A top revenue generator, she’s a trusted adviser on complex employment matters and drives talent acquisition, awareness and outreach initiatives as a leader of the firm’s DEI committee. Minton applies her experience to matters like a health care client’s nationwide acquisition. An active community leader, Minton introduced Michael Best to the Big Shoulders Fund, where she’s on the board, with an officewide volunteer day.

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Natalie Harris

Stacie Hartman

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A partner at K&L Gates, Sana Hakim has spent her 29-year career advising clients on trademark law matters including clearance, registration, protection, enforcement and licensing. She manages global trademark portfolios for multinational firms. Dedicated to developing fellow professionals, Hakim oversees associates and chaired her firm’s women in the profession committee. As the Chicago office’s most senior female equity partner, she has focused on mentoring junior attorneys. She prevailed in a recent restaurant trademark opposition proceeding filed with the U.S. Trademark Trial & Appeal Board. Hakim serves on the board of Working in the Schools, a nonprofit that empowers students’ reading skills.

Natalie Harris co-founded the media, marketing and intellectual property law firm Baron Harris Healey nearly five years ago. She’s litigated high-profile defamation cases, including winning dismissal of a suit against actor and activist Rose McGowan in 2020. In 2021, Harris secured a rare defense victory in a defamation case under Illinois’ anti-SLAPP statute for the Illinois Integrity Fund. She recently persuaded a plaintiff to voluntarily dismiss a defamation suit against a local newspaper. Harris sits on the ABA Forum on Communications Law governing committee and co-leads its diversity moot court program.

Within the firm, she champions diversity efforts; more than half of Baron Harris Healey’s attorneys are women.

Stacie Hartman chairs Steptoe’s financial services group, comprising more than 80 lawyers globally. An accomplished regulatory enforcement and trial lawyer, she leads cases before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Securities & Exchange Commission and Department of Justice, securing nonprosecution for clients in multiyear investigations.

Beyond financial services, Hartman co-led a team securing a $64 million jury verdict against one of the country’s largest tire manufacturers and is defending a trading firm against trade secret misappropriation claims. Hartman lends her expertise to civic organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, Fashion Incubator, the Joffrey Ballet and Steppenwolf Theatre.

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CONGRATULATIONS, MALAIKA TYSON McAndrews, Held & Malloy Shareholder, for being named one of Crain’s 2024 Notable Women in Law. We are grateful to have such an incredible attorney and colleague on our team. Malaika, thanks for your unwavering dedication to ]SYV GPMIRXW ERH SYV ƼVQ ERH JSV ]SYV GSRXVMFYXMSRW XS QEOMRK McAndrews one of the world’s premier, full-service intellectual TVSTIVX] ERH XIGLRSPSK] PE[ ƼVQW

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Janet Hoffman

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Senior counsel and pro bono counsel Katten

Partner Latham & Watkins

Maggie Hickey co-leads ArentFox Schiff’s complex litigation and government enforcement and white-collar practices, overseeing nearly 300 lawyers. She’s an independent monitor of the Chicago Police Department, tracking dozens of reforms under a multiyear consent decree. Hickey leads some of Chicago’s largest public investigations, such as into allegations of hazing in Northwestern University’s football program and allegations of harassment in the Illinois House speaker’s office.

Before private practice, she was executive inspector general for the agencies of the Illinois governor; executive assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; and assistant U.S. attorney.

As pro bono counsel, Janet Hoffman leverages 40-plus years advising some of the country’s largest nonprofits on governance and finance. She recently moved to senior counsel, continuing to advise nonprofits like the Evolved Network in Chicago while transitioning clients — some that have been with her since the 1980s — to her colleagues.

Hoffman led Katten’s team guiding a merger between counseling and support service provider Family Services of Lake County and Josselyn, a nonprofit community health provider. She is board chair of the Leslie Shankman School Corporation and on the boards of the Foundation for the Educational Development of Children and Covenant Living Communities & Services.

Robin Hulshizer is a trial attorney with more than 30 years’ experience litigating commercial and environmental cases. She advises multiple Fortune 100 companies, including Navistar, which she guided through SEC investigations and lawsuits. In addition to representing clients in manufacturing, oil and gas, and consumer products, she also led a team that brought a class-action complaint against West Virginia’s largest school district for failing students with disabilities. Hulshizer has been global vice chair of Latham’s diversity leadership committee and deputy office managing partner. She’s a board member of The Reach Institute and has helped chair the Chicago Do The Write Thing program.

Sheryl Jaffee Halpern

LaVon Johns Partner; lead, business transactions team Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila

Principal Much Shelist Sheryl Jaffee Halpern is an employment attorney, advising clients on employment issues with guidance to advance their business goals while ensuring legal compliance. As a management committee member, Halpern leads 160-plus employees, fostering diverse viewpoints and maximizing client service.

She helped create Much Shelist’s five-year strategic growth plan, developing the people development aspect promoting operational excellence and professional growth.

She was integral in rolling out 12 weeks’ paid parental leave for all firm employees. As founder, president and treasurer of Power Rainmakers NFP, she helps plan and host an annual two-day conference for female partners of law firms across the U.S. and Canada.

Since joining Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila in 2022, LaVon Johns has led the business transactions team with a focus on team building, infrastructure and growth.

She’s also acted as in-house real estate counsel on leases for the firm’s five locations.

Johns advises clients on real estate investments and guided a nonprofit client in constructing, financing and leasing a South Side health complex.

For a manufacturing and industrial client, she led a transaction that involved a multisite, multistate crosscollateralization project. An adjunct instructor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Johns has also been president of the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education and works with the nonprofit Monarch Award Foundation.

Congratulations!

Benesch is proud to congratulate the outstanding women selected among the 2024 Notable Women in Law, particularly our three recognized attorneys.

BRYNA DAHLIN

CAITLIN KOVACS

NICOLE WRIGLEY

beneschlaw.com FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 29

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Emily Johnson

Jaime Jones

Michelle Kantor

Member McDonald Hopkins

Partner Sidley Austin

Member McDonald Hopkins

Emily Johnson practices health care law, representing a wide variety of clients including physician practices, anatomic pathology and clinical laboratories, hospitals, telehealth providers and pharmacies. As a key contact for McDonald Hopkins’ laboratory and pathology practice, she guided clients through the challenges of the pandemic, enabling them to adapt and navigate regulatory changes. Johnson also helps clients implement advanced digital pathology structures. Through panels and discussions, she enhances industry understanding of digital trends. Johnson supports Cycle For Survival, the rare-cancer fundraising program of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; the American Heart Association; and the American Health Law Association.

Jaime Jones, global co-leader of Sidley Austin’s health care practice and a member of the firm’s global life sciences leadership council, guides health care providers and life sciences companies through investigations, government enforcement actions and litigation. Her biggest wins involve persuading the Justice Department to close investigations of her clients without any public resolution. Jones orchestrated Sidley’s representation of Walmart in its 10-year partnership with UnitedHealth Group and led a team that won four successive, precedent-setting lawsuits on behalf of the Texas Medical Association challenging the implementation of the federal No Surprises Act. She is a board member of World Business Chicago and a director of Legal Aid Chicago.

Michelle Kantor chairs McDonald Hopkins’ federal government contracting and procurement practice, with decades of experience in certification submissions and appeals for women-, minority- and veteran-owned firms. She focuses on bid protests, joint ventures, mentoring agreements and other contracts and represents clients in M&A and succession planning. Kantor and her team have prevailed in several federal bid protests in small-business set-aside work and settlements of multimilliondollar federal project disputes.

She is on the national board of Women Impacting Public Policy, is general counsel to the Federation of Women Contractors, where she received the Lifetime Advocate Award, and is on the board of the Women’s Business Development Center.

Suzanne Karbarz Rovner

Andrianna “Annie” Kastanek

Partner Levenfeld Pearlstein

Partner Jenner & Block A former chief of appeals in the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago and U.S. Supreme Court clerk, Andrianna “Annie” Kastanek joined Jenner & Block’s appellate and Supreme Court practice in 2022. She brings experience from her decades spent as a federal prosecutor, advising on major cases and defending convictions on appeal. Kastanek has briefed 200 federal appeals and argued over 40 cases.

Since joining Jenner, she’s represented clients like W.K. Kellogg, Nestle and Kraft. She serves on the board of Chicago Debates and is a member of Leadership Greater Chicago’s yearlong Signature Fellows Program. Kastanek regularly accepts 7th Circuit appointments to represent indigent defendants pro bono.

Suzanne Karbarz Rovner focuses her practice on all aspects of construction law, advising clients on effective strategies for project execution, drafting and negotiating contracts and enforcing contractual rights and obligations. She’s served as exclusive construction counsel for a multibillion-dollar international real estate investment trust, represented the developer revitalizing an iconic Chicagobased Public Works Administration housing complex and represented the developer building an $84 million business school facility and garage for a large public university. Rover is involved in the Construction Law Forum and the Society of Illinois Construction Attorneys and is on the board of the nonprofit Mary Crane Center.

Championing leadership Congratulations to Stacey Kern – Corporate partner, US Executive Committee and Global Board member – for her well-deserved recognition as one of Crain’s Chicago Business 2024 “Notable Women in Law.”

eversheds-sutherland.com © Eversheds Sutherland Ltd. 2024

30 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

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Camille Khodadad

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Colby Kingsbury

Partner Locke Lord

Partner Eversheds Sutherland

Principal Much Shelist

Managing member Fuksa Khorshid

Partner Faegre Drinker

Jennifer Kenedy is general counsel and a member of Locke Lord’s executive committee. She co-founded the firm’s women’s initiative, chairs its flexible work arrangement committee and was the first female managing partner in Chicago. Kenedy concentrates her practice on complex commercial litigation, including intellectual property and catastrophic product liability litigation. In 2022, she led a 12-attorney team in an AI telehealth technology case, with a favorable settlement for client Andor Health. She is an executive board member of Girls Inc. and an executive board member of the Patrick Williams Foundation. She is a co-founder and advisory board member of the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law.

A corporate attorney of over 25 years, Stacey Kern is a member of Eversheds Sutherland’s M&A and private-equity practice, advising public and private companies on complex domestic and global transactions and corporate governance. Since 2020, she has advised a private-equity client on transactions that included the client’s acquisition of the equity of an industrial products company, the company’s subsequent add-on acquisition and the company’s ultimate sale. Kern is a member of the firm’s global board and in 2023 was elected to its 10-member U.S. executive committee. She also chairs Eversheds Sutherland’s Chicago pro bono committee and serves on the firmwide pro bono committee.

As chair of Much Shelist’s labor and employment group, Camille Khodadad leads a team of 14 attorneys providing counsel on the complex web of employment laws. During the pandemic, she successfully defended a hospital system against wrongful termination allegations related to PPE shortages. She has represented an employer in a Labor Department investigation, defended employers in wage and hour class actions, led clients through difficult reductions in force and conducted harassment investigations. She’s on the board of the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law Chicago chapter and writes the “Women@Work” column for Chicago Lawyer. She co-chairs Much Shelist’s DEI initiative, working to refine the firm’s action plans.

Lema Khorshid is the managing member of Fuksa Khorshid, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property protection and commercialization. She has grown her practice and client base internationally and launched initiatives including a panel series with Lululemon highlighting the stories of local leaders to inspire others.

Khorshid was named Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year by Enterprising Women magazine and serves as a pro bono coach, mentor and legal expert, mentoring dozens of young women lawyers and frequently serving as a guest speaker on empowering women in business. Khorshid is on the advisory board of the Women’s Business Development Center.

Colby Kingsbury advises clients on complex business litigation in industries including telecom, manufacturing, banking and financial services.

She co-leads the commercial disputes practice and chairs Women Forward, Faegre Drinker’s group supporting women’s recruitment, retention and advancement. She led a team that obtained summary judgment in favor of a management company on a five-count complaint in Maryland and served as ACLU co-counsel on an Illinois Human Rights Commission appeal of a discrimination case involving a transgender student, leading to an advantageous settlement for the student. Kingsbury serves on the firm’s pro bono committee and the boards of ACLU Illinois, the Chicago Bar Foundation and Evanston Children’s Choir.

Congratulations to Kim Copp and Julie Pleshivoy for being named Notable Women in Law by Crain’s Chicago Business.

Kimberly M. Copp Partner

Julie Sirlin Pleshivoy Partner

Taftlaw.com FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 31

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Erin Kirchner Partner Cooley Erin Kirchner, a founding partner of Cooley’s Chicago office, represents acquirers, founders and private-equity investors in M&A transactions, joint ventures and financing activities. She advises technology, life sciences, biotech, digital health, finance, retail and manufacturing clients. Her aggressive recruiting and dedication to diversity has fueled the office’s growth from nine to over 55 attorneys since 2021. Kirchner led the team that advised Sprout Social on a $140 million acquisition of Tagger Media. She also advised beverages and spirits company Amass Brands in its acquisition of Winc.com via a Chapter 11 bankruptcy structure. She’s the incoming board chair of Bernie’s Book Bank, which provides free children’s books to underserved communities.

Caitlin Kovacs

Jennifer Kuzminski

Laura Labeots

Jade Lambert

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Partner Benesch

Partner HMB Legal Counsel

Partner Lathrop GPM

Partner King & Spalding

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Caitlin Kovacs counsels Benesch clients on complex commercial matters including business disputes, defamation, product liability and restructurings. She was part of a team that secured a complete summary judgment win for a global investment management firm in a halfbillion-dollar defamation case.

Kovacs has also been instrumental to one of the litigation practice group’s landmark matters: Smartmatic USA Corp. et al. v. Fox Corp. et al., the $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Benesch client Smartmatic against Fox News for allegedly defamatory broadcasts regarding the 2020 presidential election. Kovacs is on the leadership team at A Restoration Church, which supports the local community and provides for neighbors in need.

Jennifer Kuzminski counsels families and individuals on estate planning, nonprofit formation and tax matters. She serves on HMB’s forms committee and leads her practice group’s hiring committee. Among her wins: representing the trustee of a $65 million estate in an IRS valuation dispute; her efforts led to no substantial value change and no additional tax liability. Kuzminski advised the Girl Gonna Launch Foundation, which helps middle school girls become entrepreneurs, in pursuing 501(c)(3) status. She’s a member of the Chicago Estate Planning Council and has provided pro bono services to immigrants, low-income taxpayers and seniors through Heartland Alliance, Ladder Up and the Center for Disability & Elder Law.

Laura Labeots’ practice includes patent drafting and prosecution, litigation, trade secrets, trademark prosecution and litigation, and review proceedings before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. A research chemist, her wins include helping a major research institution obtain a large portfolio of patents related to Nobel Prize-winning nucleic acids-based research; helping a higher-education institution build a patent portfolio for CRISPR-related technologies; and representing a nonprofit working on cures for Alzheimer’s disease in patent matters. She is a member of Lathrop GPM’s Women’s Initiative Network, the Intellectual Property Law Association of Chicago, Women in Bio, the American Chemical Society, and Matter.

Jade Lambert represents individuals and corporations facing government investigations and enforcement actions, with particular expertise in investigations involving anti-kickback violations, workplace violence and sexual misconduct. She’s assisted clients impacted by fatal shootings in several states, bringing a trauma-informed approach. She’s also guided company boards through internal investigations involving executive misconduct.

Lambert has worked on cases involving criminal records relief and worked pro bono to obtain executive clemency for eight clients. She’s on the firmwide pro bono committee and leads the pro bono program for King & Spalding’s Chicago office. In her hometown, Lambert formed the Momence AntiRacist Coalition.

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Congratulations Leah Bruno, Amy Rubenstein, and Natalie Spears on being named 2024 Notable Women in Law by Crain’s Chicago Business.

Fostering strong relationships with our clients and within our communities is an integral part of our success. Together, we achieve excellence.

Grow | Protect | Operate | Finance

dentons.com © 2024 Dentons. Dentons is a global legal practice providing client services worldwide through its member firms and affiliates.

Please see dentons.com for Legal Notices.

32 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

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Brienne Letourneau Partner White & Case Brienne Letourneau, a partner in White & Case’s global commercial litigation practice, handles cases involving fiduciary disputes in corporate governance and asset management, class actions and business torts. She manages a team representing global financial services firm Bayport Financial Holdings and Bayport Colombia in a $150 million federal “mass raid” case. In 2021, Letourneau and her team secured a $49.3 million judgment for Olin in a series of disputes over environmental liabilities, with recovery eventually totaling several hundred million dollars.

In her pro bono practice she’s represented the National Women’s Law Center and the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. Letourneau is a member of the Goodman Theatre business council.

Jessica Levitt Acuna

Jessica Lingertat

Yvette Loizon

Partner Swanson Martin & Bell

Managing partner Gould & Ratner

Partner Clifford Law Offices

As co-chair of Swanson Martin & Bell’s medical negligence and health care practice group, Jessica Levitt Acuna defends hospitals, physicians, nurses and other health care providers in medical malpractice lawsuits. She also represents clients in other general tort matters including premises liability cases. In 2023, Acuna secured three defense verdicts, with all three totaling requests for damages in excess of $34.25 million. She sponsors events and fundraisers for organizations including the Duly Health & Care Charitable Fund, whose mission is to ensure communities have access to health care, goods and housing.

Jessica Lingertat guides major real estate projects for national builders and lenders. She’s a member of Gould & Ratner’s management committee and spent many years as chair of the firm’s real estate practice.

Lingertat’s recent win: spearheading a series of large construction loans that enabled a client to start and keep projects on track around the country, despite challenging lending conditions. She’s a member of Commercial Real Estate Women Chicago, the Chicago Mortgage Attorneys Association and Professional Women in Construction.

Lingertat coordinates Gould & Ratner’s pro bono work for Habitat for Humanity Chicago and leads the firm’s womenfocused initiatives as chair of GROW: Gould & Ratner Opportunities for Women.

As Clifford Law Offices partner, Yvette Loizon handles personal injury cases, litigating aviation, medical malpractice and trucking cases in state and federal court. She’s served as the Illinois State Police chief legal counsel, creating policies during the transition to cannabis legalization. Loizon has represented plaintiffs seeking damages against Boeing for the 2019 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight. A $4.5 million settlement she secured for an accident victim was the highest-ever motorcycle-related injury settlement in DuPage County.

Loizon was named interim commissioner of the Commission for Public Safety & Accountability, providing civilian oversight of the Chicago Police Department, and is on the board of Urban Gateways.

Karin H. Berg

Cynde H. Munzer

Nichole Lopez-Tackett Finance partner Ropes & Gray Finance attorney Nichole Lopez-Tackett joined Ropes & Gray in 2021 and has since advised on more than $12 billion in closed transactions.

Lopez-Tackett helps corporate borrowers and private-equity firms navigate complex deals.

As a partner, she leads a 40-plus-member finance team in leveraged buyouts and other transactions. She has strengthened Ropes & Gray’s reputation and Chicago presence, advising key clients like The Vistria Group and HIG Capital. A member of the firm’s Multicultural Forum, Lopez-Tackett launched the first Native American Lawyers Group at Ropes & Gray. She also participates in Project Citizenship, providing pro bono support to lawful permanent residents applying for U.S. citizenship status.

Paige Barr Tinkham

We are proud to congratulate Karin H. Berg, Cynde H. Munzer, and Paige Barr Tinkham on being named again to Crain’s Chicago Business “Notable Women in Law.” ŽŶŐƌĂƚƵůĂƟŽŶƐ ŽŶ ƚŚŝƐ ŵƵĐŚͲĚĞƐĞƌǀĞĚ ƌĞĐŽŐŶŝƟŽŶ͘

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 33

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Layla Lumpkin Partner Thompson Hine Layla Lumpkin is Thompson Hine’s leading partner for venture financing and venture transactions work in Chicago, including a $125 million-plus fund client for whom she served as lead attorney on nearly all investments, and plays a key role in recruiting lawyers to the firm’s New Ventures team. She served on the ABA business law section private-equity and venturecapital committee leadership team as co-editor of “Preferred Returns,” the committee’s twice annual newsletter.

Lumpkin is on the board of The Gray Matter Experience, providing students with entrepreneurship curriculum, and is a member of the Junior League and Impact100. She teaches entrepreneurship law and venture-capital finance as an adjunct law professor.

Laura Lydigsen

Virginia Marino

Partner, co-chair of intellectual property department Crowell & Moring

Partner Crowell & Moring

Laura Lydigsen, partner and co-chair of Crowell & Moring’s intellectual property department, works on patent litigation with a focus on pharmaceutical litigation under the Hatch-Waxman Act and Federal Circuit appeals. She’s represented generic drug companies seeking to bring lower-priced generics to the market, including a client in three active litigations involving drugs with annual sales topping $750 million. She also contributed to a pretrial victory in a patent case for an agricultural manufacturer and defends a seller of lab-grown diamonds against patent infringement. Lydigsen is on the board of the Federal Circuit Bar Association and is active in the Multiple System Atrophy Coalition.

A significant portion of Virginia Marino’s practice at Crowell & Moring centers on trademark portfolio management and counseling multinational companies as well as entrepreneurs. An example of her work: protecting and enforcing the rights of one of the world’s most recognized pharmaceutical brands. Marino helped secure a favorable preliminary injunction for a health care client in a case involving trade secret, breach of contract and trademark infringement, and obtained successful judgments and favorable settlements before the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. She’s the talent and inclusion partner in the firm’s advertising and brand protection group and is on the recruiting core committee. Marino has held leadership roles in the International Trademark Association.

Lindsey Paige Markus Principal Chuhak & Tecson The author of “A Gift for the Future: Conversations About Estate Planning” and the first female shareholder in the firm’s 35-year history, Lindsey Paige Markus leads the 25-person trusts and estates group. Her national practice works with business owners and families on estate and succession planning, business formation and minimizing gift and estate taxes.

She was instrumental in creating Women Helping Women, the firm’s initiative program integrating business development with philanthropy. Markus sits on the Jewish United Fund’s legacies and endowments committee and the Advocate Health Care Charitable Foundation’s gift planning advisory committee and co-chairs the American Technion Society’s Midwest planned giving committee.

Congratulations to our partner Megan Cunniff Church — one of Chicago’s Notable Women in Law

“Brilliant lawyers with courtroom savvy.”

—Benchmark Litigation

C HIC A GO

WA SHINGT O N, D.C . www.mololamken.com

34 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

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LaKeisha Marsh

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Partner Akerman

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LaKeisha Marsh, chair of Akerman’s government affairs and public policy group, leads a team providing strategic counsel on policy and regulatory issues. She specializes in representing colleges and universities, focusing on federal and state regulatory compliance, higher-education policy, governance and NCAA compliance. Marsh founded and chairs the firm’s highereducation and collegiate athletics practice, and has represented a collegiate athletic association in concussion litigation and addressed employee issues for student-athletes. Marsh is on the firm’s board and is deputy chair of the Women’s Initiative Network. She’s on the board of Girls in the Game and is a member of the Economic Club and Corporate Counsel Women of Color.

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Courtney Mayster

Beth McCormack

Katriina McGuire

Anna Meresidis

Partner Hinshaw & Culbertson

Managing partner Much Shelist

Equity partner Beermann

Partner Jenner & Block

As a partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson, Megan Mathias represents middle-market businesses and Fortune 1000 companies in matters including internal investigations, risk management and developing growth strategies. Before joining Hinshaw, she was a founding partner of Mathias Law, a boutique firm representing women- and minorityowned businesses and executives. She ran for the City Council in the 45th Ward in 2023. In 2019, Mathias won the Chicago Bar Association’s Alliance for Women Alta May Hulett Award, given for significant contributions to the advancement of women in the legal profession. Her board service includes Life Span and the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago. She is a founding member of Force of Lawyers Against Sexual Harassment.

As the first female managing partner in Much Shelist’s 53-year history, Courtney Mayster leads 160-plus employees and guides the firm’s strategic vision, including rolling out a five-year plan.

For nearly a decade she was chair of the real estate group and continues to help clients navigate complex commercial real estate transactions. She was part of the team that guided Cinespace Film Studios in its $1.2 billion sale to TPG Real Estate Partners in 2021, creating North America’s second-largest independent owner of soundstages.

Mayster is on the board of the Chicago Deferred Exchange and Commercial Real Estate Executive Women and is a past co-chair of Much’s Women’s Initiative.

Beth McCormack focuses on family law cases at Beermann, handling litigation, mediation and collaborative law in high-net-worth and highprofile cases. She says her greatest professional honor is being appointed as guardian ad litem, advocating for minor children amid parental conflict.

Ten years ago, she became the first female owner in Beermann’s then-55-year history. McCormack is on the international board of the Association of Family & Conciliation Courts and the advisory council for Rainbows for all Children, helping kids cope with trauma from divorce or the loss of a parent, and works with Between Friends, a group dedicated to breaking the cycle of domestic violence.

Chicago office managing partner Thompson Coburn As Chicago office managing partner, Katriina McGuire leads an office of about 70 attorneys and chairs Thompson Coburn’s real estate land use practice. For more than two decades, she’s advocated for clients before city and suburban plan commissions, zoning and economic development committees and zoning boards of appeals, helping pave the way for development. McGuire is a lateral hiring partner, focusing on integrating attorneys in Chicago and helping expand the office with the addition of partners in the labor and employment, immigration, and real estate and construction practices.

She chairs the firmwide women’s initiative steering committee with a focus on retention, diversity and mentoring programs.

Congratulations Diane, Kathleen & Caitlin!

As co-chair of Jenner & Block’s corporate and finance practices, Anna Meresidis structures deals for U.S. and international clients in industries including energy, financial services, technology, manufacturing, sports and entertainment. She advised data center and cloud solutions firm Internap in restructuring, including a $75 million debtorin-possession financing and $300 million exit financings.

She also led a team that obtained a $750 million multicurrency credit facility for Methode Electronics. In August 2023, Gov. J.B. Pritzker appointed Meresidis to Northeastern Illinois University’s board of trustees.

She also assisted the United Way of Metro Chicago’s partnership with the Chicago Fund for Safe & Peaceful Communities.

Diane Bell

Chicago Managing Partner

The law firm of Ice Miller is pleased to congratulate our own Diane Bell, Kathleen Sheil Scheidt, and Caitlin Podbielski for their recognition as Crain’s Chicago Business’ Notable Women of Law. Together, these three firm leaders exemplify the exciting growth of our Chicago office, the breadth of services we provide, and our commitment to raising diverse voices and perspectives to help achieve richer results for our clients.

Kathleen Sheil Scheidt

Workplace Solutions Practice Leader

Together, we build opportunities.

350+ lawyers helping clients across Chicago and beyond

icemiller.com Attorney Advertising Material

Caitlin Podbielski Partner, Business Group

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 35

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Carolyn Metnick

Tricia Meyer

Partner Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton Carolyn Metnick guides health care providers, tech firms and other stakeholders through the complex regulatory environment of digital health models, focusing on how patient data is used and protected. She counsels businesses in data breach investigations and compliance with federal and state privacy laws. A career highlight: helping a client implement a new, cutting-edge AI tool. In the past year, Metnick drew on her expertise in health care privacy law and regulatory matters to guide an international company’s U.S. expansion. She’s on the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women board and chairs the American Health Law Association’s transactions program planning committee.

Founder and managing attorney Meyer Law As a business lawyer for almost two decades, and after working at large corporations, Tricia Meyer started Meyer Law in 2010 in Chicago. She’s since expanded to Denver, Los Angeles and Traverse City, Mich., advising firms ranging from startups to some of the world’s largest companies.

She also leads teams that mentor firms at incubators and accelerators across the United States. An entrepreneur as well as an attorney, Meyer co-founded baby and toddler products company The Clever Baby and was selected to participate in Target’s Forward Founders accelerator program.

Meyer participates in mentoring at Chicago innovation hub 1871.

Leslie Minier

Desirée Moore

Guinevere Moore

Chief diversity partner Katten

Partner Venable

Managing member Moore Tax Law Group

Leslie Minier focuses on expanding Katten’s bench of attorneys with diverse backgrounds and building a more inclusive, equitable and diverse legal profession. As Katten’s chief diversity partner, she works to recruit diverse attorneys and develop programs to foster inclusiveness and encourage retention.

Following the murder of George Floyd, with renewed attention on racial injustice and inequality, Minier hosted restorative listening circles.

She was integral to planning a firm diversity summit in Chicago last summer, and due to her efforts, the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms recognized Katten with its Diversity Award.

Minier is on the board of the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law’s Chicago chapter.

Desirée Moore focuses on crisis planning and response as a commercial disputes partner, guiding clients through data breaches, key executive separations, sports industry and higher-education crises and more. She was part of a team that successfully dismissed two lawsuits brought against a prominent sports organization, represented a Fortune 20 CEO in his highly publicized departure and won an appeal on behalf of the Republic of Poland, obtaining the dismissal of a high-profile matter involving Nazi-looted art. Moore is on Loyola University Chicago School of Law’s board of governors and the board of the nonprofit Ingenuity Chicago, and she chairs the Economic Club’s questions committee, which prepares questions for the club’s celebrated speakers.

As a litigator in civil and criminal cases, Guinevere Moore advocates for taxpayers at the IRS examination and appeals levels and, if a settlement cannot be reached, in litigation. She served as tax counsel in Doe v. Trump, defeating the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the class action and leading to a change in law that allowed COVID relief for those previously excluded. She works for systemic change in the tax system: A U.S. Supreme Court opinion last year quoted from a brief Moore submitted on behalf of a pro bono client.

She’s been a March of Dimes board member and co-chair of the Women Who Count national conference.

Congratulations to RSHC Partners LaVon M. Johns and Amy C. Andrews!

Recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business as “Notable Women in Law 2024”

Amy C. Andrews

LaVon M. Johns

Champions for Clients, Colleagues, and Community

#ProudtobeRSHC CHICAGO | SAN FRANCISCO | NEW YORK | ANN ARBOR | LOS ANGELES / IRVINE 36 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

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Mary Margaret “Mimi” Moore Partner Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner As the leader of Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner’s 98-attorney employment and labor practice, Mary Margaret “Mimi” Moore brings 30-plus years of experience litigating complex cases and advising clients on compliance issues. She was on a team that won a complete defense victory in a case filed against electronic medical records software maker Epic Systems, and she recently won on behalf of Northwestern Memorial Hospital an employment discrimination case.

Moore is co-chair of the advisory board of Working on Womanhood-Youth Guidance, a group that provides girls with school-based counseling. She also teaches continuing legal education courses and assists bar associations with lawyer training events.

Cynde Munzer

Tonya Newman

Katharine O’Connor

Amanda Oliver

Partner Blank Rome

Partner, litigation and disputes practice group chair Neal Gerber Eisenberg

Partner McDermott Will & Emery

Partner Weiss-Kunz & Oliver

A partner in McDermott Will & Emery’s antitrust and competition practice, Katharine O’Connor handles antitrust litigation and compliance issues and government investigations with a focus on the health care industry. She helped secure a victory for Southern Illinois Healthcare in two civil antitrust lawsuits and played a key role securing a summary judgment victory for Plantronics in a case brought by a rival. Her pro bono work has included securing asylum for a political asylee and a substantial settlement for a client denied religious meals, violating the First Amendment.

She’s a business development lead for McDermott’s gender diversity committee and co-chairs education programming for the antitrust section of American Health Law Association.

Amanda Oliver is a founding partner of Weiss-Kunz & Oliver, focusing her practice on family law litigation and mediation, specifically high-net-worth and complex estates, custody disputes and prenuptial agreements. Her clients have included high-profile individuals, including professional athletes and television personalities. She argued a case before the Illinois Appellate Court and had an opportunity to set precedence with her case. Oliver is on the advisory board of the NBA Retired Players Association, where she works with former pro basketball players to protect their families and their assets. She is also director of Immanuel Lutheran Church’s vacation Bible school.

Cynde Munzer, a partner in Blank Rome’s financing, restructuring and bankruptcy group, advises major financial institutions, publicly held corporations and large Chicago-based businesses on transactions involving up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

In the past year, she successfully handled deals totaling more than $1.5 billion for clients including large banks and professional services companies. She has served as co-chair of Blank Rome’s 2023 Chicago FinWo networking luncheons, bringing together women in the financing industry to exchange ideas and network. She’s served on committees for the AntiDefamation League’s Midwest Region Women of Achievement Award and the Illinois Legal Aid Online annual dinner.

Tonya Newman chairs Neal Gerber Eisenberg’s litigation and disputes practice group, leading a team of 18 litigators representing Fortune 25 companies in state and federal courts nationwide. In her practice, she handles civil litigation and product liability matters across multiple jurisdictions, serving as counsel for a prominent industrial manufacturer, handling multimillion-dollar cases and investigations.

She’s on the firm’s associate review committee, mentoring junior attorneys. Newman is a board member of the nonprofit Girls on the Run Chicago and serves on the American Bar Association’s products liability committee and is regional co-chair of its judicial internship opportunity program.

Cheers to Excellence!

Congratulations to Crain’s Chicago Business Most Notable Women in Law 2024 - Jennifer F. Kuzminski and Samantha K. Breslow of HMB Legal Counsel.

Kilpatrick and HMB are joining forces. With more than 70 attorneys in Chicago, the combined firm’s presence and corporate-focused practice launches an exciting new chapter in our service to the Chicago business community.

ktslaw.com © 2024 Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 37

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Camille Olson

Michelle Olson

Nancy Olson

Marcia Owens

Shelby Parnes

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Partner Seyfarth Shaw

Shareholder Vedder Price

Partner Honigman

Shareholder Vedder Price

Camille Olson represents companies in matters including employment discrimination and harassment, wage and hour litigation and equal pay.

She’s national chair of Seyfarth Shaw’s complex discrimination litigation practice group and chairs the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s equal employment opportunity subcommittee. Olson led one of three firms that in 2016 won $3 billion in damages for HewlettPackard in its lawsuit against Oracle. The NHL chose her to lead an investigation of the 2018 Canadian Junior Hockey team that’s led to charges against five players. Olson serves on the board of directors for The Conference Board, the Inland Press Foundation and the University Club of Chicago Foundation.

A member of Vedder Price’s labor and employment group, Michelle Olson advises employers on matters including federal and state anti-discrimination laws, workforce reductions, whistleblower claims and remote work. The first Vedder attorney elevated to shareholder on an alternative work arrangement, she served as an independent investigator for a multinational nonprofit facing a discrimination and retaliation complaint against top leaders.

For a higher-education client, she managed employment matters including a sensitive internal investigation involving a high-ranking official. Olson co-chaired Vedder’s pro bono committee, increasing by nearly 40% the number of pro bono hours worked by firm attorneys.

She’s on the board of Sister House, a residential recovery home for women in Oak Park.

Partner Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom

Marcia Owens, who chairs Honigman’s retail industry group, has spent her 25-year career representing owners, operators, developers and investors in commercial real estate, with a focus on retail and industrial. She’s leading the redevelopment of Pheasant Run Golf Course into an industrial park, and a past win includes guiding a 1970s office building redevelopment in suburban Chicago that presented unique challenges.

A member of Honigman’s Corporate Transparency Act task force, she also chaired a committee that created a series on the Dobbs decision featuring law school professors and the CEO of Illinois Planned Parenthood. Owens is director of the national board and co-chair of national programming for the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law.

A member of Vedder Price’s finance and transactions practice group, Shelby Parnes advises corporate, family office, private-equity and startup clients on matters ranging in value from $1 million to $1 billion, including M&A, sales, equity offerings and joint ventures. She played an integral role in Iowa-based Krause Group’s sale of Kum & Go and Solar Transport to Salt Lake City-based Maverik.

Parnes chairs the firm’s associate hiring committee and is a member of the diversity and inclusion and pro bono committees. She’s a board member of Uniting Voices and Homegrown Impact, an organization that aims to build racial wealth equity on the South and West sides.

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Nancy Olson leads Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom’s Chicago real estate group, focusing her practice on sophisticated cross-border joint ventures and REIT transactions. She represented Brookdale Senior Living in a series of transactions with Healthpeak Properties and represented GIC in its $15 billion take-private acquisition of Store Capital and the related $2.6 billion acquisition financing, one of the largest M&A transactions in the U.S. real estate market. Olson is on Skadden’s attorney development and compensation committees and participates in a program helping soon-to-be new moms transition to becoming working parents, as well as the firm’s Series for Women lectures. She has worked with the Foundation for Homan Square.

Partners in excellence.

DLA Piper congratulates Kathleen Ruhland, as well as the other inspiring honorees, for being recognized as one of Crain’s Chicago Business’ Notable Women in Law in 2024.

We admire your contributions to the legal industry.

dlapiper.com

Kathleen Ruhland | ATTORNEY ADVERTISING | MRKT0010426

38 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

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Paulita Pike Managing partner, Chicago office Ropes & Gray Paulita Pike, a partner in Ropes & Gray’s asset management practice, represents products including open- and closedend funds, exchange-traded funds and funds investing in private equity. She’s created first-of-its-kind products and governance reforms published by the SEC. Pike advised on developing defined-outcome ETFs for the independent trustees of the Innovator ETF Trust, an industry first. She co-chairs the firm’s diversity committee, securing Ropes a highest-ever 20-place jump in American Lawyer’s 2022 survey of firms ranked by diversity. Ropes’ Chicago office has grown 20% in the three years she’s been managing partner. Pike chairs the Shakespeare Theater board and serves on a committee of the Art Institute.

Caitlin Podbielski

Megan Poetzel

Kristen Prinz

Julie Proscia

Partner Ice Miller

Partner Jenner & Block

Partner Amundsen Davis

Caitlin Podbielski is a leader in Ice Miller’s business group and part of the outside general counsel practice, advising tax-exempt organizations. For clients impacted by COVID, she worked to minimize the economic exposure of conference/ trade show cancellations while maximizing insurance recoveries. She guided clients’ pivot to virtual programming and meeting global regulatory compliance obligations; much of this programming is now permanent and revenuepositive today. Podbielski helped a client launch two international operations, coordinating teams of domestic and foreign lawyers and counseling the client on the regulatory burdens of conducting business abroad. She co-led a firm service day with Rise Above Hunger.

Megan Poetzel is a first-chair trial lawyer, representing fintech, financial services, technology, real estate, manufacturing and transportation companies in disputes involving corporate transactions and consumer relationships. She led a team representing a residential mortgage lender in more than a dozen lawsuits and several government investigations stemming from the 2008 financial crisis fallout, and over the past year has counseled a fintech firm through state and federal regulatory inquiries. She co-chairs Jenner & Block’s financial litigation practice and Women’s Forum and is an executive committee member.

Poetzel is on the board of Legal Aid Chicago and worked with Chicago’s National Immigrant Justice Center to secure asylum for a pro bono client.

Founder and managing partner Prinz Law Firm Kristen Prinz oversees all functions and activities of the firm, consults for businesses and executives, and practices employment litigation. She created a new employment law counseling line of business focused on using culture audits to detect employment law claim risks and improve employee satisfaction. Prinz was first chair for a trial involving a complex employment dispute before the Labor Department; represented two Fortune 500 CEOs in disputes over separation terms and compensation; and has advised clients in post-COVID return-to-work efforts. She served as president of the International Women’s Forum Chicago, and is a member of the Chicago Network, Economic Club and National Employment Lawyers Association.

Julie Proscia — the youngest and among the first women to be named equity partner at Amundsen Davis — practices in the labor and employment service group, advising public and private-sector employers through all phases of the employment relationship. She co-chairs the firm’s DEI committee and helps raise diversity awareness, assisting with recruitment and retention strategies. Proscia served on the Illinois Senate Task Force on Sexual Harassment and worked on drafting amendments to the Illinois Human Rights Act. Last year she was elected to the USLAW board and is on the boards of Hesed House, the Aurora Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Illinois Landscape & Contractors Association advisory committee.

FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 39

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Vaishali Rao

Megan Ratia

Partner Hinshaw & Culbertson

Partner Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg

At Hinshaw & Culbertson, Vaishali Rao has expanded her financial services, regulatory and compliance practice from just her to a team of 12, most of them women. She focuses on defending companies in regulatory investigations and litigation brought by governmental bodies and compliance counseling related to statutes intended to protect consumers. In the past year, Rao joined Hinshaw’s management committee, the youngest member ever appointed and the first woman of color to serve at this level. She serves on the Chicago Zoning Board of Appeals and is a Leadership Greater Chicago fellow. Before joining Hinshaw, Rao was a supervising attorney in the consumer protection division of the Illinois attorney general’s office.

Megan Ratia advises investors and companies in corporate transactions, with a focus on representing clients in the beauty industry. She represents Kendo Holdings in its partnership with Rihanna in Fenty Beauty and related brands, leading joint venture negotiations. Ratia also represents private-equity and venture-capital clients in connection with investments across the beauty and skin care industry, including three separate transactions that closed in 2023. She serves as president of the BFKN Foundation, leading the firm’s charitable arm, and is a member of the firm’s DEI and business development committees. Ratia is on the board of La Rabida Children’s Hospital, where she serves on the audit committee.

NOTEWORTHY

39%

of U.S. lawyers were female in 2023, according to the ABA National Lawyer Population survey.

In 2013, that number was 34%.

Trisha Rich

Sonya Rosenberg

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Partner and co-chair, legal profession team Holland & Knight

Partner Neal Gerber Eisenberg

Sha Littl

Sonya Rosenberg, a member of Neal Gerber Eisenberg’s executive committee, counsels public and private companies and organizations on employeerelated legal issues. For an international chemical manufacturing client, she resolved a wage and hour class action and negotiated labor and other complex contracts; for a major publicly traded financial company, she resolved contentious executive claims and a restrictive covenants dispute. Rosenberg is a member of the firm’s hiring, anti-harassment and attorney credit allocation committees.

She’s a member of the national board of the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law and the Chicago chapter of the International Women’s Forum and participates in providing pro bono employment counseling services to Cabrini Green Legal Aid.

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As a professional responsibility partner in Holland & Knight’s litigation section and co-chair of the firm’s national legal profession team, Trisha Rich focuses her practice on commercial litigation, legal ethics and professional responsibility. She was on a team that filed a high-profile cert petition to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a law student challenging his denial of admission to the bar; she also successfully brought two significant arbitrations to conclusion, including securing a nearly $50 million defense award for a major firm client.

Rich is secretary of the Chicago Bar Association and serves on the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism and the Illinois Judicial Ethics Committee.

Congratulates Our Shareholders Named to Crain’s Chicago Business 2024 Notable Women in Law

Dana S. Armagno

Shelby E. Parnes

Michelle T. Olson

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40 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

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Amy Rubenstein

Kathleen Ruhland

Shareholder Littler Mendelson

Partner Dentons

Partner DLA Piper

Marissa Ross Ingley counsels clients on high-level executive separations and release agreements, workplace discrimination concerns, and sensitive investigations and employment diligence for mergers and acquisitions. One win: handling restructuring of a Fortune 500 company, advising on its internal organization with an eye on the future, from the vice president to entry-level workers, with no resulting litigation. For another client, she successfully settled all claims on a significant, multiplaintiff race discrimination matter while avoiding prolonged litigation and retaining all employees.

Ingley sits on Littler Mendelson’s executive committee.

She’s the governance chair of the board of trustees for Lycée Francais de Chicago and is on the advisory board of Big Careers Little Kids.

A partner in Dentons’ cannabis group, Amy Rubenstein focuses on the chemicals and cannabis industries. She helped secure the dismissal of all complaints against a global chemical company in a federal PFAS (“forever chemicals”) product liability lawsuit and advises a publicly traded company authorized to cultivate, manufacture and sell cannabis and related products.

Rubenstein has developed risk management strategies for PFAS litigation and state and federal regulation compliance.

She’s on a team developing a white paper for the National Academy of Sciences’ airport cooperative research program about the impact of state-legal marijuana on airports. She’s a member of Illinois Women in Cannabis and mentors women through the University of Chicago Law School.

Kathleen Ruhland, global co-chair of DLA Piper’s corporate practice, advises clients on transactions including M&A, restructurings and joint ventures, with a focus on the consumer goods, industrial, food and beverage, and agricultural industries.

Under her leadership, the firm maintained its No. 1 ranking on Mergermarket’s global M&A deal volume list for the 14th consecutive year. She advises Fortune 500 companies such as Deere, Ecolab and Nike and was named to The Deal’s 2023 list of the top women in dealmaking. Ruhland is on DLA Piper’s global board and executive and management committees. She’s served on the board of the Children’s Law Center of Minnesota and supports Christopher House and BandWith Chicago.

Christina Sajous Bullock

Carolina Y. Sales Partner Robbins DiMonte

Partner Baker McKenzie Christina Sajous Bullock, a partner in Baker McKenzie’s North America transactional practice group, focuses on M&A and corporate reorganizations in logistics, packaging, chemicals and health care. She co-led the team integrating FedEx’s $4.8 billion acquisition of TNT Express and co-led advising Cummins on the $317 million IPO of its filtration unit.

Sajous Bullock is a member of the Almost Home Kids President’s Advisory Council and chairs Baker McKenzie’s Black Attorney Network Alliance, of which she’s been a member for more than 15 years, mentoring Black attorneys and addressing issues facing the Black community both within the firm and in the communities Baker McKenzie represents.

Carolina Y. Sales handles bankruptcies and litigation matters in state and federal court, including insolvency matters and business disputes, for businesses and individuals, resulting in millions of dollars of distributions to creditors. She’s a member of the Chicago Bar Association’s judicial evaluation committee and is a past membership chair and programming co-chair of the International Women in Insolvency & Restructuring Committee’s Chicago Network. As a board member and now treasurer of the Diversity Scholarship Foundation, Sales helped raise and distribute more than $400,000 for scholarships for diverse law students. She was an elected board member for the District 64 school board for four years, serving as secretary and vice president.

Applause & admiration White & Case congratulates Brienne M. Letourneau and all of the honorees for their accomplishments and for being named to Crain’s Chicago Business 2024 Notable Women in Law. As a pioneering international law firm, we help our clients achieve their ambitions across the world’s developed and emerging markets.

whitecase.com FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 41

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Lisa Sauer

Eileen Sethna

Molshree Sharma

Member Clark Hill

Partner Levenfeld Pearlstein

Lisa Sauer is a member in Clark Hill’s real estate practice group and adjunct to the firm’s banking and finance and corporate groups. Her main focus is on real estate lending, with a secondary focus on commercial leasing. Counseling lenders, borrowers and shopping center owners through pandemic uncertainty, she developed creative and practical solutions to loan workout matters and tenant lease defaults. Sauer has been an active member of the International Council of Shopping Centers and Real Estate Finance Forum and has been an adjunct professor for the Business Enterprise Law Clinic at the University of Illinois Chicago Law School.

Eileen Sethna advises financial institutions, private-equity firms, hedge funds and real estate investors. Under her leadership, Levenfeld Pearlstein’s financial services and restructuring group has more than doubled, and more than 80% of recent group members are women. She led a team that resolved a high-profile bankruptcy matter with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake for her client, the debtor’s landlord, and represented a large national bank as a participant in a $1.7 billion revolving loan and a privateequity fund in multiple significant financings to fund key acquisitions. Sethna is on Misericordia’s women’s board and advisory board and serves on the Special Olympics of Illinois’ board and executive gala committee.

Partner Birnbaum Gelfman Sharma & Arnoux

Julie Sirlin Pleshivoy

Julia Skubis Weber

Kimberly Smith

Mary Smith

Natalie Spears

Partner Taft Stettinius & Hollister

Partner Baker McKenzie

Partner Katten

Vice chair Veng Group

Partner Dentons

Julie Sirlin Pleshivoy joined Taft Stettinius & Hollister over five years ago to expand the private client practice in Chicago and has grown clientele by at least 20% each year. She advises individuals and families, business owners and financial institutions on a range of estate planning and administration, trust, wealth transfer, charitable giving and tax matters, expanding into preand post-marital advising.

Pleshivoy was elected as incoming president of the Chicago chapter of the American Technion Society and was named a Rothman Fellow in its leadership program. She’s a member of the Chicago Estate Planning Council, Jewish United Fund/ Metropolitan Chicago and Hadley School for the Blind professional advisory committee.

Julia Skubis Weber, co-chair of Baker McKenzie’s tax planning and transactions practice group, advises U.S. and foreign-owned clients on cross-border tax issues including internal reorganizations, structuring investments, foreign tax credits and treaty analysis. She also has extensive experience in M&A, spinoff transactions and joint ventures. Weber co-led a team that counseled Merck on the tax, employment and related corporate aspects of spinning off its women’s health, trusted legacy brands and biosimilars businesses. Weber is an adjunct professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and chairs the planning committee for the University of Chicago Law School federal tax conference.

Kimberly Smith, global chair of the corporate department, supervises and supports 140-plus attorneys throughout the U.S., U.K. and China in Katten’s corporate group. She recently joined the executive committee and plays a key role in shaping overall strategy for the 700-attorney firm.

Smith advises clients including private-equity funds, family offices and independent sponsors on leveraged buyouts, acquisitions, joint ventures and other investments across multiple industries. She represented Equity Group Investments in its investment in CraneWorks, one of the largest crane dealerships in the U.S. by fleet. Smith is a founding member of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago’s guild board and is on the corporate board of directors.

Mary Smith handles health equity and regulatory matters as vice chair of Veng Group and serves as a federal court trustee. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she oversaw distribution of more than $1.5 billion to the nation’s federally recognized tribes to address the devastation of the opioid epidemic. Smith is president of the American Bar Association, the first Native American woman in the role. During the pandemic, she helped the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston overhaul its investment strategy and led online commerce and nationwide programming. She is on the board of the Field Museum and belongs to the Economic Club, International Women’s Forum and the Chicago Network.

As head of Dentons’ U.S. technology, media and telecommunications sector, Natalie Spears represents clients in matters including class actions, intellectual property, media, advertising and First Amendment litigation.

Among her wins: securing dismissal of a defamation suit against NBCUniversal brought by a convicted Jan. 6 rioter and winning dismissal of class actions against Condé Nast, Hearst and other publishers that alleged disclosing subscription mailing lists to third parties violated right of publicity laws. Spears has held leadership roles with the National Immigrant Justice Center and co-founded Dentons’ WomenLEAD.

42 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Molshree “Molly” Sharma, a partner at Birnbaum Gelfman Sharma & Arnoux, practices in family law with an emphasis on international child custody.

She is an expert in Hague Convention cases, and Birnbaum Gelfman is one of the only law firms in the U.S. that handles international child abduction cases. With her knowledge of complex financials, international assets and enforcement of foreign court orders, clients from all over the world consult her on legal decisions regarding prenuptials, asset preservation and ensuring orders are enforceable in the United States. Sharma is a member of the Economic Club and the International Women’s Forum and is a fellow of the International Academy of Matrimonial Attorneys.

Kathleen Sheil Scheidt Partner Ice Miller A partner and leader of Ice Miller’s workplace solutions group, Kathleen Sheil Scheidt’s practice involves counseling employers in all aspects of employee benefits and executive compensation. She helped design and implement the merger of Ice Miller’s labor/ employment, immigration, and employee benefits practices into a single group and has helped the firm refine its model for supporting the advancement of colleagues whose career paths don’t fit the traditional law firm approach.

Scheidt is a member of the ESOP Association’s advisory committee on legislative and regulatory issues and the American Benefits Council policy board, and she chairs Roycemore School’s board of trustees.

Lei Shen

Ka

Partner Cooley

Par Kirk

A data privacy partner at Cooley, Lei Shen helps companies navigate state, federal and international privacy laws and regulations. She advises on developing data protection strategies and emerging technologies such as telematics, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence, using her insights to help clients develop products that are more likely to be compliant with future privacy laws. Shen was involved in recent California attorney general investigations regarding the state’s Consumer Privacy Act, helping clients resolve the matters and avoid further inquiries. She’s on the board of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms, the advisory board of the Chinese American Bar Association of Greater Chicago and the Chicago History Museum board.

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Morgan Stogsdill

Partner Kirkland & Ellis

Equity partner Beermann

Practicing in the fund formation space, Katie St. Peters advises clients including Thoma Bravo, Silversmith Capital Partners and Golden Gate Capital. She led a team that designed and developed Funded, a digital platform that’s been used to manage the subscription process and close more than $250 billion of fund subscriptions in more than 400 unique funds for 230-plus clients. St. Peters also led the Kirkland team that advised Thoma Bravo on the completion of simultaneous fundraisings for its three buyout funds, totaling more than $32.4 billion in capital commitments. She’s been involved in the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the National Immigrant Justice Center.

Morgan Stogsdill is head of family law at Beermann, focusing on complex and comprehensive divorce and family law matters for high-profile clients with extensive financial structures.

She’s one of nine owners of Beermann and the youngest owner of the firm. Her podcast, “How Not to Suck at Divorce,” ranks in the top 1.5% of podcasts worldwide and aims to help people better understand the divorce process while also delivering some humor. Stogsdill is a board member of the Jackson Chance Foundation and a member of YPO and the Chicago American Inn of Court.

NOTEWORTHY

79%

of U.S. lawyers were white in 2023, according to the ABA National Lawyer Population survey. The percentage of white lawyers decreased from 88.7% in 2013.

Other races in 2023: 6% Hispanic 6% Asian American 5% Black 3% Multiracial 1% Other

Monica Sullivan Partner Nicolaides Fink Thorpe Michaelides Sullivan Monica Sullivan, a founding and named partner at the firm, focuses on insurance coverage litigation and arbitration. A member of the executive committee, her clients include international insurance companies that seek her counsel on claims in the pharmaceutical, construction, environmental and product liability areas. Nicolaides’ opioid team, led by Sullivan, is involved in numerous declaratory judgment actions across the U.S. involving insureds including Walmart, Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens, as well as opioid-related international arbitrations. She established the firm’s DEI initiatives and served as that committee’s co-chair. Sullivan is a member of the American College of Coverage Counsel.

Samera Syeda Ludwig Partner Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton partner Samera Syeda Ludwig focuses her legal career on labor, employment and business immigration law. Representing employers in state and federal courts for more than 20 years, she is an experienced litigator counseling companies and conducting workplace investigations. She served as national employment counsel for a Fortune 50 company, defending claims in federal and state courts. She also advises businesses on immigration policies and compliance.

Ludwig leads the judicial evaluation committee of the Asian American Bar Association of Greater Chicago and teaches at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law.

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ưưư ƢưƟƜơƢƜƚƠƨ ƨƫƠ FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | 43

NOTABLE WOMEN IN LAW

Kate Tellez

Liisa Thomas

Paige Tinkham

Vanessa Tiradentes

Amanda Todd

Partner Gould & Ratner

Partner Sidley Austin

Kate Tellez advises clients and litigates cases on intellectual property issues in fields including software-based inventions, pharmaceuticals, consumer goods, automotive parts and medical devices. In 2023, Tellez and her team obtained summary judgment rulings on behalf of American Axle in a case proceeding to trial after extensive appellate proceedings, culminating in a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2022, she and her team secured a $40 million jury trial victory on behalf of Express Mobile against Shopify, where three patents were found infringed and not invalid. Tellez is on the executive board for the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law and focuses her pro bono work on adoption matters for Chicago Volunteer Legal Services.

Chicago office managing partner Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton Liisa Thomas, the first woman to lead Sheppard Mullin’s Chicago office, also leads its privacy and cybersecurity practice. She advises companies including Subway, Digital Realty Trust, ABN AMRO Clearing USA and CDW. Thomas and her team advised a large defense contractor on a phishing scam, coordinating with the FBI and other parties in an investigation and recovery of funds. She conducted research on law firm leadership diversity involving partners across the U.S. that’s now used to develop leadership training at her firm and beyond.

Thomas is on the boards of the International Association of Privacy Professionals and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and plays violin in the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra.

Partner Blank Rome As a partner in Blank Rome’s finance and restructuring practice group, Paige Tinkham handles insolvency and restructuring matters. Many of her clients are lenders to senior living facilities, and she has been successful in having an independent receiver appointed over dozens of facilities in actions representing more than $200 million in debt owed to her clients. Tinkham co-leads the firm’s Chicago BR Women program, which offers female attorneys professional development, mentorship, sponsorship and client development opportunities. She’s a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute and Turnaround Management Association and is on the board of the nonprofit Ascend Justice.

Vanessa Tiradentes, vice chair of Gould & Ratner’s litigation practice, represents clients in commercial litigation in federal and state courts in matters including breach of fiduciary duty claims, business divorces, contract disputes and indemnification claims. She also assists clients with construction matters, including contractor disputes, breach of warranty claims and insurance coverage issues and chairs the firm’s inclusion committee.

Tiradentes was named to the board of LawExchange International, has served as deputy general counsel of the Hispanic National Bar Association and is on the board of the Harvard Latino Alumni Alliance. In 2020, she was given the leadership award by the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law for the Chicago chapter.

As co-leader of Sidley Austin’s global insurance and financial services group, Amanda Todd leads a team of more than 70 lawyers handling the largest and most complicated deals in the industry. In her own practice, Todd primarily represents insurance companies and financial institutions in M&A and capital markets matters. She led American National Group in its $5.1 billion acquisition by Brookfield Asset Management Reinsurance Partners, one of the largest insurance M&A deals ever led by a woman.

She also led the team representing Lincoln Financial in a landmark $28 billion reinsurance transaction with Fortitude Re.

Malaika Tyson

Amy Van Gelder

Nicole Wrigley

Partner Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom

Andrea Verney Kerstein

Paula Wegman

Shareholder McAndrews Held & Malloy

Partner Hinshaw & Culbertson

Unit partner Benesch Friedlander Coplan & Aronoff Nicole Wrigley is vice chair of Benesch Friedlander’s trial and litigation groups, representing companies in commercial matters ranging from defamation to class-action litigation, trade secrets and more.

Wrigley was a lead partner in Smartmatic USA Corp. et al. v.

Fox Corp. et al., the $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Benesch client Smartmatic against Fox News for allegedly defamatory broadcasts regarding the 2020 presidential election. She served as pro bono counsel for individuals within the Illinois Department of Corrections, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and Chicago Public Schools. She is active in Benesch’s B-Sharp group, which develops programming and networking for in-house female counsel.

Partner Steptoe

Malaika Tyson, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry along with a law degree, focuses her practice on corporate intellectual property and patent protection for clients in the life sciences, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, chemical and material sciences, and consumer goods industries. Tyson helped a small life sciences company develop a groundbreaking patent portfolio and steered the development and management of a high-impact patent portfolio, contributing to a multimillion-dollar product launch. She was the first recipient of McAndrews’ Diversity in Patent Law Fellowship and the firm’s first African American female equity partner.

She’s the national vice chair of the Coalition of Women’s Initiatives in Law and is on the board of Chicago House and the Chicago Committee.

44 | CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Amy Van Gelder leads Skadden’s Chicago litigation practice, representing companies, universities, and directors and officers in commercial litigation, arbitration and trials.

She was a key member of the team that represented the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in a federal trial regarding the constitutionality of the university’s use of race in undergraduate admissions. Following SCOTUS’ decision to overturn prior law permitting the consideration of race in admissions, Van Gelder advises clients on implications on the private sector, including DEI initiatives. She’s on the boards of the nonprofit Urban Gateways and CARPLS, Cook County’s largest provider of free legal services, and has served as the partner liaison for the Women’s Initiative Network.

Office managing partner Locke Lord Andrea Verney Kerstein, a member of Locke Lord’s board and chair of the firm’s health and managed care litigation practice group, represents insurers and reinsurers in insurance and health care disputes and arbitrations, primarily in the life insurance and health insurance lines. She also has experience representing local and international plaintiffs and defendants in other complex commercial litigation and arbitration matters. During the pandemic, Kerstein blazed a trail in advocating for flexible work hours and championing work-life balance via a slew of well-received speaking engagements. She dedicates her time as a volunteer at the Sharing Resource Center at her local church in Glenview.

As a trial attorney and litigator, Paula Wegman leads Hinshaw & Culbertson’s commercial airlines section, representing global aviation and aerospace companies and product manufacturers in state and federal courts. She also counsels on regulatory and contractual issues related to airline and airport operations.

Among her wins: securing a complete dismissal for an airline in a racial discrimination case asserted by passengers who were removed from a flight following a dispute with crew members. Last year she defended a major global airline in a highly publicized sexual assault case and obtained a significantly lower judgment for her client.

Wegman was the first female chairperson of the Chicago Bar Association Aviation Committee.

Chicago nonprofit lands CLASSIFIEDS . federal water-research grant

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The “blue economy” is one of several areas of interest as Illinois chases billions of dollars in government funding

By John Pletz

The "blue economy" has Chicago researchers seeing green.

Current, a Chicago nonprofit focused on water innovation, has won a federal grant worth up to $160 million for scientific research and economic development.

The National Science Foundation will provide the money over a decade for Current and the Great Lakes ReNEW project, which aims to remove toxic chemicals and recover precious minerals from water.

“We waste too much water and the valuable materials it carries.

Too much of our water is contaminated. The common challenge is precision separation,” says Alaina Harkness, executive director of Current, which started in 2016 and has 10 employees.

It was one of just 10 applicants out of nearly 200 to be named an NSF regional innovation engine, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Jan. 30.

The move validates an economic development idea that's been gaining traction for several years: Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes as a whole are a resource that could draw business and people to Chicago and the Midwest as water becomes more scarce elsewhere.

Water technology is one of a

BANKS From Page 2

with 70.5% of its loan portfolio devoted to commercial real estate.

By comparison, the biggest banks in the Chicago area by asset size had commercial real estate loans that averaged 19.1% of their total loan portfolios, according to the Stephens data. The 20 banks on that list had assets ranging from $2.627 billion to $3.395 trillion.

Still lending Privately held Elgin Bancshares’ Union National Bank in Addison is comfortable with its loan mix, said Anthony Catanese, the bank’s business development sales manager. He noted that much of its commercial real estate exposure came from businesses in the industrial, manufacturing and wholesale sectors, which have fared better than office and multifamily home loans.

“We are still actively doing loans and doing deals,” Catanese said.

But he conceded that higher interest rates have slowed down the market. “It has been interesting,” he said. “It is tougher to pen some deals out.”

Even some of the bigger banks on the list were starting to note

half-dozen areas in which Illinois is competing for massive amounts of funding created by the Biden administration and Congress to either advance or regain technology leadership.

Illinois is central to a $1 billion project to commercialize hydrogen production. Initiatives involving the University of Illinois and the Chicago Quantum Exchange are finalists for $40 million to $70 million grants as regional tech hubs designated by the Department of Commerce.

“Industrial wastewater contains critical minerals for manufacturing of products such as electric vehicles.”

— Junhong Chen, a University of Chicago professor and Argonne National Laboratory scientist The state also is pursuing separate billion-dollar programs for next-generation semiconductor design and packaging.

The ReNEW water project aims to commercialize technologies and research underway at 15 universities in six states across the Midwest. pressure from the commercial real estate sector despite hedging their bets with a more diversified portfolio.

For the 20 biggest Chicago banks, Old Second Bancorp had the most commercial real estate exposure, accounting for 44.9% of its loan portfolio.

Old Second’s nonperforming loan ratio of 1.7% as of Dec. 31 was up from 0.9% a year earlier, with the increase coming from stress in its office loans and assisted living properties.

“We believe we are being proactive in addressing commercial real estate loans facing deterioration from higher interest rates, declining appraisal values and cash flow pressures,” Old Second CEO Jim Eccher said in the company’s most recent earnings statement.

Byline Bank said its nonperforming loans and leases at the end of 2023 totaled $64.1 million, up 78% from a year earlier, with increases from the commercial real estate sector one of the main reasons. Commercial real estate accounts for about 35% of Byline’s total loan portfolio.

The road ahead The worst may be yet to come, as the large volume of loans taken out during the low-interestrate environments of 2020 and

“We have all the research and commercialization strengths here in the Great Lakes region to become a water innovation superhighway,” says Junhong Chen, a University of Chicago professor and Argonne National Laboratory scientist who leads Great Lakes ReNEW with Harkness. “Now we can start building it.”

One goal is to figure out ways to remove so-called forever chemicals, such as those used in nonstick cookware, from water.

Researchers and companies also are focusing on water as more than just an input for industrial manufacturing, especially electric vehicles and the batteries that power them.

“Industrial wastewater contains critical minerals for manufacturing of products such as electric vehicles,” Chen said.

Many of the chemicals for batteries, such as lithium, are mined offshore, and it has become an economic and national security issue. They’re also expensive, and companies are focused on recovering them.

Gotion, a Chinese battery maker that’s building a factory near Kankakee, says it plans to incorporate a closed-loop water system at the plant that will recycle the water and recover chemicals that then will be reused in the production process.

2021 come due and borrowers face a choice of either refinancing at today's higher rates or defaulting.

“A lot of the debt is going to come to maturity this year,” said Derrick Barker, CEO of Atlantabased real estate financing company Nectar. “The assumptions that people were making are not going to have panned out and people are going to have to refinance or sell. It is just the math of the situation. We have not seen the real reckoning of what is going to happen in the real estate space.”

Regulators have been preparing for this. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently warned about the commercial real estate sector but said U.S. regulators are working to ensure that banks' loan-loss reserves and liquidity levels are adequate to cope with a potential rise in defaults.

The slowdown of activity in the commercial real estate sector throughout 2023 was a harbinger of what is coming as borrowers sought to delay the inevitable.

“There are still people that are holding out hope that interest rates are going to go down but, even if they do go down a little bit, they are not going to go down enough to bail out people that were making the most aggressive assumptions back in 2021,” Barker said.

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RADIO FLYER

Radio Flyer tested the waters in digital animation in 2016 with its short film titled “Taking Flight,” which featured the Little Red Wagon and was a tribute to the company's founder, Antonio Pasin. The roughly five-minute video, which has tallied 6.5 million views on YouTube, won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Animated Program.

From Page 3

Radio Flyer has tapped two media executives to spearhead the entertainment division: Carrie Miller, a longtime digital producer at Frederator Networks, and Deborah Frank, who previously worked at PBS Kids.

The idea is for Radio Flyer Studios to build the entertainment brand in-house before potentially partnering with distributors. “We want to develop the characters, we want to develop the story, we want to develop the world in a way that is really true to the brand and what the brand means to people,” Pasin said.

Skyrocketing sales

Vision still up in the air As for what exactly that will look like, the vision is still up in the air.

“That's been a huge source for discussion,” Pasin said. “Do we personify the wagon? Do we give the wagon eyes and a voice? We don't know yet, and I think anything is fair game. We've got a few different concepts in development.”

Whether the Little Red Wagon is a character or a prop, expect family-

SINKING From Page 1

undergoing unwanted settlement, slowly but continuously.”

Not just a local phenomenon Temperatures below various cities across the globe are warming at an average rate of 1.8 to 4.5 F (0.1 to 2.5 C) per decade.

Rotta Loria told ChicagoGlobal that underground climate change occurs in all urban areas worldwide, but some experience more severe effects than others. Intensity varies depending on the density, age, architectural characteristics, and layout of the built environment. It also varies by neighborhood, and even where you are within that neighborhood.

Small towns emit heat into the ground, but “it’s negligible compared to cities such as London, New York, Paris, Milan, Miami ...

London is probably the city where

BRUNSWICK

A scene from the “Taking Flight” short film | RADIO FLYER

friendly content from Radio Flyer Studios. As described in a release

announcing the new division: “Delightful, relatable and high-quality

stories about family, adventure, active play and outdoor exploration.”

subsurface urban heat islands are the most intense across the entire world,” said Rotta Loria.

Like Chicago, London is built on clay-heavy soil — something common near bodies of water, making the ground more susceptible to heat and deformation. And similar to many other European cities, London is dense and has several old buildings, which are particularly prone to subsurface heat diffusion. But it’s the Tube, London’s rapid transit system, that’s the biggest contributor.

With no way to properly remove the heat emitted from trains that have run deep underground for more than a century, it has baked the clay surrounding the tunnels.

Tunnels that were once 57 F (14 C) in the early 1900s now experience temperatures as high as 86 F (30 C).

immediate danger of collapsing, and therefore don’t pose any current threats to residents, over time soil deformation can affect their durability, appearance, and operational requirements. This may cause structures to tilt, underground railway tracks to buckle, and water to seep through cracked foundation and onto walls.

And those are important — and potentially costly — issues to local developers and insurance professionals. However, according to the Chicago Tribune, neither group is planning to make any changes to buildings or policies until more research on subsurface heat islands is conducted. It’s considered an emerging risk at this time, and coverage for damage “remains to be seen.”

“We’re looking at it more anecdotally than I would say we’re doing research studies on that specific thing,” said Steve Bowen, chief science officer at Gallagher

Re, a global reinsurance broker, to ChicagoGlobal. He added that it’s probably something that needs to be top of mind more than people realize, “but there’s no widespread, imminent risk.”

autonomous assistance right now."

Foulkes recruited Denari to Brunswick in 2020 with a weighty resume of 20 years in the auto industry. Denari was senior vice president of advanced driver assistance system technology for large supplier ZF Group. Once she arrived, Denari continued recruiting others from the auto industry, reaching deep into her contact base at various companies.

"There are other automotive skill sets that we can use, like user interface, supply chain management and program management."

Brunswick's vice president of electrification is Perissa Millender Bailey, who in 2022 came aboard from an 18-year stint with Ford to serve as Brunswick's director of technology and feature strategy.

Brunswick that year also recruited Brandon Ferriman as autonomy and ADAS program director. He had spent more than nine years at ZF.

Automotive heavy hitters are also on Brunswick's board of directors. Industry supply chain veteran Roger Wood is the former CEO of Tenneco Inc. and former CEO of Dana Holding Co. And MaryAnn Wright is the retired group vice president of engineering and product development of Johnson Controls Inc. She also is known from her career in engineering at Ford, where among other things, she served as chief engineer on the 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid.

How could this affect local businesses?

Although Chicago’s buildings and infrastructure aren’t in ment and no cracked hull.

From Page 3

Carryovers

mapping.

"The strategy we're pursing requires advances in autonomy, connectivity, electrification and shared access," he said of boating.

"So there's a lot of common ground between where we're headed and where auto has been going."

Picture this: One of Brunswick's 30-foot-plus, $600,000 Boston Whalers equipped with embedded advanced opticals and an autonomous drive system lets an onboard control system identify the outline of the shoreline. It detects the presence of a marina and determines the path to enter it. It scans the marina for a suitable slip for docking, and then it gently steers the boat into that slip dock with no human involve-

Some things are easy carryovers from paved streets to water, such as advance processors and object detectors, to allow boats to "see, think and act," as automotive engineers like to say.

Others are not. Lidar, a lightbased sensor and key component of autonomous driving, is less useful on water since surfaces are constantly rippling and changing, unlike steady and consistent asphalt.

"Docking turns out to be one of the biggest pain points of boat ownership," said Aine Denari, president of the Brunswick Boat Group. "There's a lot of boats around you. There is wind, there's a current, and you don't have any brakes, and you can't turn the steering wheel and have the boat go where you want it.

"So that's where we want to focus

46 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

What can be done?

Right now, it’s hard to see the effects of underground climate change, said Asal Bidarmaghz, a senior lecturer in geotechnical engineering at the University of New South Wales in Australia, in an interview with The New York Times.

“But in the next 100 years, there is a problem. And if we just sit for the next 100 years and wait 100 years to solve it, then that would be a massive problem.”

The good news is that some scientists see this as an opportunity.

Interventions aimed at enhancing energy efficiency and reutilizing subsurface heat waste are, according to Rotta Loria, “two concrete and relatively straight-

Fun products Foulkes said the company intends to have five electric outboard motors on the market this year. He said it will likely be of greatest interest in European markets and for small boats rather than large ones. Battery range anxiety is an issue on the water, just as it is on city streets. And

The toy company's decision to get back into digital production comes on the heels of the recordbreaking cinematic adaptation of another childhood relic, Barbie.

Los Angeles-based toy company Mattel partnered with Warner Bros. on the film, and while they have not publicized the specifics of that deal, the manufacturer is reported to have taken home more than $100 million in box office revenue.

Mattel's sales also skyrocketed to the tune of 10%.

The boom of “Barbie” and other works like it is not lost on Radio Flyer as it ventures back into digital storytelling. “What 'Barbie' did was amazing,” Pasin said. “We would love to achieve that kind of success.” forward mitigation strategies” that would help reduce the effect that underground climate change is having on urban areas, as well as harness renewable energy. It’s also important to revise current urban planning strategies.

Installing thermal insulation in underground structures could minimize the amount of heat escaping into the ground. And using geothermal technology to absorb heat and reuse it to warm the very structures pumping it out could be an eco-friendly and sustainable alternative.

This story first appeared in ChicagoGlobal, a joint weekly newsletter produced in partnership with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Go to ChicagoBusiness.com/ topic/ChicagoGlobal to learn more and subscribe. many boat owners tend to not want to embrace electrification at the expense of the thrill of boating excitement.

The chance to work on fun products has been part of the attraction for auto engineers to jump ship and join Brunswick, Denari said.

And the mood of the work is also a bit different from autos to boats.

In automotive, she said, the work of making vehicles electric or rendering them autonomous is under public pressure as well as regulator scrutiny. U.S. safety regulators have a strong voice in what new technologies they will permit on American highways.

In boating, safety considerations are also critical, Denari said. But new technology is not highly regulated.

In the end, it comes down to creating customer enjoyment.

Lindsay Chappell writes for Crain's sister site Automotive News.

19th-century school chapel turned house sold in Lake Forest for $1.1M

ChicagoBusiness.com President and CEO KC Crain Group publisher Jim Kirk, (312) 397-5503 or jkirk@crain.com

Built in the late 1880s for Ferry Hall, the building has a significant architectural provenance | By Dennis Rodkin tect of Chicago’s Newberry Library, the Michigan Avenue home of the Chicago Athletic Association (now a Hyatt hotel), the old Chicago Historical Society building on Dearborn Street and the University of Chicago’s main quadrangle.

Cobb also designed the legendary Potter Palmer mansion on Lake Shore Drive, a veritable castle that was demolished in 1950.

Ferry Hall, founded in 1869 as the Young Ladies Seminary at Ferry Hall, “was no mere finishing school,” according to a historical article published by Lake Forest Academy. “It provided a liberal arts education for women, including uncommonly taught subjects, such as science and mathematics.”

Enrollment peaked at 177 in 1963, according to the article, and in 1970 Ferry Hall, whose campus was near Lake Michigan in east Lake Forest, began joining with the all-male Lake Forest Academy about 4.5 miles west. The last class graduated from Ferry Hall in 1974.

Around 1980, the chapel and one other remaining Ferry Hall building were converted for residential use. Owners of the former chapel, although it’s a free-standing building, belong to the Mayflower Road Condominiums association.

Managing editor Aly Brumback Director, visual media Stephanie Swearngin Creative director Thomas J. Linden Director of audience and engagement Elizabeth Couch Assistant managing editor/special projects Ann R. Weiler Assistant managing editor/news features Cassandra West Deputy digital editor Robert Garcia Associate creative director Karen Freese Zane Digital design editor Jason McGregor Art directors Kayla Byler, Carolyn McClain, Joanna Metzger Copy editors Todd J. Behme, Beth Jachman, Tanya Meyer Political columnist Greg Hinz Notables coordinator Ashley Maahs Newsroom (312) 649-5200 or editor@chicagobusiness.com SENIOR REPORTERS Ally Marotti, John Pletz, Dennis Rodkin REPORTERS Katherine Davis, Brandon Dupré, Danny Ecker, Leigh Giangreco, Jack Grieve, Rachel Herzog, Corli Jay, Justin Laurence, Steven R. Strahler, Mark Weinraub Researcher Sophie H. Rodgers ADVERTISING Senior vice president of sales Susan Jacobs (312) 649-5492 or susan.jacobs@crain.com Sales director Christine Rozmanich (312) 649-5446 or crozmanich@crain.com Events specialist Kaari Kafer Account executives Linda Gamber, Claudia Hippel, Menia Pappas, Bridget Sevcik, Laura Warren VHT PHOTOS

A

house in Lake Forest, built in the 1880s as the chapel of a school for young women and turned residential a century later, sold for less than it went for 13 years ago.

The three-bedroom stone house with a spire and rows of Gothic arched windows sold Jan. 31 for $1.1 million. That’s about 8% off what the seller paid for the Mayflower Road property in November 2010.

Crain’s could not reach the seller, who’s identified in Lake County public records as Anne Krauss.

Her listing agent, Suzanne Myers of Coldwell Banker, did not respond to a request for comment.

The house came on the market in January 2023 at almost $1.6 million. Three price cuts, each about $100,000, took it down to about $1.28 million by September. The property went under contract in late December, and the buyers, who are not yet identified in public records, closed their purchase Jan. 31. Nancy Adelman of Compass represented them.

The house’s distinguished history isn’t only in its origins as a chapel but in its architect. Henry Ives Cobb, who designed the building with Charles Frost in 1888 for the Ferry Hall school, is also the archi-

Editor Ann Dwyer

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