Crain's Chicago Business, September 4, 2023

WHY THE WHOLE PHYSICS WORLD WILL SOON BE

WATCHING FERMILAB

By John Pletz

Fermilab is building a new accelerator that eventually will be used to shoot a beam of subatomic particles underground from the research lab in the western suburbs to a former gold mine in South Dakota in an e ort to answer one of the biggest questions in physics: How did we get here?

It starts with the Big Bang — speci cally, the rst millionth of a second.

“Standard physics says there should have been equal parts of matter and antimatter, which should have canceled each other out,” says Chris Mossey of Fermilab, in Batavia. “ at didn’t happen: ere was more matter than antimatter, so we exist. A fundamental question in physics is, why is that?”

See FERMILAB on Page 30

Who made the right choice on sports, Northwestern or U of C?

NOTABLE

WOMEN IN STEM

careers I PAGE 13

It’s more than an academic question as a football hazing scandal unfolds at the Evanston campus

By Judith Crown

It was a football powerhouse, winning seven Big Ten championships in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its running back was awarded the rst Heisman Trophy in 1935. But University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins famously abolished varsity football after the 1939 season and withdrew from the Big Ten in 1946, where it had

This city was built by immigrants, and they could help rebuild it — if the pols get out of the way. PAGE 2

been a charter member. e reason: Big-time college football and the university’s commitment to academics weren’t compatible.

e Chicago area’s other elite university — Northwestern — went the other direction, maintaining Division 1 teams in a range of sports, despite the diculty of Big Ten competition.

Which school made the right choice? e question has taken on greater salience in the wake of

FINANCE

the football hazing scandal that has tarnished Northwestern’s reputation, distracted its leaders and exposed the university to legal liability. It will become even more pressing as the costs of maintaining Division 1 athletics continue to rise.

ere’s no question that the University of Chicago and Northwestern enjoy global prominence. Both are in the top 10 in the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of the best national universities. Both have top-tier

See SPORTS on Page 31

For the rst time in many years, Discover Financial Services is a potential acquisition target. PAGE 3

Meet 100 professionals dedicated to introducing girls — particularly girls of color — to STEM

Excavation continues in three large caverns at the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility in South Dakota for Fermilab’s Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. I RYAN POSTEL, FERMILAB

The Batavia-based science center is getting set to launch a global, $4 billion effort to study one of the biggest questions physicists have ever attempted to answer I

Immigrants should be welcomed, not spurned

Four or five times a week, on my way home from the gym, I see them, a literal embodiment of our national disgrace, and a challenge to our integrity as a city. Do we still feel? Do we even know what’s in our own self-interest?

There, sprawled out in the lobby of the Town Hall 19th District police station, are immigrant refugees, a few adults but mostly kids, babies to pre-teens, a volleyball in one corner, maybe a donated bike in another. The lucky ones have a mattress; others sleep right on the floor or have a thin futon. Except for a few weeks, the slowly changing mass of faces has been there since spring. And despite the

rigors of getting here from Venezuela, Guatemala or wherever, they show no sign of wanting to go back.

Only a zombie could be blind and deaf to these people and their desire to find a better life here. Yet some Chicagoans have on their zombie faces, egged on by a failure of government and feuding Washington politicians.

It’s now been a full decade since the U.S. Senate, led by Illinois’ Dick Durbin, miraculously passed a comprehensive immigration-reform plan by a bipartisan 68-32 margin, with 14 Republicans voting aye. Though not perfect, the bill had things Democrats want, such as a path to citizenship for those who have been here many years, and things Republicans want, such as money to secure the southern border, along with a requirement for employers to hire only workers with a verified legal

right to work here.

But then-Rep. Paul Ryan caved in to the nativist right, killing the measure. If there’s any justice, “he failed” will be on Ryan’s tombstone.

Now, with Washington pointing fingers and President Joe Biden seemingly befuddled about what to do, we’re reaping the fruits of a catastrophic policy failure. Immigrants from poor, often oppressive countries in Central and South America continue to storm the border, and because they don’t have the same political cover that, say, Cuban refugees do in Florida, they have become a human football, with 13,000 and counting bused here by governors such as Texas’ Greg Abbott, who wants us to share his pain but also wants to score a few political points.

Having declared itself a “sanctuary city,” Chicago can hardly turn

them away. Mayor Brandon Johnson and predecessor Lori Lightfoot get credit for at least trying. But “trying” increasingly means housing people in neighborhoods around the city that aren’t majority-Latino. And some of the opposition has been ugly, with people literally saying “they” ought to go back because “we” have to take care of our own rst.

I get it. But stepping on someone else to step up is a lousy path to success. Moreover, it ignores the fact that an aging city with a declining population and an iffy economy badly needs the new blood and energy and taxes that immigrants bring. Handled correctly, this influx can be a plus.

There is a worsening labor shortage in this town — and not just at hotels and restaurants. Take the Chicago Transit Authority, where bus driver jobs that pay $82,000 a year after

three years are going begging. How come? The agency has been trying and even has arranged for classes to help would-be bus jockeys get their licenses. But of every 10 people who apply, fewer than one ends up finishing the training, passing the drug test and otherwise clearing the bar. You think some hungry immigrants might be able to do better, so that we could count on the CTA to meet its schedule again?

That’s why Johnson, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and even some Republicans — such as Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb — are urging Biden to take a little political risk and issue rules allowing refugees (who are in this country legally) to work while their cases are adjudicated.

We’ll see what the White House does. Chicago was built by immigrants — literally. And they could help rebuild it, if the pols get out of the way.

e Mapes trial is only the latest wake-up call for voters

With the near-constant corruption charges and trials in Illinois ensnaring government o cials at all levels, it’s perhaps understandable that we become inured to it all. We’re the frogs, ever so slowly and obliviously, boiling in a pot of water. It’s time we hop out of the pot and pay heed.

e recent federal corruption trials of the “ComEd Four”

and Tim Mapes, former chief of sta to ex-Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, have provided every Illinoisan with a behind-the-curtain peek at how our government and elections are being manipulated and controlled in unethical ways.

e release of transcripts of Mapes’ testimony before a grand jury, and of wiretapped recordings between him and Madigan friend and former lobbyist Mike McClain, reveal all manner of ways in which everyone was about protecting Madigan and preserving his and his party’s control.

Speaking about a former colleague who might have urged his own abrupt ring after decades of service, Mapes told McClain in one call: “Uh, he’s protecting the boss. Now he views that as his mission. at is part of the mission.”

It was part of the mission for Madigan’s inner circle and for former Commonwealth Edison o cials who went to extreme lengths to ensure our elections

were not fair or above-board. ey made sure the drawing of districts, which set the table for our elections and the rest of our government, could continue to be done behind closed doors to the advantage of the majority political party.

As far back as 2014, Madigan lawyer Mike Kasper intervened in a hearing concerning the validation of scores of signatures collected to try to get a question on ballots statewide asking voters if they wanted a non-political group of residents drawing districts for elections. He registered as an opponent of that e ort with the state elections board and said his client was the “Committee to Protect the Illinois Constitution.”

In 2015 and beyond, Kasper, former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and former ComEd CEO Frank Clark went so far as to create a group that opposed independent redistricting e orts and sent o cial-looking letters and political ad mailers throughout Illinois, wrongly suggesting that having non-politicians draw maps was going to suppress minority voting rights.

In fact, in California’s rst use of an independent commission, the resulting election produced six more Latino assembly seats, one new Asian assembly seat, one additional Latino Senate seat and one added Latino congressional district. e number of Latino o cials doubled overall, and there were nine more total opportunities for minority voters in California to select representatives of their choosing than existed when politicians drew the boundaries.

And, in fact, after the most recent redistricting in Illinois, it was Black and Latino groups who

sued, unsuccessfully, because they believed the map drawers diluted their representation rights. As noted by the Brennan Center for Justice, “Black-led organizations allege the state house map cracks the Black community of the East St. Louis area into two state house districts to dilute its voting strength and shore up white Democratic incumbents. Suits by Latino voters allege that the maps drawn by Democrats intentionally perpetu-

ate a long history of discrimination against Latino voters by packing and cracking them, which in turn dilutes their political power.”

If you’re inclined to think ComEd o cials were sending these mailers for above-board reasons, think harder. Beginning on page 49 of the Mapes grand jury transcript, federal prosecutors note that Kasper, Hooker and Clark sued to stop an independent redistricting commission from getting

before voters, and, Mapes testi ed, “there may have been a phone call or two” that representatives and Madigan might have been listening in on where Hooker described what he was doing to thwart removing politicians from controlling how districts are drawn. Drawing districts is where it all begins. Other than donations, few things are more valuable to

MADELEINE DOUBEK ON GOVERNMENT

Greg Hinz

Madeleine Doubek

AbbVie blockbuster is on Biden’s drug price-negotiation hit list

Imbruvica, which AbbVie co-developed with Janssen Biotech, is among 10 medications for which the government said it intends to negotiate prices

By Katherine Davis

Although AbbVie’s leukemia drug Imbruvica is now among the rst targets for price negotiations in 2026 under President Joe Biden’s In ation Reduction Act, the biggest threat to the North Chicago-based pharmaceutical giant likely remains biosimilar competition for its best-selling rheumatoid arthritis drug, Humira.

Imbruvica, which AbbVie co-developed with Janssen Biotech, was among 10 medications the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, identi ed Aug. 29 as those it intends to negotiate prices with. e drugs were chosen because they have been on the market for a prolonged period and account for the largest share of Medicare Part D spending. e Medicare negotiation and other In ation Reduction Act

Discover’s woes make it potential takeover target

A beaten-up stock price and a sudden need for a new CEO are the kinds of problems that get would-be acquirers sharpening their pencils

Regulatory woes at Discover Financial Services that led to the ouster of CEO Roger Hochschild also open the door to potential acquisition overtures that would have been all but unthinkable earlier this year.

Riverwoods-based Discover is su ering two misfortunes that typically get would-be acquirers sharpening their pencils. Its stock is at a low not seen in well over two years. And it is scrambling to nd a new CEO, engaging in a search for outside candidates as well as considering internal possibilities.

e credit card company is a rare plum in the nancial-services landscape — a large consumer lender with a track record of top credit-quality performance. Until recently, Discover’s business was considered strong enough to safeguard its independence. Now that’s less certain.

Still, an acquirer likely would have to o er top dollar, says analyst Michael Miller of Morningstar in Chicago. Miller thinks an o er in the $30 billion range — a 34% premium to Discover’s stock market value — would get Discover directors’ attention.

at was before a series of regulatory stumbles, which led Hochschild In July to admit that the company had underinvested for many years in systems and personnel focused on following the many rules imposed on consumer lenders. e company has said it expects a consent order soon from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. related to consumer protections.

It also has suspended share repurchases for the second time in less than a year due to the regulatory uncertainty.

Imbruvica made up 13% of AbbVie’s $58.1 billion in sales in 2022.

“It’s just the question of, what does the board think Discover is worth?” Miller says.

Not long ago, stock market investors thought Discover was worth quite a bit more. e company’s market capitalization of $22.4 billion is down 16% from $26.7 billion at the end of 2022.

e sudden removal of Hochschild, which took investors by surprise, led to a sharp sell-o in shares. After a 12% decline to $90.35 since his departure, Discover stock was trading late Aug. 29 at about seven times analysts’

See ABBVIE on Page 31 See DISCOVER on Page 30

Pair of deals ends drought for local bank

The MSU Federal Credit Union has agreed to buy McHenry Savings Bank and Algonquin Sta te Bank in a slow year for such transactions

Steve Daniels

In one of the slowest years on record for bank mergers, the Chicago market nally has tallied a couple of deals.

e McHenry-based parent of McHenry Savings Bank in Chicago’s far northwest suburbs is selling to Michigan State University Federal Credit Union. So is Algonquin State Bank, based in that suburb about 13 miles south of McHenry.

e cash transaction for the larger McHenry Savings, expected to close late in the rst quarter of 2024, is priced at a range between $36 million and $38

million, or $39 to $41 per share.

e nal price will depend on contingencies between now and closing, according to a joint press release announcing the deal.

With $314 million in assets as of June 30 and tangible shareholder equity of more than $23 million, McHenry Savings is selling for about 1.5 times its book value — a decent valuation in these uncertain times for banks.

e sale comes ve years after McHenry Savings CEO and veteran Chicago-area banker Donald Wilson led a $23 million recapitalization of the then-troubled lender.

Wilson now has spearheaded two turnarounds of nancially ailing local community banks. In 2015, he sold the parent of Community Bank-Wheaton/Glen Ellyn to Rosemont-based Wintrust Financial for $42.5 million after leading a nancial rescue of the community bank.

“Given the current environment, this is a really good win for all involved,” Wilson said of the McHenry deal in an interview.

For the East Lansing, Mich., credit union, the deal jumpstarts its already-laid plans to enter the Chicago market. MSU Federal Credit Union earlier this year announced it was opening

mergers

ve branches in the city, with future locations in Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Old Town and the Gold Coast.

e acquisition of McHenry Savings, whose bank charter dates to 1955, and $145 million-asset Algonquin State Bank gives the credit union toeholds in the far northern suburbs.

MSU, which announced the Algonquin deal, didn’t disclose terms. If at the same book-value multiple as McHenry, the price would be around $12 million.

Credit unions intent on expansion increasingly have become the most active buyers of community banks. e trend has fueled banker complaints about what they see as unfair competition given that credit unions are technically nonpro t and don’t

have to pay income taxes.

e MSU Federal Credit Union deals carry more logic than most, though. More than 10,000 MSU students and alumni live in the Chicago area, the credit union said when it announced its branch-opening plans. at gives the credit union a strong base of potential customers not enjoyed by commercial banks when they enter the market.

Wilson noted that the deal also will bring to MSU Federal Credit Union current McHenry Savings employees, so it won’t have to sta its new branches entirely with new hires.

When the deals are done, the Michigan credit union will have $8.3 billion in assets, $6.3 billion in loans and $6.8 billion in deposits, the credit union said.

I

Steve Daniels

BLOOMBERG

President Joe Biden

Until recently, Discover’s business was considered strong enough to safeguard its independence.

State Farm accused of sharing personal health info

The Bloomington-based insurer calls ‘without merit’ a lawsuit alleging the company illegally gave sensitive medical records to a for-pro t data rm

State Farm is ghting a lawsuit seeking class-action status that accuses the insurance giant of illegally furnishing to a for-pro t data rm sensitive health information of individuals ling claims with the insurer.

at data rm — Insurance Services O ce, or ISO, which also is a defendant in the lawsuit — then adds the information to a database that it accesses to help client insurers and others underwrite and price future policies, according to the complaint.

e suit, originally led in late July in Cook County Circuit Court, was moved to federal court in Chicago.

bert said in an email. “Verisk is proud to be an ethical steward of data, trusted to work closely with both insurers and regulators, and we are con dent that we have complied with all applicable laws and agreements.”

Group of law rms

e suit — brought by Illinois plainti s Mary Brown, Andy Velasquez, William Midgett and Diane Coughlin, all of whom were injured in auto accidents and led claims with State Farm — is being brought by a group of rms including prominent Chicago personal-injury plainti s’ rm Corboy & Demetrio.

medical professionals are, ac cording to past rulings by the Illi nois Supreme Court. at’s ac cording to the complaint.

e suit is intended to cover a class made up just of Illinoisans who’ve provided their medical records to State Farm, not a na tional class — perhaps because of the Illinois Supreme Court’s past legal rulings. Corboy & Demetrio wouldn’t comment be yond what’s in the complaint.

State Farm in a ling said it “denies the allegations in the complaint, which are factually and legally baseless.”

Added spokeswoman Gina Morss-Fischer in an email, “ e ling of a lawsuit does not substantiate the allegations within the complaint. State Farm will not comment on the speci cs of what is alleged except to say we believe the litigation is without merit.”

“As a matter of policy, we do not comment on pending litigation,” ISO spokeswoman Ali Her-

At the heart of the litigation is an insurance-industry practice that the complaint says has been going on for decades. ISO was established in 1971 by a group of ratings agencies as a nonpro t. It became a for-pro t company in 1993 and in 2009 went public as Verisk Inc. ISO now is a unit of Jersey City, N.J.-based Verisk, according to the lawsuit.

Bloomington-based State Farm, the largest home and auto insurer in the U.S., often is privy to the health records of individuals injured in car accidents when they le claims tied to their injuries.

Under the federal Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, or HIPAA, insurers like State Farm are governed by the same rules governing handling of personal medical information as insurers and other

“ISO’s collection and process ing of personal information gen erates billions of dollars annual ly, all at the expense of people whose personal medical infor mation is being used without their knowledge for nancial gain,” the lawsuit states.

“State Farm never noti ed plainti s or class members that their private medical information was submitted to ISO,” the complaint goes on. “ISO never noti ed plainti s or class members that it continues to retain and pro t o their protected health information.”

State Farm and other insurers bene t by having access to the analysis ISO performs with information including the claims records that have totaled in the tens of billions over the years, according to the complaint.

“In violation of plainti s’ right to privacy, defendants have created a symbiotic relationship where ISO runs a business processing massive amounts of premiums and loss data provided by insurers, including State Farm, and State Farm relies on ISO’s analysis of this data to raise premiums and deny coverage to individuals,” the lawsuit states.

Greater Chicago Food Depository taps local vendors to feed migrants

In an e ort to feed the city’s growing migrant population, the Greater Chicago Food Depository has been working with local food vendors to source meals.

“We have been working with the Greater Chicago Food Depository now, probably a little bit more than six months, preparing speci c meals for the migrants at various locations,” said Anthony Waller, CEO of Catering Out the Box, a catering company based in West Gar eld Park.

Man-Yee Lee, spokeswoman for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, estimates the total price behind the e ort at somewhere in the millions of dollars. “We’re covering this expense mainly

through donations. However, this response requires a combination of public funding and private philanthropy and we are currently actively pursuing to secure both.”

Bringing in a team to cater to the speci c tastes of the newly arrived population, Waller says his company created a new menu to provide meals seven days a week. Migrants are currently getting their meals through two locations on the North and West sides.

Waller connected with the food bank by way of networking through business development incubator e Hatchery Chicago.

“ ey were one of the rst people that we thought of because of the commitment that (Waller) has to the local community and

to creating jobs and opportunities for historically disinvested communities and neighborhoods that really t into the bigger goals of the food depository,” said Lee.

e catering company has also served sta meals to the food bank, fostering a relationship that would eventually grow to tackle a bigger problem.

“Food people nd food people,” said Waller.

Additional partners

Other partners the food bank has teamed up with for the e ort, which began last September, include Chi-Care, Food Hero, Nuevo Leon and Los Comales. Lee emphasized that the e ort does not take away from existing hun-

A key question not answered by the lawsuit is whether ISO pays State Farm and other insurers anything for the data.

ISO on the other hand? “ISO’s collection and processing of personal information generates billions of dollars annually, all at the expense of people whose personal medical information is being used without their knowledge for nancial gain,” the lawsuit alleges.

“In essence, detailed protected health information provided to State Farm to evaluate, litigate, or settle a claim could end up in the hands of Allstate, Liberty Mutual, or any other ISO-participating organization,” according to the complaint.

Ownership issue

State Farm should have no right to hold onto the individual medical records once it adjudicates a claim and should either return them or destroy them at that point, the plainti s contend.

“At the conclusion of the litiga tion or proceeding for which the protected health information is requested, rather than returning or destroying the records containing a claimant’s protected health information, State Farm retains and uses the claims data, which includes protected health information, for developing rates and underwriting,” according to the lawsuit. “ e provision of protected health information for purposes of adjudicating or settling a claim does not transfer ownership of the protected health information, nor does it allow State Farm to sell or transfer that protected health information to third parties for purposes unrelated to the litigation or proceeding.”

e plainti s are requesting a court injunction to stop State Farm from continuing to hold onto and share personal health records with others. It’s asking for unspeci ed actual and punitive damages.

ger relief programs the organization provides.

“We believe that food is a basic human right. It’s as simple as that,” said Lee.

“Everyone in our community, whether you were born here, whether you’re a longtime neighbor, or whether you are newly arrived from other parts of the world, everyone deserves access to quality, nutritious food in order to survive. at is what we believe,” Lee added.

e number of arrivals in the

state has totaled more than 13,000 since last year, according to a letter recently penned by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security asking for expedited work authorizations for asylum-seekers.

e Chicago City Council approved $51 million to cover the migrant response through June, while the state has allocated $200 million and the federal government has provided $21 million to the city to aid asylum-seekers.

The food bank emphasizes that the effort to provide for the city’s growing population of asylum-seekers does not take away from existing programs

Corli Jay

Steve Daniels

The suit is intended to cover a class made up just of Illinoisans who’ve provided their medical records to State Farm, not a national class.

NEWSCOM

Investor sues Wirtz company over short-form merger

A minority investor in American Mart Corp., a holding company controlled by the Wirtz family, is challenging the company’s recent merger that cashed out minority stockholders at $375 a share.

e lawsuit, led in Delaware Chancery Court last month, alleges the defendant, the newly formed American Mart Company LLC, broke Delaware law and failed in its duciary duty to disclose important nancial details of its short-form merger with American Mart Corp. on Nov. 21, 2022.

e suit, which seeks class-action status, was led on behalf of plainti David Abraham, who, according to the lawsuit, was a shareholder in American Mart Corp.

Under Delaware corporate law, a parent corporation owning 90% or more of the stock can force the minority shareholders out for a fair value cash buyout. But, the lawsuit alleges, at the time of the merger, American Mart Company LLC, was not the shareholder of record and of the right size, a violation of Section 18-209(i) of the Delaware Limited Liability Company Act.

Records show that “AMC-LLC could not have owned the required outstanding voting power of the

company to complete a short-form merger,” the complaint reads. “ e merger must be declared void.”

‘Giant hammer’

e second allegation against American Mart Company LLC was that it failed in its “ duciary duty to the company’s minority stockholders to disclose in the notice all information material to a stockholder’s decision to accept the merger consideration or demand appraisal,” the complaint reads.

“AMC-LLC breached that duty by omitting from the notice basic and fundamental information respecting the value of the company,” the complaint alleges. “No information whatsoever is disclosed regarding the reasons or the background of the merger.” e complaint also alleges the defendant “was unjustly enriched” by refusing the plainti ’s demands for an appraisal of the company’s assets, which would impact its share price.

e plainti seeks to void the merger and asks for monetary relief.

In a statement, the defendant’s counsel said “the complaint contains numerous inaccuracies” and that Abraham “owned less than 0.1% of total shares in American Mart and appears to be trying to take advantage of a leadership tran-

sition within the company.”

e lawsuit, according to DePaul University law professor Greg Mark, is nothing out of the ordinary when dealing with mergers, especially large ones.

“ e real question is: What are those minority shares worth?” he said, adding that the complaint’s intent to invalidate the merger is “mainly a giant hammer used to try and extract more value on behalf of the plainti .”

Behind nixed deal for US Steel is a familiar name in Chicago business

Among US steel executives gathering for a major conference in Atlanta last month, two questions dominated the conversation: Will US Steel Corp. be acquired? And is James Bouchard for real?

e drama trans xing the industry began Aug. 13, when US Steel revealed it was reviewing multiple proposals from third parties. Within hours, Cleveland-Cli s Inc., a domestic rival, disclosed a takeover o er — which US Steel then rejected. One day later, Esmark, a steel distributor controlled by Bouchard, announced it was making a higher, all-cash proposal valuing its target at $7.8 billion.

Cut to Aug. 23 and a fresh plot twist: Esmark said it’s no longer pursuing a takeover, citing the United Steelworkers union’s support for Cli s.

By that point, skepticism was already swirling around the Esmark proposal. While Bouchard, 62, is well known within the US steel world and has a track record of dealmaking, closely held Esmark was an unlikely suitor. A distributor of the metal rather than a producer, the company is also a conglomerate involved in diverse sectors ranging from aviation and real estate and has about $500 million in annual revenue. An acquisition of US Steel, which had $21

billion in sales last year, would have been its biggest transaction by far.

e steel industry is in Bouchard’s blood. His father and mother were employees at Chicago-based Inland Steel, where he also spent much of his early career.

Esmark name

With the backing of Donald Kelly, a premier dealmaker of the ’80s in Chicago, Bouchard and his brother Craig revived and built up the old Esmark name in his native city during the 2000s by buying struggling U.S. steel service centers. ey won a proxy ght against a much larger Brazilian rival to gain control of steelmaker Wheeling-Pittsburgh Corp. in the mid2000s. Wheeling-Pittsburgh became part of Esmark, which was sold to Russia’s Severstal for about $1.2 billion in 2008, just before the global nancial crisis and the resulting collapse in metals prices. Esmark later moved its corporate HQ from Chicago to Pittsburgh.

In a 2016 interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Bouchard described his frustration at waiting for the steel market to recover. Steel prices nally started to rebound in 2017, after President Donald Trump said he would impose tari s on imports. ey then surged to a record in 2021 on the economic rebound from pandemic-related shutdowns.

Analysts had also voiced doubts about an Esmark-US Steel combination. Timna Tanners at Wolfe Research said combining a so-called steel service center like Esmark and a steel producer simply didn’t make sense strategically or competitively. Exane BNP Paribas analysts Tristan Gresser and Xin Wang said they talked to more than 30 investors and none of them took the proposal seriously.

Until Aug. 23, Esmark’s Aug. 14 press release was the only public documentation related to the offer. It included a lengthy biographical section about Bouchard that stretched back to his high school days. It also lacked the kind of detail on things likenancing and terms and conditions that one would typically expect, said Donna Hitscherich, a co-director of the private-equity program and faculty member of Columbia Business School. “ is seems as though it could be a trial balloon,” she said prior to Esmark’s about-face.

US Steel shares dropped as much as 2.1% Aug. 24, extending their drop following Esmark’s withdrawal. ey were already trading below both Cli s’ o er and Esmark’s $35-per-share proposal, indicating investors weren’t anticipating an imminent bidding war.

Despite the doubts, Bouchard was unbowed when he spoke in an interview last month in Chicago as he watched the Chicago Cubs play the White Sox. Dressed

e values in question, according to the lawsuit, are the two main assets within the holding company: Breakthru Beverage Group, a top liquor wholesaler with billions in annual revenue, and 333 Building Corp., which owns a 35-story building at 333 N. Michigan Ave.

But the evaluations of those assets, according to the suit, were insu cient and lacked detail on how the defendant arrived at their share price.

e “historical pro t margins are not disclosed, and only summary annual nancial statements for years 2021 and 2022 are included in the notice,” the complaint reads. “It is impossible to know what historical pro t margin is being assumed. And even if a stockholder could determine what the company intended, no information is provided on what projected increases in costs and prices management expected.”

in shorts, Crocs and an untucked button-up and sitting in his suite at Wrigley Field surrounded by relatives and friends, he said US Steel supported his bid.

“I just got o a call with the chairman and CEO” of US Steel, David Burritt, Bouchard said. “I’ve got their back.” He also said in a separate conversation that he had discussed the deal with United Steelworkers union President Tom Conway and received his backing.

A US Steel spokesperson said Burritt didn’t talk to Bouchard. Conway also denied talking to him.

Bouchard said during the ballgame interview that he was in town for meetings with Bank of Montreal, which had agreed to provide $10 billion to fund his offer, and that US Steel assets would be used as collateral. A spokesperson at BMO declined to comment.

In a response to additional questions on Aug. 23 — just hours before Esmark withdrew its interest in US Steel — Bouchard said

via text message that BMO was one of Esmark’s banks, but that he hadn’t actually discussed the US Steel situation with the lender.

‘I love US Steel’

Esmark has previously held talks about a potential bid for Altos Hornos de Mexico, the steelmaker known as AHMSA, according to Roberto Alvarez, who runs Esmark’s service-center business. AHMSA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Yet it’s US Steel, which traces its roots back to the days of J. Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, that had captured Bouchard’s imagination. Speaking by phone soon after Esmark announced its o er, Bouchard emphasized his history with US Steel and said he wanted to prevent it from falling to a foreign bidder.

“I love US Steel,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Joe Deaux writes for Bloomberg News. Crain’s Robert Garcia contributed.

Joe Deaux

Brandon Dupré

Jim Bouchard, a veteran of the steel roller coaster, trans xed the entire industry with an all-cash offer

US Steel had $21 billion in sales last year. BLOOMBERG

333. N. Michigan Ave. (center) is owned by the 333 Building Corp., which is controlled by the Wirtz family. I COSTAR GROUP

Downtown apartment rents in ‘calm before the storm’

Danny Ecker

Tenants in downtown Chicago apartments are feeling the pinch of rising rents as demand keeps surging. But it’s nothing compared to the more painful squeeze that’s on the horizon.

After consecutive quarters of slowing rent growth, net rent at top-tier, or Class A, apartment buildings downtown increased by 3.3% during the second quarter to a record-high $3.76 per square foot, according to the Chicago o ce of appraisal and consulting rm Integra Realty Resources. Net rent includes concessions like free rent.

e data shows the continued resilience of demand for rental units in the heart of the city, even as demand for commercial properties like o ces and retail remain sluggish coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. While people may not want to work and shop in the city as regularly as they used to, they still want to live there.

e rent increase last quarter was in line with the average over the past decade, suggesting the market is neither too hot nor too cold. But if Integra’s projections are right, it won’t be long before those modest increases turn into spikes. e main culprit: Developers aren’t starting enough new apartment projects right now.

After developers complete

around 2,900 units this year and another 3,600 next year — fairly typical annual numbers over the past decade — Integra forecasts the city will only get 400 new apartments in 2025, which would be the fewest for any single year since 2004.

“ is is the calm before the storm for renters,” said Integra Senior Managing Director Ron DeVries. “Rents are going to spike in 2025.”

Landlords can thank higher interest rates for that. Developers have struggled to land nancing for new apartment projects over the past year, nearly shutting o the new supply pipeline. at means a typical amount of demand in two years will far outpace the number of new apartments in the market, a recipe for landlord pricing power.

Higher borrowing costs have also helped juice demand, as some renters that would traditionally opt to move out and buy a house aren’t doing so.

In newer buildings downtown, one-bedroom apartments are renting for around $3,000 per month, a number that would have been hard to reach before the COVID-19 pandemic, DeVries said.

e interest rate impact isn’t unique to Chicago, but it has big implications for the city’s lack of affordable housing. While rising rents could help developers start to land nancing for new projects and relieve the supply constraint, some

Downtown residents give thumbs down to NASCAR

Greg Hinz

NASCAR’s rst Chicago street race ought to be its last, according to a survey of downtown residents who had to deal with the racing spectacle rsthand.

e online poll was conducted for Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, whose ward includes the central business district. e survey was open to anyone who chose to participate and thus is not scienti c and may have attracted a disproportionately negative sample. But Reilly, in an email to his constituents, said he will rely on the results as well as the ndings of an upcoming economic impact study in deciding whether to continue or cancel the NASCAR event next year.

Of the 662 ward residents who responded to the survey, 58% said they were “negatively impact(ed)” by the closure of DuSable Lake Shore Drive and other thoroughfares, compared to just 34.7% who said they were not.

Almost as many, 54.5%, said they would not support a future NASCAR race here. Races each of the next two years are scheduled under terms of a contract between the city and the racing group, but either side has the right in the next few months

to cancel the deal. Only a little over a third of those who replied said they want NASCAR to return, 37.2%.

Residents were more evenly divided on how well NASCAR did reaching out to residents and civic groups to try to resolve any possible problems. A total of 38.7% were satis ed and 32.3% were dissatised, with 29% identifying as “neutral” on the subject.

Another City Council member whose ward covers much of downtown, Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, said the poll results “track what I’m hearing” from constituents.

NASCAR does deserve credit for trying to work with him to minimize problems, Hopkins added, saying the group made “Herculean e orts” to be helpful. But overall, “most people I talk to don’t think that we need to see this race continuing year after year. . . . ere were a lot of inconveniences for little payo . We don’t need NASCAR.”

Hopkins conceded that the event helped Chicago get some needed positive international publicity and said he’s willing to change his mind if an economic impact study being conducted by Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism arm, “is done fairly, and it shows show clear economic bene t to the city from the race.”

may be scared o by rising property taxes and new measures that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration could back, such as a higher real estate transfer tax.

“You have to build new units to add to the supply, then everything falls down the line in terms of what happens to the lower quality units,” DeVries said. “ is is going to further add to the housing shortage crisis.”

Net rents at less-expensive, or Class B, apartment buildings hit a record-high $3.21 per square foot in the second quarter, according to Integra. at’s more than it cost to rent in a Class A building just before the pandemic.

Lower property values

Overall occupancy at downtown apartments stood at 95.1% midway through the year, according to Integra data, on the high

end of what the rm considers a stabilized market. e rate was 95.2% at the same time last year.

Of course, higher interest rates also have a big downside for landlords, particularly those with maturing debt. Despite strong demand and rising rents, the increased cost of capital has driven down property values and made it di cult for owners to re nance.

Some examples of the value loss:

e 329-unit Lake & Wells apartment tower in the Loop sold in April for $98 million, well below the building’s $123 million construction cost. In Streeterville, the 398unit North Water Apartments recently fetched a sale price of $173 million, down from the $240 million it sold for in 2016. Just before the summer, Houston-based real estate rm Hines paid around $73 million for the 199-unit apartment building at 165 N. Desplaines St., a price that

people familiar with the property said was far less than it would have fetched a few years ago.

“If you put long-term debt on your building and nothing is coming due soon, you’re sitting in a great spot right now,” DeVries said. “ e problem is, a lot of people have debt (maturities) happening, which is why (a lot) is for sale.”

Some of the rent increases on the horizon will vary by location. e West Loop, for example, has more than 2,000 units expected to deliver next year, according to Integra. at’s more than all other downtown submarkets combined, meaning West Loop rent hikes might be kept in check.

“But in Streeterville, River North, the Gold Coast — for people that really want to live there, there could be more upward pressure (on rents) next year,” DeVries said. “In 2025, you’ll see it across the board.”

Higher interest rates have choked the number of new apartment projects in the works over the past year. That means big rent spikes are likely.

Developer Related Midwest announced the rst move-ins in June at The Row Fulton Market, a 300-unit apartment tower at 164 N. Peoria St. COSTAR GROUP

Wacker Drive landlord pays off debt after a string of tenant losses

After watching some of its largest tenants leave for newer digs downtown, the owner of one of the city’s most distinctive o ce towers is signaling it’s ready to start competing again for new users.

e State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio last month paid o a $150 million mortgage tied to the o ce building at 77 W. Wacker Drive, according to people familiar with the property. e loan from Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance was due to mature Sept. 1, Cook County property records show.

e move makes one of the country’s largest public pension funds the free and clear owner of the 51-story tower at a time when many o ce landlords are surrendering their properties to their lenders. Facing remote work’s assault on o ce demand and higher interest rates hammering their property values, a number of ofce owners have watched their bottom lines get dramatically thinner or been hit with foreclosure lawsuits.

By paying o its mortgage, STRS Ohio is showing its con dence in the future of the glassy, postmodern skyscraper where it has su ered a losing streak of big tenants. e tower is just 62% leased today after law rms Jones Day and Morgan Lewis & Bockius decamped for the

o ce tower at 110 N. Wacker Drive, according to real estate information company CoStar Group. at is well below the 77% average for downtown o ce buildings and unusually low for a top-tier, or Class A, ofce building along the Chicago River, which has proven to be an attractive amenity for tenants.

‘Bold statement’

e newest big defection: Greenberg Traurig, one of Chicago’s biggest law rms, plans to move out of the tower in 2025 for a new building in the Fulton Market District. at departure would leave 77 W. Wacker more than half empty, barring new tenants it lands before then.

STRS Ohio’s strategy behind the loan payo and its plans for the ofce tower are not clear, and a spokesman for the $88.8 billion pension fund did not respond to a request for comment.

Re nancing the tower would have been expensive, given the spike in interest rates since it took out its previous mortgage. STRS Ohio’s deep pockets allow it to be exible in ways many other landlords can’t today, which could give it an advantage as it pursues new users. O ce landlords typically have to follow certain rules tied to their debt when it comes to lease terms, for example, handcu ng their ability to negotiate with prospective tenants when the market is as weak as it is now.

At a time when some companies are wary of signing a lease with a landlord that might be in danger of losing their building to its lender or unable to ful ll commitments like putting up cash for o ce build-outs, STRS Ohio is sending a message that it will be sticking around and in a strongnancial position to make deals.

“ ey no longer have that loan hanging over their head while competing owners might give their buildings back (to their lenders),” said mortgage broker Dave Hendrickson, senior managing director in the Chicago ofce of real estate services rm Walker & Dunlop. Amid rampant o ce distress, “it’s as strong as it

gets. at’s a bold statement.”

Appeared in movies

Designed by late Spanish architect Ricardo Bo ll, the 959,258-square-foot Wacker Drive building was completed in 1992 and originally known as the R.R. Donnelly Building, with the printing and information services company serving as its anchor tenant. It was renamed the United Building in 2007, when the airline relocated its headquarters to the building.

Widely recognized for its topoor Greek pediment, the tower has appeared in a number of movies, including a prominent role in the 1998 action-thriller

“ e Negotiator.”

STRS Ohio acquired the building in 2008. Capital One is the largest tenant in the tower today, according to CoStar Group. e McLean, Va.-based credit card giant relocated some of its suburban employees to the o ce after putting its big Rolling Meadows o ce up for sublease during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to the Wacker Drive tower, STRS Ohio owns a handful of retail properties downtown as well as the Streeter, a 481-unit apartment tower at 345 E. Ohio St. e pension fund owned $11.6 billion worth of real estate as of the end of June 2022, according to its most recent annual report.

Law would let towns opt out of Illinois’ rent control ban

Since 1997 the state has prohibited local governments from implementing rent control. A bill in Spring eld would let them vote to drop the moratorium.

Individual towns and cities could decide the statewide ban on rent control no longer applies to them — that is, if legislation proposed in Spring eld passes.

Rent control has been prohibited everywhere in Illinois since 1997, but in the past several years, a ordable housing advocates hoping to put caps on fast-rising rents have been pushing to lift the ban statewide.

Now state Rep. Hoan Huynh, whose 13th District includes north lakefront neighborhoods heavily populated by renters, is pushing to let municipalities to lift the ban within their own boundaries.

HB 4104, also known as the Let the People Lift the Ban Act, is Huynh’s proposal, introduced June 6 in the Illinois House. It would allow local governments to adopt rent-control provisions if a majority of voters in the locality support a pro-rent control referendum.

Huynh did not respond to requests for comment on the proposal, but in an Aug. 15 press re-

lease he was quoted saying, “Our bill would put power in the hands of everyday Illinois residents who have been disenfranchised to lift the ban on rent control.”

Voter support

Wherever it’s been put on the ballot, rent control has received support. In 2018 and 2019, more than 60% of voters approved in all three advisory referenda put before several Chicago precincts in wards with a high proportion of renters.

e push to reintroduce rent control simmered down during the COVID pandemic, when Illinois provided millions of dollars in assistance to renters using federal money from the CARES Act. With those forms of aid now largely gone, the drive for rent control is reviving.

While statewide e orts to lift the ban move slowly, “it makes a lot of sense to empower local communities to make the decision themselves if they should opt out of the current ban on rent control,” said state Sen. Mike Simmons, whose

7th District covers the lakefront from Rogers Park to Wrigley Field.

“ ere is de nitely growing unrest with folks who are renters all across the state who feel like they’re being gouged by double-digit rent increases,” Simmons said. “ ey’re seniors on xed incomes, middle-aged adults who are empty-nesters or younger employees who can’t a ord the rent increases.”

Opponents of rent control, including property owner groups, contend that imposing a cap on rent increases will sti e landlords’ investments in improving their properties and ultimately lead to lower-quality rental housing.

If Huynh’s legislation passes, the route to rent control would likely still entail at least two more steps:

rst, a municipal referendum to gauge local support for rent control. en, if a majority supports rent control, the creation of a speci c program to implement it. e legislation does not provide for a swift single step where a local government opts out of the ban and directly into rent control.

Simmons said the aim of the proposed legislation is local control over the question. “It’s a common-sense proposition to let local communities opt out of a ban that’s been in place for almost 30

years,” he said. “It’s a good democratic step forward.”

Huynh introduced the legislation after the General Assembly adjourned in late May. It has not yet been assigned to a committee.

Danny Ecker

Dennis Rodkin

77 W. Wacker Drive (center). COSTAR GROUP

The push to reintroduce rent control simmered down during the COVID pandemic, when Illinois provided millions of dollars in assistance to renters using federal money from the CARES Act. With those forms of aid now largely gone, the drive for rent contol is reviving. GETTY

Home prices at in U.S., keep rising in Chicago area

Dennis Rodkin

Home prices grew faster in the Chicago area than in any other major U.S. city for the second month in a row, a sign of the local housing market’s resilience at a time of rising interest rates and some cities’ bumpy year.

is latest data from a highly regarded home price index adds to the pile of evidence that in the COVID era, Chicago didn’t boom as much as other cities, and subsequently didn’t bust.

Chicago-area single-family home values rose 4.2% in June compared with the same time last year, according to new data from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices released last week.

at’s the strongest price growth among the 20 major U.S. metros that the index tracks, a

status Chicago rst attained in July’s report, covering the month of May. At this time last year, Chicago was 18th of the 20 major metros, at the end of a 61-month stretch when home price growth here consistently ranked at or near the bottom of the list in terms of year-over-year growth.

In July 2022, Chicago began climbing up out of the basement, gaining steps mostly because other markets’ home prices were falling. By March 2023, Chicago had the fth-fastest home price growth, and in May, it landed at the top of the list for the rst time.

Price growth was slightly less in the latest report than the month before, 4.2% compared to 4.6%. at narrows the gap between the Chicago metro and the nation’s overall price growth.

In July’s report, nationwide

prices dipped a bit, down 0.5% compared to the same time in 2022. In the latest report, the nation’s price growth is at compared to a year earlier. us, with slightly less growth in Chicago and an improvement from the negative nationwide, Chicago isn’t quite as far ahead of the nation as it was in the prior report.

Cleveland in 2nd place Cleveland had the secondhighest price growth, at 4.1%, with New York third, at 3.4%. In 10 metro areas that the index tracks, prices were down. e biggest drop was in San Francisco, 9.7%, followed by Seattle,

8.8%. A year ago, those cities were among the high yers. San Francisco home prices were up 16.1% in the index issued in August 2022, and Seattle was up 19.2%.

e regional di erences in the housing market’s performance

“continue to be striking,” Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, said in prepared comments that accompanied the data. e three top performers were all east of the Mississippi River: Chicago, Cleveland and New York, while the three hardest hit by declines were west of the Mississippi: San Francisco, Seattle and Las Vegas (down 8.2%).

whatever politician is running a caucus than controlling how districts are drawn.

Why should you care? When politicians draw districts, it helps determine whether you have real choices when you vote. In the 2022 general election following redistricting, where maps were again drawn behind locked doors, 31 out of 59 Illinois Senate seats had only one candidate running. Nearly 53 percent of the districts had no competition.

When politicians draw districts and pick their own voters, they don’t have to be responsive to what you want because they already know they’re quite likely to win re-election. ey don’t necessarily have to act on the things worrying you, whether what’s worrying you is violence, quality schools, a ordable taxes or safe and convenient public transportation. is democracy is ours, and it’s up to each of us to keep pushing to make sure it’s fair and working for us. ese corruption trials show us it’s not. Let’s recommit now to working to make our elections more competitive and fairer for us all.

Madeleine

Doubek, executive director of Change Illinois, a nonpartisan nonpro t that advocates for ethical and e cient government, writes a monthly column for Crain’s.

For the second month in a row, Chicago topped a list of 20 major U.S. metro areas for growth in values compared with a year earlier

By March 2023, Chicago had the fth-fastest home price growth, and in May, it landed at the top of the list for the rst time. Chicago led the list again in June. VHT STUDIOS

A gut-check moment for corporate Chicago

When she stepped up to become CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance in March 2021, Roz Brewer became that rarest of corporate creatures: a chief executive who also happens to be a woman and a person of color.

Her exit from the top job at the pharmacy giant, however, throws a harsh light on the status of long-term e orts to diversify C-suites not just in Chicago but nationwide.

To be sure, corporate America has made some progress on this front. As of the latest iteration of the Fortune 500 list, published in June, 10.4% of the nation’s largest publicly traded companies were headed by a woman. e magazine ballyhooed crossing the 10% barrier this year for the rst time in the ranking’s nearly 70-year history. Meanwhile, eight Black CEOs lead companies on Fortune’s ranking. at’s the highest number since the list’s debut in 1955. Of those eight CEOs, two represented the Windy City: Brewer at Walgreens and Exelon CEO Calvin Butler, who started in the role in December. Even so, Black people make up just 1.6% of all Fortune 500 CEOs. And Brewer’s departure from Walgreens will put a dent in the ranks of female CEOs as well.

In what may perhaps strike some readers as a surprise, Chicago is actually somewhat ahead of the curve when it comes to lifting women and people of color into the C-suite.

e executive ranks of Chicago’s 50 largest public companies have become more diverse over the past 10 years, according to the latest “Inside Inclusion” report, a study of trends in the racial composition of boardrooms and C-suites compiled annually by

PERSONAL VIEW

business advocacy group Chicago United. ree years after George Floyd’s May 25, 2020, murder and the painful social reckoning that followed, corporate Chicago has some gains to feel relatively good about — as well as some goals still left frustratingly unful lled. In the past decade, minority representation in senior leadership positions at the Chicago companies measured in the May report has increased about 14%, Chicago United notes. Meanwhile, minority board representation at these compa-

nies rose nearly 11% in that 10-year span.

As Crain’s Sophie Rodgers reported in a May 25 summary of the report’s ndings, Black people made up nearly 8% of C-suite positions in 2022 at the companies measured, compared with 3% nationally. Asian Americans represented nearly 10% of those positions in Chicago, compared with 7% in the U.S. Chicago’s most diverse public companies in 2022, meanwhile, were Commonwealth Edison, Archer Daniels Midland and CommonSpirit Health.

at said, there is still a long, long way to go before corporate leadership in Chicago and beyond truly re ects the demographic makeup of the region and the nation. And the data also reveals some nagging trouble spots: Growth in Hispanic representation tended to lag other groups in the Chicago United leadership data.  at nding tracks with research re ected in the Jan. 17 edition of Crain’s monthly Equity series. In statewide research conducted annually by the University of Illinois, Latinos were the most underrepresented group among Illinois board members. e school’s report found that 72 companies that led reports in 2021 had no Hispanic or Latino directors, and only 23 rms had at least one Hispanic or Latino director. ough Hispanic or Latino directors made up about 6% of Illinois board members, Hispanic and Latino residents comprised roughly 16% of the state’s population in 2021.

e business case for diversity, equity and inclusion e orts has long been made and settled: Diverse leadership teams and inclusive workplaces generate higher returns and a proven competitive edge. Brewer’s departure from Walgreens’ top spot is more than an opportunity for a corporate reboot at the company’s Deer eld campus. It’s also a moment for leaders across Chicago to do a gut check on how well — or poorly, as the case may be — they are doing in identifying, mentoring and promoting the most promising talent within their organizations, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

Chicago has made strides, but the journey is far from over.

Let’s not let misperceptions de ne our city, Chicago

There is no shortage of public opinion surveys these days. From the economy to politics to tattoos, a plethora of surveys are released every week. However, the recent Gallup survey about public perception of safety in 16 major cities caught our attention. e survey posed the question, “Is Chicago safe to live or visit?” Unfortunately, Chicago ranked second-to-last in public perception. ese results were disappointing and do not accurately re ect our city.

Like every city, Chicago has challenges. As a city, we are working together to address them, but we cannot and should not let our challenges de ne us.

Chicago is a great place to live, work and play.

We are a welcoming city with ample opportunities to build lives, businesses and careers. Chicago has been ranked the top metro for corporate investment for the past decade by Site Selection magazine. More than 70 companies made pro-Chicago decisions in the rst half of the year as they expanded in or moved to the city. Part of what drives business to Chicago is our workforce and talent. Almost 40% of our population over 24 years old have a bachelor’s degree or higher — more than the

national average and the highest of the ve largest U.S. cities.

Chicago is home to a robust community of entrepreneurs, especially among historically marginalized and underrepresented communities. While we are the third-largest city in the U.S., we are the best city for underrepresented early-stage founders to obtain seed and pre-seed funding, according to Crunchbase. Small businesses, like large, thrive in Chicago. And the Chicago area ranked No. 4 among its peer cities in the most recent Inc. Magazine list of the Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America, with 221 companies.

e accolades for our city go beyond business. For the past six years, readers of Condé Nast Traveler have voted Chicago the Best Big City in the U.S., an accomplishment that no other city has ever come close to achieving. We welcome millions of people for business and leisure travel each year. is summer, we have hosted dozens of events, from Taylor Swift to NASCAR to Sueños Music Festival to Lollapalooza without incident. On the business side, more than 1 million people came to McCormick Place alone for meetings, conventions and trade shows in the rst half of the year. ese visitors gener-

ate millions of dollars in taxes and create thousands of tourism and hospitality jobs.

e bottom line is that Chicago boasts one of the best quality-of-life to cost-ofliving ratios in the nation. Seventy-seven diverse and robust neighborhoods, a vibrant arts and culture scene, world-class dining, exciting sports and entertainment options — not to mention the lakefront and architecture — make us one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Crime is a problem facing every urban city. We can’t escape that, and we are cleareyed about the serious challenges facing Chicago that are rooted in the decades-long neglect of underinvested neighborhoods. But we also know that perception does not equal reality in Chicago — and it is clear that many respondents to the Gallup survey, unfortunately, have heard only negative talking points rather than legitimate facts and data.

e reality is that the crime rate in Chicago is lower than in many of our peer cities, and millions of locals and visitors are able to enjoy our city safely every day. And we’re making progress, especially as it relates to gun crime — according to the latest Chicago Police Department data, shootings are down 11% year to date in 2023, and homicides are

down 7%. is is building upon last year’s improvements, when Chicago saw a double-digit percentage decrease in gun crime. Our city partners are working hard to address public safety, and we look forward to continued progress under the leadership of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration. As citizens and residents, though, we also have an important role to play. We must do our part to communicate what makes Chicago great to our friends, colleagues and family. Rather than allow misperceptions to de ne us, we need to stand together as a community to change the reality and the narrative and share a new and positive story about Chicago. We need to loudly and proudly share what makes Chicago a great place to live, work and play.

Larita Clark is CEO of the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority. Emilia DiMenco is CEO of the Women’s Business Development Center. Jaime di Paulo is CEO of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Michael Fassnacht is CEO of World Business Chicago. Lynn Osmond is CEO of Choose Chicago. Charles Smith is executive chairman of the Business Leadership Council.

FORTUNE LIVE MEDIA/FLICKR

Roz Brewer

simplest x for

When it comes to stabilizing state nances, Illinois has made tremendous progress recently. Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic recession, the state made smart choices like paying down debt early, making supplemental pension contributions and contributing to the reserve fund. As a result, Illinois is in the best scal position it has been in decades, as demonstrated by its recent credit rating upgrades.

However, pensions remain a substantial risk to our state’s nancial health: At the end of scal 2022, the state’s ve pension funds were roughly 44% funded, and unfunded liabilities totaled about $139 billion. In addition, unfunded liabilities for local pension funds total $71 billion, based on analysis of the most recent actuarial valuations of each of the pension funds. A signi cant portion of the state’s operating budget — over 20% — goes to making annual pension contributions, as does a similar percentage of the city of Chicago’s budget. ese large contributions crowd out spending in other priority areas, from education to public safety.

Now the General Assembly is weighing how to address another risk: Tier 2 pension bene ts falling out of compliance with federal regulations. IRS rules require that public employees receive a pension bene t at least as good as they would under Social Security — known as safe harbor. However, pension bene ts provided through the less generous tier of bene ts for government employees hired since Jan. 1, 2011, known as Tier 2, are at risk of violating safe harbor because of the way bene ts are calculated. is is because the maximum amount of salary considered in Social Security bene ts has grown faster than the maximum pensionable salary for Tier 2 pensions.

We agree this issue needs to be addressed. But in doing so, we urge the General Assembly to stick with the simplest, most cost-e ective x for the safe harbor compliance issue: changing the Tier 2 pensionable salary cap to match the pay cap used to determine Social Security bene ts, known as the Social Security Wage Base, or SSWB. Making this one change would ensure Tier 2 is permanently compliant with federal regulations without substantially adding to pension costs because not all employees will retire with a pensionable salary at or above the SSWB. e model of this approach was taken by Cook County in HB 2352, which was recently signed into law.

We are pleased that the Illinois House’s Personnel & Pensions Committee is holding a series of hearings on the Tier 2 safe harbor issue this summer in search of a proactive solution. e hearings have made clear that adjusting the pensionable salary cap is the best x. As the General Assembly works on legislation to address safe harbor, studies are still needed to estimate what the safe harbor changes would cost each local government. We heard projections at the Tier 2 hearings this summer for several of

the state’s pension funds and the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, but estimates are still needed for the rest of the government employers across Illinois whose budgets could be a ected by increasing Tier 2 pensionable salary.

Other Tier 2 pension enhancements have been proposed as part of the safe harbor “ x,” but these proposals far overshoot what is necessary to prevent compliance issues and would be more costly in the long run. Two such bills introduced during the spring legislative session, SB 1629 and SB 1630, would enhance bene ts for

Chicago re ghters beyond the bene t increases necessary to ensure compliance with federal regulations. ey would also add substantially to Chicago’s pension liabilities, thereby exacerbating the city’s pension challenge given that Chicago’s pension funds are collectively only about 24% funded. Any bene t changes that go above and beyond what is required for federal compliance should be considered separately from the federal compliance issue, with full actuarial analysis of costs and identi cation of funding to pay for it.

Tier 2 has been an important contributor to curbing Illinois’ unsustainable pension liabilities. At the time it was created, the Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability projected Tier 2 benets would save the state $71 billion in pension contributions through 2045. Had Tier 2 never been enacted, the state’s pension systems would be in far worse shape than they are today. It would be a step backward for the state to increase bene ts beyond what is necessary to ensure continued compliance with federal safe harbor regulations.

In recent years, Illinois has started

climbing out of the nancial hole it has been in for decades by making scally responsible decisions. Let’s focus on continuing that climb rather than digging ourselves deeper. We welcome the opportunity to engage more deeply with the state and city to help identify ways to continue our scal progress.

Derek Douglas is president of the Commercial Club of Chicago and its Civic Committee. Jack Lavin is president and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. Sarah Wetmore is acting president of the Civic Federation.

NOTABLE WOMEN IN STEM

STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the quartet of hard sciences that has historically employed a dearth of women — at last count, 28%, according to data from the American Association of University Women.

The 100 STEM professionals pro led here are most assuredly changing that. They mentor at their companies and volunteer at Chicago-area nonpro ts dedicated to introducing girls — particularly girls of color — to STEM careers. Even more critically, their careers as physicians, biologists, neuroscientists, physicists, architects, engineers, computer scientists, technologists, STEM educators and leaders of STEM nonprofits prove to young women that there is plenty of room for them in the wide-ranging, creative and lucrative world that is STEM.

By Lisa Bertagnoli

METHODOLOGY: The individuals featured did not pay to be included. Their pro les were written from 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 the list, nominees must serve in a senior STEM role at their places of employment, live and work in the Chicago area, and demonstrate leadership through mentoring, involvement in professional organizations and participation in community and civic initiatives.

Teresa Andrea

Vice president and chief information of cer Silver Cross Hospital

Teresa Andrea oversees all IT functions at Silver Cross Hospital and its af liated organizations. She blends an IT background with clinical roots as a registered nurse. Major recent accomplishments include creating an organizational digital road map, implementing an enhanced online appointment booking platform and transitioning two af liated physician groups to Cerner/Oracle Millennium, which enables providers to access a patient’s complete longitudinal medical record throughout their course of treatment. She also leads the organization’s digital strategy team, implementing solutions to optimize appointment registration, triaging and e-visits, as well as lung cancer screening technology. She is a member of the College of Health Information Management Executives.

Ana Karina Bedran-Russo

Associate dean of research University of Illinois Chicago Dental School

In addition to serving as associate dean of research, Dr. Ana Karina Bedran-Russo chairs the oral biology department at the School of Dentistry and is the current president of the Chicago Academy of Dental Research. She recently built a Digital Innovation Center at Marquette University’s dental school to give students access to cutting-edge dental technology, and has several active R01 NIDCR grants. She won the Way Klingler Research Award at Marquette recently. BedranRusso is an associate editor of the Journal of American Dental Association Foundational Sciences and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Dental Research and the Journal of Dentistry. She’s also president elect of the Academy of Operative Dentistry.

Paula Avery

Americas marketing manager, food safety and quality bioMérieux

Paula Avery has nearly two decades of experience, an advanced degree in microbiology (emphasis on bacteriology) and an MBA, enabling her to advise clients on risk mitigation and quality-control strategies. She works with federal regulators, industry partners, manufacturers and retailers, helping them understand the innovations and cutting-edge testing solutions available to bolster consumer food safety in the meat industry. A clinical microbiologist by trade, Avery works with the R&D and scienti c affairs teams to ensure that testing solutions are a step ahead of the pain points felt by the food industry. In 2022, her work was integral to developing bioMérieux’s Gene-Up Quant salmonella assay. Avery volunteers with the Great Plains SPCA.

Kirsten BibbinsDomingo

Editor-in-chief

JAMA

Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo is the 17th editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the most widely circulated medical journal in the world. Among recent accomplishments, Bibbins-Domingo led JAMA and the JAMA Network in efforts to make scienti c ndings more accessible to a wider variety of stakeholders, and in a more timely manner. Under her leadership, JAMA launched a new public-access policy in December that permits authors of original research investigations to deposit their accepted manuscript in the public repository of their choice on the day it is published by the JAMA Network. Bibbins-Domingo serves on the board of Resolve to Save Lives.

Shivani Awalegaonkar

Managing director and head of innovation Accenture

A computer science engineer by education, Shivani Awalegaonkar has more than 25 years of international experience in technology growth strategy and digital transformation. She helps companies take emerging technologies and ideas from concept to commercialization by bringing multidisciplinary teams together. She launched the Innovation in Action program by partnering with the Civic Consulting Alliance and Chicago Innovation. In 2022 she hosted six applied innovation sessions designed to galvanize community innovators to improve the quality of people’s lives. Most recently, Awalegaonkar’s team partnered with the Chicago Department of Aviation to help reimagine the O’Hare traveler experience, and with World Business Chicago on a Mentorship Exchange for minority-owned small businesses.

Elizabeth Buchanan

Global head of customer success and platform transformation

NielsenIQ

Elizabeth Buchanan oversees client-facing activities and teams at consumer-intelligence provider NielsenIQ. She is leading the change management and adoption of NIQ’s global platform transformation, an accelerated, 18-month initiative to build and implement analytical tools capable of managing the volume (especially e-commerce-generated) and complexity of consumer data across 80 countries. Launched in July 2022, NIQ’s platform has been adopted by more than 1,200 retailers and brands across 30 countries and will roll to several thousand more by December. Buchanan serves with Cradles to Crayons, the Chicago Humanities Festival and World Business Chicago. She also sponsors NIQ’s two-week “sprinternship” for women and nonbinary STEM students.

Tiffany Barker Project manager ARCO/Murray

Tiffany Barker specializes in industrial-tenant improvements for large corporate clients. Using a design/build approach, she handles pricing, proposals, subcontractor buyouts, design management and construction oversight. With expertise in MEP design and technical engineering, she focuses on understanding the requirements of multisite corporate clients, ensuring account standardization and effective design management. Barker is a member of the Professional Women in Construction’s Chicago chapter and has been selected to join PWC’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee. Barker mentors high school students and participates annually in Habitat for Humanity’s Women’s Build.

Julie Byars

Co-founder and principal Ontogen Medtech

Julie Byars co-founded Ontogen Medtech, an engineering-services rm involved in medical-device product development. Her company is on track to exceed $2 million in revenue. Byars supports Ontogen’s clients through early-stage product design and development all the way to FDA engagement and product launch. She’s also the quality lead at client Hubly Surgical, a neurosurgical device startup that launched a cranial-access drill with advanced features for safety. She created Hubly’s quality-management system, designed its regulatory strategy and led the 510(k) submission to the FDA, with clearance for sale achieved in May. Byars is an active member of Women in Bio in Chicago.

Brianne Caplan

Founder and executive director

Code Your Dreams

Brianne Caplan leads Code Your Dreams, a Chicago-based nonpro t that uses computer-science education as a vehicle for community action for the underserved in the United States and East Africa. This year, the number of students that have graduated from Caplan’s after-school and after-work programs surpassed 5,000. She has secured partnerships with the University of Chicago, City Colleges of Chicago, the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition, Chicago Public Schools and others. She also serves as the inaugural program director for the University of Chicago’s Careers in Computer Science, an initiative for undergraduates interested in technology-career pathways. In January, Caplan launched Women Building Change, a program to empower 30 Burundian women.

Marcela Carena

Professor and theory division head

University of Chicago and Fermilab

Marcela Carena is a professor at the University of Chicago, the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute. She also heads the theory division at Fermilab.

Last October, she received the U.S. Department of Energy’s Distinguished Scientist Fellow award for her work on the Higgs boson, dark matter and early-universe phase transitions.

She’s also been lauded for efforts to connect students from Latin America to Chicago-based STEM research. Carena founded the national Quantum Theory Consortium, a consortium of universities and labs (including the University of Illinois and Purdue) that, coordinating with the Chicago Quantum Exchange, is collectively making Chicago the world leader for quantum science and technology.

Andrea Chang

Vice president

Adage Technologies

Andrea Chang reports directly to Adage’s CEO, leading a team of project-delivery professionals who bring digital solutions to a diverse client base ranging from the arts to manufacturing to e-commerce. In the past 12 to 18 months, notable activities have included participating in the acquisition and integration of Adage Latin America, a 75-person organization in Colombia; leading the vendor-selection process and contract negotiations for Adage’s Professional Services Automation tool; and serving as executive sponsor in the implementation of this resource-management, budgeting, forecasting and revenue-analysis tool. For the past ve years, Chang has been the Chicago director of Women Who Code, a global nonpro t that seeks to elevate women in technology careers.

Louise Chang

Principal, U.S. life sciences mergers and acquisitions practice

Deloitte Consulting LLP

Louise Chang provides advice to life sciences clients on sell-side and buy-side activities across the entire M&A life cycle. In recent years, she has advised on some of the most complex deals in the pharmaceutical and medical-device sectors, including an $11 billion acquisition, a $1 billion spinoff, and seven concurrent carve-out deals totaling more than $5 billion in value. Chang led Deloitte’s support on a 2023 merger of equals between two life sciences clients that created an industry leader, supporting both companies in a transaction that involved more than 60 countries and affected 1,500 employees. Chang is a governing board member of Snow City Arts, a nonpro t that educates youth in hospitals through the arts.

Caralynn Nowinski Collens

CEO

Dimension Inx

Over the last 12 to 18 months, Dr. Caralynn Nowinski Collens led her company through the approval of its rst product, CMFlex, a 3D-printed regenerative bone graft product (it is a device used for facial reconstruction) that has been cleared by the FDA. CMFlex, considered the world’s rst FDA-cleared 3D-printed regenerative product, will be launched for clinical use in mid-2023; it will be fully manufactured and shipped from a facility in Chicago. Collens also recently closed on a $15 million Series A fundraise and secured a major biopharma development partnership. Collens is board chair of Imerman Angels, a Chicago-based nonpro t providing one-on-one cancer support.

Azurii Collier Director of enterprise innovation

AbbVie

As a director of enterprise innovation, Azurii Collier leads regulatory transformations, redesigning AbbVie’s business processes to signi cantly reduce timelines. This transformation develops business models that impact critical assets across immunology, neuroscience and oncology therapeutic areas. At AbbVie, Collier also designs strategies to drive diversity in clinical trials, embedding inclusive research processes that are transformative and are affecting hundreds of trials.

Collier is the national president and board chair of Women in Bio, an af liate of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the industry’s global trade association. She also serves on the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition’s board as well as on a U.S. National Science Foundation task force to help diversify workforces.

Shelley Danek Partner

Marshall Gerstein & Borun LLP

Shelley Danek is a patent prosecution partner, helping pharmaceutical companies strategize patent lings and navigate past the competition. A scientist herself, Danek helped biotech company Amgen ward off opposition to patenting a drug with chiral molecules that have a pair of compounds called enantiomers. Amgen sought to patent the use of one enantiomer for its drug, creating a case that hinged on nuanced legal and scienti c analysis. Typically, if challenged in court, a case might involve up to four opponents; in this case, Danek had to craft a legal strategy, arguments and analysis necessary to beat 15 challengers. Danek is a member of WOMN, which mentors women in law.

Onyinyechi Enyia

Daniel

Vice president, data and analytics strategy and partnership

Highmark Health

Onyinyechi Enyia Daniel is accountable for the data and analytics strategy, D&A productcommercialization strategy, and enterprise-data governance, as well as data and AI ethics, AI governance and the D&A research agenda. Daniel developed the enterprise data/AI ethics strategy and operationalization plan, enabling the appropriate enterprise forum to adjudicate on data/AI ethics issues while supporting end-toend business processes that empower the ethical uses of data and machine-learning models. Daniel is a member of the board of directors of Sinai Health System in Chicago and an adjunct instructor in the department of health policy and administration at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Vanessa Coffman Director, The Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness Stop Foodborne Illness

Vanessa Coffman directs activities at the Alliance, a group of 18 leading food companies and other stakeholders that collaborate to prevent illness through best practices, continuous improvement and positive corporate food-safety cultures. In the past 18 months, she developed and released a free, online Food Safety Culture Toolkit (tailored for small and midsize enterprises); launched a 10-part webinar series that was co-sponsored by the U.S. FDA; and gained funding for research into modernizing food recalls. More than 700 professionals in 70 countries have already registered for these evolving resources. Coffman was recently appointed to the National Advisory Committee on Meat & Poultry Inspection.

Joy Dell’Aringa

Associate director of segment marketing, food safety and quality

bioMérieux

Joy Dell’Aringa is a microbiologist and food safety advocate with two decades of professional experience working on various projects and innovations to safeguard public health. At bioMérieux, which provides diagnostic solutions used in agri-food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products, she translates the complexities of microbiology to be easy to understand for customers and consumers. She also works to ensure that microbiology testing solutions adhere to regulations and are designed for wide adoption across industry verticals. Dell’Aringa is a founding board member of the Chicagoland Food Science Foundation and recently became a member of the board of trustees of the Feeding Tomorrow Fund.

CITY COLLEGES OF CHICAGO

CONGRATULATES DR. DORIS ESPIRITU

ON BEING NAMED A CRAIN ’S CHICAGO BUSINESS NOTABLE WOMAN IN STEM

Under the leadership of Dr. Espiritu, the Engineering and Computer Science program at Wilbur Wright College has shown extraordinary growth, while also helping boost the participation of women and minorities in the field.

Innovations like her National Science Foundation-funded “Bridge” program have eliminated up to two years of remedial math courses for students, helping them find a pathway into the rigorous field. A er earning their associate degrees at Wright, Dr. Espiritu’s students transfer to top engineering programs and ultimately work for some of the biggest employers in the country.

DR. ESPIRITU’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS INCLUDE:

Being awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to expand her work

Growing the program from nine students in 2015 to over 500 students today

Maintaining a 93% student retention rate

Setting students up for transfer success, with 85% transferring to four-year programs within 2-3 years

Establishing guaranteed transfer pathways for Wright students to:

Armour College of Engineering and College of Computing at Illinois Tech (IIT)

Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Lisa Dhar

Associate vice president for innovation and new ventures

Northwestern University

Lisa Dhar leads Northwestern’s Innovation & New Ventures

Of ce, which manages the university’s intellectual property across all academic disciplines. In the past 18 months, she led efforts to construct and open the Querrey InQbation Lab, Northwestern’s rst incubator for research-based startups. The lab has 15,000 square feet of renovated wet labs and workspaces for startups in synthetic biology, sustainability and medical devices. Dhar spearheaded the lab’s broad portfolio of entrepreneurial programming and was lead author on a $3 million grant from the state, matched by Northwestern. Dhar led colleagues from other universities to help establish the biennial technology showcase Illinois Ignite, and is an adviser to the Chicago chapter of Nucleate.

Doris Espiritu

Senior advisor to the provost

Dean of the Center of Excellence for Engineering & Computer Science City Colleges of Chicago

Doris Espiritu is responsible for all aspects of engineering and computer science education at Wilbur Wright College, including recruiting and onboarding students and ensuring they receive tutoring and other supports. Under her leadership, the Center of Excellence has seen continued enrollment growth, to 437 students in 2022-23 from 235 students in 2021-22; more than 500 students are expected to enroll for 2023-24. Espiritu is working to expand the Wright College model to additional City Colleges with an eye toward accommodating a more diverse pipeline of women and minority students. Espiritu is a National Science Foundation grant reviewer and a member of the Society of Women Engineers.

Danielle DuMerer Vice president, technology and information security

Shedd Aquarium

Danielle DuMerer helps Shedd Aquarium manage information security, apply equity to data collection and chart a future for how technology can make the aquarium’s work more ef cient. She oversees Shedd’s technology infrastructure, applications, data analytics, information security, application development and audiovisual services. Most recently, her team operationalized a data-governance framework; launched a business intelligence and analytics platform; made improvements to Shedd’s information security posture; and developed Shedd’s rst mobile app. She also helped form the steering team that built a diversity, equity, access and inclusion framework for the aquarium. DuMerer is a board member of SIM Chicago as well as a board director at Bernie’s Book Bank.

Angela Esposito

Senior director of learning and community engagement Chicago Architecture Center

Working through CAC’s youth, adult and community-based onsite and online education initiatives, Angela Esposito leads a team of educators that serves about 45,000 young people a year from the Chicago area, focusing on underrepresented students and underfunded schools. Esposito founded Girls

Build! a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) fellowship for middle-school girls; it has a waitlist of hundreds of female-identifying students as well as organizations interested in training to lead their own gender programs. A 2019 SheShines Awardee with Girls Inc. Chicago, Esposito is president of the Family & School Association of Old St. Mary’s School.

Laura Élan Senior director of cybersecurity

MxD

Laura Élan is a licensed professional engineer, medical regulatory professional and product cybersecurity expert. She recently directed the launch and expansion of the Cyber Marketplace, which provides affordable cybersecurity surveys utilizing industry frameworks from the National Institute of Standards & Technology and the Defense Department so that users can better understand their cybersecurity posture. The marketplace facilitates formal plans to support gap remediation, cybersecurity process improvement and incident-response preparation. It already has reached 130 users; 38% completed or are in-progress with an assessment. Élan also leads MxD’s cyber steering committee, which educates industry members on how to better secure their organizations.

Virginia Ferguson

Senior director Slalom

Virginia Ferguson leads Slalom’s health care and life sciences salesforce practice, overseeing a portfolio of organizations focused on creating patient-centric outcomes. She recently led a project at a Top 10 pharmaceutical company to transform patient engagement and outreach processes for 86,000 patients. The outcome was built around more effective communication, enabling the organization to re ne patient engagement strategies to deliver more impactful interventions. Personalized support can contribute to increased treatment plans, leading to better disease management, reduced hospital readmissions and improved patient well-being. Ferguson leads a Lean-In Circle and is also involved with Slalom’s Womenin-Tech employee resource group. She also shares STEM experiences by partnering with Girls Who Code.

Dima Elissa CEO

VisMed-3D Healthcare Technology

Co-founder

Equity in STEMM & Innovation

Dima Elissa is the founder of VisMed-3D, a biomedical design and consulting rm that is a leader for 3D biomedical visualization and printing in personalized medicine. In 2022, she launched the American Medical Women’s Association Healthcare Innovation Challenge, a program to empower women in medicine and health care. She also helped launch a STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) program designed to aid underrepresented college and high-school students by working with academic partners and sponsoring organizations on internships. A founding board member of the Women in Entrepreneurship Institute as well as mHub, Elissa is Chicago chapter president of Women in Bio.

Shelly Vaziri Flais

Pediatrician and partner

Pediatric Health Associates

Assistant professor of clinical pediatrics

Northwestern University

Feinberg School of Medicine

Dr. Shelly Vaziri Flais is co-chair of the Women in Medicine subcommittee of the Medical Alumni Association board at Feinberg. She and her co-chair, Dr. Kavitha Gandhi, lead efforts to promote women in STEM via programming that includes mentoring students at Westinghouse Prep, Northside Prep and Jones College Prep. They provide panel discussions about STEM careers with a focus on issues facing women in medicine. They also participate in twice-yearly programs with My Block, My Hood, My City, which mentors students who are part of the Explorer’s program. Flais is author of parenting books with the American Academy of Pediatrics and is an AAP spokesperson.

Karen Eng President and CEO CSMI

Karen Eng is CEO of CSMI, an engineering rm specializing in FDA- and USDA-regulated industries. She works with organizations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 100 corporations. She recently completed a ve-year strategic plan for the agship manufacturing facility of a large manufacturer/marketer of specialty food products for the retail and food service markets, working personally with senior management as well as all operations, maintenance and quality functions. The plan is being implemented, with growth and productivity goals being targeted alongside major sustainability measures reduce the company’s carbon footprint. Eng is a member of the National Asian American Chamber of Commerce as well as the Entrepreneurship (Ace) Foundation.

Kelley Francis Executive director

The HITEC Foundation

Kelley Francis leads the HITEC Foundation’s efforts to increase the number of Hispanics in technology. Recently, her organization has nearly tripled in growth, to 100 scholarship recipients in 2023 from 36 in 2022. Next year, the organization is set to serve more than 1,500 high school seniors who are early on their career paths in technology. The foundation’s mentorship program pairs scholars attending universities across the United States with a professional leader in their eld and city to support them through their educational pursuits and beyond. Francis leads the development, marketing and operations of three agship initiatives: scholarships, mentorship and career-development support. She is a member of the Downers Grove Junior Women’s Club.

Wendy Freedman

John and Marion Sullivan

university professor in astronomy and astrophysics

Senior member, Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics

University of Chicago

Wendy Freedman led the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project, which measured the current expansion rate of the universe to determine its age with unprecedented precision. Her current research uses the James Webb Space Telescope to test whether fundamental early-universe physics might be missing from the standard model of cosmology. With mounting evidence that the universe is expanding more rapidly than anticipated, Freedman is using different types of stars, which she considers cleaner probes of expansion. Her methodology has the potential to overthrow the standard model. Freedman is the founding board chair for the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Carla Frieh

Vice president of transmission and substation engineering

ComEd

Carla Frieh leads a team of 350 people who operate and maintain the power grid for more than 4 million customers across northern Illinois. Her teams are the engineering authorities in power restoration and strategic planning for the grid, managing power lines in ComEd’s 11,400-square-mile territory that serve 70% of the state’s electrical customers. Her Transmission & Substation team also oversaw ComEd’s development of a rolling, ve-year investment plan. Frieh serves on the board of Midwest Energy Association, a trade association, and she’s a lead sponsor for One in Seven (so named because only one in seven women achieve executive positions), a ComEd group focused on developing women professionals for leadership positions.

Cole Gagnon Partner, director of people OKW Architects

Cole Gagnon is one of OKW’s four partners and has been instrumental in Johnson College Prep’s new entry, plaza and student lounges. The Englewood charter school’s entry lacked prominence; it was also underused and misaligned with Noble Schools’ mission. Gagnon led the team, bringing a complex and layered project to life while mentoring women from all parts of the project team as its most experienced team member. She sees her work at Johnson College Prep (and in similar projects like LEARN Waukegan) as opportunities to bring greater visibility to women in STEM elds. The Catholic University of America recently invited Cole to join its Board of Visitors.

Kavitha Gandhi

Clinical instructor

Northwestern University

Feinberg School of Medicine

Dermatologist

Lake Shore Dermatology

Dr. Kavitha Gandhi co-chairs the Women in Medicine subcommittee of the Medical Alumni Association Board at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Her efforts to promote women in medicine and STEM via programming throughout the year include mentoring students at the Chicago Public Schools’ Westinghouse Prep, Northside Prep and Jones College Prep. Additionally, Gandhi participates in twice-ayear programming with My Block, My Hood, My City, mentoring students who are part of the Explorers program. The Women in Medicine subcommittee also provides educational events. She is a member of the board and executive committee of the Medical Alumni Association.

Christina Garcia

Senior vice president of engineering

Echo Global Logistics

Christina Garcia came to Echo as a change agent, evangelizing best practices in processes, technology and continuous improvement across engineering design and development. She has promoted modern technology approaches while balancing the need to deliver current business objectives, enabling the engineering team to simplify designs and operations in its Accelerator project, which reboots the company’s Transaction Management System. Garcia works closely with Echo’s CIO on strategies to unlock ef ciency and speed for Echo clients. She serves on the advisory board of EyeBuy, a company that leverages AI in video streaming to help unlock retail opportunities. Garcia is a member of Women Who Code, a nonpro t empowering women for technology careers.

Patty King, PL A, CPSI, LEED AP / Senior Landscape Architect

Sandra Gesing

Senior research scientist, scienti c outreach and DEI lead Discovery Partners Institute

Sandra Gesing is an international leader in the research software engineer ecosystem. She contributed to the Sloan grant to the U.S. Research Software Engineer Association for $800,000 and, as general chair, is helping to bring the rst US-RSE conference to Chicago, in October. Gesing is also on the advisory board of the NSF project INTERSECT Research Software Engineering Training and is a member of the Association of Computing Machinery and the Research Data Alliance. Gesing is on the leadership team for the National Model for Long-Term Support of High-Potential Kids in Unstable Housing program of the 4 Foundations Division of Chicago Hopes for Kids.

Saranya Gunasingh

Senior manager

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Saranya Gunasingh works across real-estate sectors with a focus on ESG in the built environment. She has industry and R&D experience across design, engineering and construction, and helps clients achieve net-zero targets through high-performance buildings, emerging technology integration, reducing embodied carbon, renewable energy procurement and electri cation strategies.

Gunasingh is implementing a 75 megawatt on-site solar strategy for a client that is designed to avoid 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Working with the Chicago Housing Authority, she led a two-year pilot with Illinois utilities to help owners and operators in underserved communities improve building performance and reduce operating expenses, while training 10 residents in affordable housing for green jobs.

Rebecca Goldberg Director of education Illinois Science & Technology Coalition

Rebecca Goldberg is responsible for managing ISTC’s education programming, including the Mentor Matching Engine, STEM Challenge, the 6x3 Project and teacher externships. She led the collaborative creation of the 6x3 Project series, which builds real-world skills by partnering students with mentors from a STEM organization. As a result of last year’s program, 100% of participants reported feeling more con dent in their professional skills and said the program boosted their interest in STEM-related careers. Goldberg increased the series to three cohorts over the last three years alongside a STEM curriculum that better aligns with industry priorities. She belongs to the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce’s Emerging Leaders Council.

Poonam Gupta-Krishnan

Founder and executive vice president, global public sector

Iyka Enterprise

Poonam Gupta-Krishnan has a customer-facing, internal- and external-collaborator role at this data management product and service provider, managing an internal team of 11 and more than 20 vendors and subcontractors. She is responsible for resources, P&L and the growth of the sales unit, as well as building new market practices and business development, forecasting, pricing, contracts and vendor management. Customers include the FAA, the state of Illinois, Cook County, the RTA, City Colleges and Starbucks. Gupta-Krishnan introduced SaaS-based enterprise data analytics and built a $500 million pipeline in incremental revenue. She also helped solve COVID dashboard challenges for Cook County Health and provided data-discovery solutions for the University of Illinois Medical Center.

Valerie Goss Professor of chemistry Chicago State University

Valerie Goss serves as the project lead of the Quantum Institute to advance workforce development in quantum sciences. She is currently a co-principal investigator on a $25 million grant awarded through the National Science Foundation Quantum Leap Challenge Institute, in collaboration with Harvard, the University of Chicago and UIC. She also serves as a co-principal investigator on awarded CSU NASA grants. To grow access to STEM elds for underrepresented students, Goss spearheaded quantum information science and engineering projects for high school and college students on the South Side. In June, Goss ran a Quantum Science summer program for community students, which was the rst for underrepresented students in quantum sciences.

Melissa Hadley

Business automation account specialist, U.S. national IBM

Melissa Hadley helps clients in the nancial services and health care markets by leveraging business automation software on an enterprisewide scale. The goal is to improve processes, manage content, mine work ows to boost ef ciency, and deploy arti cial intelligence and bots to complete repetitive tasks. Hadley served as a researcher for a study run by the IBM Institute of Business Value on the LGBT+ experience in the workplace. For the past two years, Hadley has helped organize the Pride Month Celebration at IBM. She’s a board member of the Chicago Women’s Networking Group and the Chicago Black Networking Group, an active member of several employee resource groups and co-president of LGBTQ+ Chicago.

Mary Greanias

Associate director, commercial excellence training

Horizon Therapeutics

Mary Greanias is an associate director of commercial excellence training at Horizon, a global biotechnology company that delivers medicine to those living with rare, autoimmune and severe in ammatory diseases. In the past year, she has impacted more than 90% of Horizon’s commercial organization by implementing high-performance teams. In 11 months she taught 82 courses on HPT, training nearly 900 employees. Through data and research, she identi es behaviors that help teams perform at their best, then encourages teams to commit themselves to those behaviors to create an organization that’s cross-functionally aligned. Greanias, who has a degree in psychology, is on the board of the Center for Enriched Living, a nonpro t supporting people with disabilities.

Melina E. Hale

William Rainey Harper professor and dean of the college University of Chicago

Melina E. Hale is a neuroscientist with a research laboratory that studies the neuromechanics of movement. Hale conceived and led UChicago Eco, an initiative that began in 2021 aimed at promoting and broadening the role of the university in environmental research and sustainability. She became dean of the college in July, overseeing 7,500 undergraduates and working with about 500 college faculty members. As vice provost the past seven years, Hale spearheaded projects in the areas of environmental research and sustainability, administrative and budgetary modernization, and adding senior leadership at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. Hale is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Joanna Groden

Vice chancellor for research

University of Illinois Chicago

Joanna Groden oversees the research enterprise at UIC, including the grants, awards and contracts portfolio, compliance, animal and biosafety research, postdoctoral affairs and shared research facilities. Recent accomplishments include the largest awards portfolio in UIC history ($464 million for scal 2022 and nearing $500 million for 2023); establishing new interdisciplinary research institutes; and creating a citywide postdoctoral recruitment strategy with Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Groden was awarded a $6.8 million NIH grant to modernize animal resources at UIC. She also directed the renovation of the UIC Center for Structural Biology. Groden is on the board of Current, a Chicago-based nonpro t water innovation hub, as well as IllinoisVentures.

Robin Hamerlinck Lane

Chief information of cer and senior vice president Shure

At Shure, Robin Hamerlinck Lane is responsible for information technology governance, talent management, operations and infrastructure optimization, as well as strategic technology planning, digital transformation, cybersecurity and risk management. Recent activities include the monetization of Shure software, the migration and modernization of Shure’s digital commerce partner platform, and moving the majority of Shure’s IT infrastructure to the cloud. Hamerlinck Lane is an active member of I.C. Stars, which creates economic opportunities for underserved communities in the high-growth tech sector by identifying, training and jump-starting technology careers for young adults. Hamerlinck Lane also a member of Shure’s IDEA Advisory Council and an executive sponsor for Shure’s Women’s Employee Resource Group.

Lubna Haque Professor, chemistry College of DuPage

Since joining College of DuPage as a full-time faculty member in 2008, Lubna Haque has been at the forefront of initiating several projects, including the Chemistry Bonding Club, Girl Scouts chemistry badge and STEM presentations at various events. She has also been instrumental in developing and implementing several Open Educational Resources in her chemistry department. She has written new cost-effective lab procedures, which use innovative technology and environmentally safe chemicals that reduce waste disposal expenses. Haque not only teaches general chemistry classes but also updates the curriculum and trains the adjunct faculty. Recently, she’s also selected new lab kits for all online chemistry classes, which require procedural updates and training.

Katie Hench Co-founder and CEO In niTeach - Autism Innovation

Through technology, training and consultation, In niTeach empowers autistic and neurodivergent communities. As a co-founder, Katie Hench manages day-to-day operations and supports In niTeach’s neurodiverse team as well as the inclusion journeys of In niTeach’s 30 clients around the world. Recently In niTeach was awarded a grant to support vaccine awareness within the intellectual and developmentally disabled (IDD) community, a group that suffered disproportionately more deaths due to COVID-19 than those without IDD. The nationwide “Vax for All” campaign prepared more than 4,000 IDD individuals on their vaccine journeys. Hench also serves on the Ethics & Rights Committee of Esperanza Community Services and is on the external Disability Advisory Board of Alaska Airlines.

Julie Holzrichter Chief operating of cer CME Group

Julie Holzrichter oversees CME Clearing, one of the world’s leading clearinghouses, and CME Group’s market operations function, which includes the Global Command Center, where customers use Globex electronic production systems. She also leads CME Group’s trading oor operations, global market solutions and services, the data centers and other critical infrastructure and crisis management functions. Under her leadership, CME Clearing will launch its SPAN 2 framework in the third quarter of 2023, which will help market participants model margin requirements for their portfolios across futures and options. Holzrichter is a member of the Futures Industry Association, Women in Listed Derivatives, ChicagoFirst and the CME Group Women’s Initiative Network.

Maya Huggins-Garcia Community engagement manager Exelon

Maya Huggins-Garcia is responsible for managing the company’s employee engagement and STEM educational programs. In 2021, she helped launch two scholarship programs, including a STEM Academy scholarship that covers tuition, room and board for selected students (22 currently). The HBCU Corporate scholarship provides STEM and business students who reside in the home regions of Exelon’s six utilities up to $25,000 of needs-based aid for four years. The Exelon Foundation STEM Academy is a free program for girls in the 10th and 11th grades. More than 820 young women and 80% students of color have attended. Huggins-Garcia is a mentor for the DePaul College Prep and UIC CHANCE STEM Academy mentorship program.

Chevy Humphrey President and CEO Museum of Science & Industry

Chevy Humphrey joined the museum in middle of the pandemic and reoriented it toward young people and local communities: Its motto is “Inspiring the inventive genius in everyone.” She’s helped bring to the museum exhibits such as “The Art of the Brick,” which focused on art built from Legos, and “Pompeii: The Exhibition.” She also championed numerous climate and environmental educational efforts as well as a partnership with the Obama Foundation to bring more investment and visitors to Woodlawn, Washington Park and South Shore. Humphrey chairs the board of the American Alliance of Museums and serves on the boards of several other organizations, including Argonne National Laboratory, Grand Canyon Education and the Helios Education Foundation.

Shana Kelley President Chan Zuckerberg BioHub Chicago

We salute the outstanding women honored as “Notable Women in

Adana Johns

Science & technology practice leader, principal Perkins & Will

Adana Johns leads the Science & Technology practice for Perkins & Will’s Chicago studio and Central region, collaborating across multiple disciplines, including higher education, health care and corporate teams. She has delivered architectural services for clients totaling more than $650 million in construction projects. Since 2018, she’s also been the project manager and client executive at the Fermilab Integrated Engineering Research Center in Batavia. Targeted for completion this fall, the 80,000-square-foot facility will co-locate engineers and technicians supporting particle physics research. Johns, a member of American Institute of Architects, served as president of the Great Lakes chapter of the International Institute for Sustainable Laboratories from 2018 through 2023.

Erin Karam

Co-founder and chief technology of cer

Mezo

Over the last 12 months, Erin Karam has developed Mezo’s strategic vision, scaled its product, engineering and analytics teams from the ground up, and launched AI-driven technology. Other roles include driving customer research, company branding and recruiting. She managed the ideation, development and launch of Mezo’s rst product, a maintenance intelligence platform called Max. This evolutionary advancement for property maintenance combines AI and deep subject-matter expertise to drive improved outcomes for tenants, maintenance technicians and property owners. Karam is a mentor with Women in Engineering (women make up 50% of Mezo’s tech-org talent) and is the technology practice lead for the Chicago Ventures Portfolio Platform.

Shana Kelley

President

Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago

Shana Kelley is president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago and the Neena B. Schwartz professor of chemistry and biomedical engineering at Northwestern University. She directs research programs focused on the development of new therapies and diagnostics for human disease, merging chemistry, biology, engineering and medicine to bear on a variety of challenging biomedical problems. CZ Biohub Chicago engineers precise, molecular-level measurement technologies; her work there speci cally focuses on new technologies for tracking and manipulating the immune system to produce insights into the origins of in ammation and related diseases. Kelley has mentored hundreds of students and provided inclusive training opportunities for the next generation of researchers.

Stephanie Koh

OnShore Technology Group

Valarie King-Bailey is CEO of OnShore Technology Group, which provides products and services to life sciences that help speed new products to market faster through advanced testing solutions. She conceived and developed ValidationMaster, an enterprise validation management and quality system. (Many engineers still conduct systems validation using inef cient manual and paper-based processes.) She also added arti cial intelligence and machine-learning to the platform, a rst-to-market positioning that revolutionizes testing by generating test scripts that are self-correcting. She leads a 21-person global team.

King-Bailey provides technology gifts, including laptops, tablets and other science-related items, to encourage learning to Southside Tabernacle for its annual Education Day, which honors high-achieving students and STEM scholars.

IP litigation partner and global IP litigation co-leader Sidley Austin

Stephanie Koh, a chemical engineer turned litigator, advocates for clients that include pharmaceutical, medical device, autonomous driving technology and communications companies. As co-leader of Sidley’s global intellectual property litigation practice, she represented Gogo Business Aviation in a six-patent case in Delaware, defeating efforts to enjoin the client’s launch of a 5G network. She also represented SynQor in a high-tech patent infringement case against Vicor involving power convertors and power distribution architecture. After more than a decade of litigation, Sidley won a $6.5 million jury victory. Koh is active in Chiefs in Intellectual Property, a nonpro t that connects women in IP and technology law, and Chicago Women in IP.

Katherine Latham Founder and managing partner Talman Consultants

Katherine Latham, who is responsible for business operations and client relationships, led Talman to secure Engineer of Choice status with one of the largest utilities. She has played a critical role in complex utility engineering deployment projects for largescale telecommunications providers in the city of Chicago. She’s also working with leading telecommunications providers to bring broadband service to underserved communities in Chicago, Illinois and other states. Talman’s work is organized around RAMP, a proprietary continuous-planning approach that leverages industry data and best practices. Latham is on the board of the Off the Street Club, the oldest boys and girls club in Chicago. Talman donates computer equipment to train young women interested in pursuing STEM internships.

Michelle Kelly

President and principal of landscape architecture Upland Design

Michelle Kelly co-founded Upland Design, creating and enhancing parks, forest preserves and green spaces throughout Illinois, often volunteering its services to communities in need. Most recently, she volunteered the Upland team to design a new playground for the Joliet Salvation Army. With a local community development block grant, she guided the Salvation Army and local Kiwanis Club volunteers to design, permit, bid, and construct a new playground and outdoor seating area. Dedicated and opened in May, it will serve the YMCA programs held at the facility and families in need who come to the Salvation Army for services and food. Kelly is president of the Village Preservation Association.

Megan Leider President

Megan Leider Consulting Adjunct professor

Loyola University Chicago

STREAM program instructor

Resurrection College Prep High School

In spring 2023, Megan Leider launched a private education consultancy based on STEM curriculum design. She’s also an adjunct at Loyola and continues to have peer-reviewed research articles published in professional journals while teaching science at the high school level. In the past 18 months, Leider expanded Loyola’s program for new and graduating teachers as assistant program director in the education department, serving as a mentor and classroom coach to dozens of diverse young professionals. Leider is executive director of her family’s charity, the Marti Leider Foundation, a 501(c)3 that raises funding for children impacted by cancer illnesses and deaths, as well as hospice care.

Patty King

Senior landscape architect Wight

Patty King is responsible for design, project management, staff training and client relations for the landscape architecture team. In the past 18 months, she identi ed viable park replacement properties for the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line Extension project and developed master plans for four major parks in suburban Orland Park. She prepared comprehensive master plans for the Carol Stream and Fox Valley park districts, as well as a facilities assessment and master plan for the city of Aurora’s Phillips Park Zoo. She assisted the park district with grant applications, securing $1 million in funds. King chairs the American Society of Landscape Architects and is a perennial partner at The Morton Arboretum.

Denise Lintz

Vice president, enterprise portfolio management and technology shared services UScellular

Denise Lintz provides governance and ensures regulatory standards across all technology functions, including webpages, retail, customer care, B2B, internet-of-things systems and telecommmunications network initiatives. Recently, she has been working with her team to build UScellular’s xed wireless access offering for home internet, IoT and B2B systems, bringing wireless to unserved and underserved communities. Lintz leads UScellular’s collaboration with Black Diamond Charities, which provides project management training to veterans and their spouses. She also serves on the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum’s board, promoting STEM education to children. Lintz is a member of the Women in Action ARG at UScellular, mentoring women interested in technology and STEM, and volunteers with Girls Who Code.

Valarie King-Bailey CEO

NOTE WORTHY

According to the National Science Foundation, the U.S. STEM workforce — comprising more than 36 million people — constitutes 23% of the total U.S. workforce.

Erin Lowery Mechanical engineer and senior project manager Primera Engineers

Erin Lowery recently served as project manager for the $40 million Lion House renovation at Lincoln Park Zoo, modernizing the historic building with an outdoor habitat and upgraded mechanical, engineering and plumbing systems. She also manages commissioning for Chicago Public Schools, handling buildings aged from the late 1800s to those that are newly constructed. Lowery has been a mentor for ACE Mentor Program for several years and led groups of high schoolers through hands-on mock building projects aimed at immersing students into the profession.

Lowery has also facilitated introduction-to-engineering sessions for middle schoolers via a partnership with Madero Middle School.

Yolanda Luna-Mroz Chief programs of cer High Jump

Yolanda Luna-Mroz oversees programs that serve more than 480 economically challenged 7th and 8th graders annually at three dedicated campuses and two public school pilot locations in Chicago. These after-school and summer academic enrichment programs have a heavy focus on STEM and prepare students for admissions into college-prep high schools in Chicago. In the past year, Luna-Mroz led her team through a technology transformation of its admissions, enrollment and alumni management processes to change how data was collected, stored and shared. She implemented Salesforce.com as a data hub to reduce manual effort, relying on a team of tech-savvy teachers instead of a formal information technology staff.

Hannah Lundberg

Associate professor of department of orthopedic surgery

Rush University Medical Center

Dr. Hannah Lundberg’s responsibilities are to direct a broad-based biomechanics research program aimed at developing novel and improved methods of the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disorders of the bones and joints. In addition, she teaches biomechanical principles and methods to students at all levels, particularly graduate and postdoctoral students. She has been principal investigator of two very competitive and prestigious R-type grants from the National Institutes of Health totaling close to $1.7 million. Lundberg also works in the Rush Research Mentoring Program, designed to nurture new faculty members to achieve the status of being an independent investigator.

Lauren Martin Senior manager of quality Leopardo Cos.

Lauren Martin works with project teams to identify design challenges, provide constructability reviews and propose solutions during preconstruction phases. With a background as a traveling quality management professional who spent 100% of her time in the eld with superintendents and teams, she’s played a role in some of Leopardo’s largest and most complex jobs to date. Her most impressive project to date has been her reboot of Leopardo’s quality program. Martin holds a Construction Quality Management for Contractors certi cate from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, Girls in the Game and other workforce development outreach efforts.

NOTABLE SPOTLIGHT with Doris Espiritu, Ph.D.

Crain’s 2023 Notable Leader in STEM

How did you get interested in a STEM career?

Dr. Doris Espiritu is the Dean of the Center of Excellence for Engineering and Computer Science at Wilbur Wright College, one of the seven City Colleges of Chicago. Dr. Espiritu also serves as a Senior Advisor to the Provost and has been teaching and leading programs in chemistry, biophysics, engineering, and computer science at City Colleges for more than fteen years. She is continually striving to provide research experiences, professional development, and other exceptional opportunities to her students.

Doris Espiritu has led the rapid expansion of the engineering and computer science program at Wright College. Her focus is to create pathways for a diverse group of community college students to enter four-year degree programs that lead to STEM careers. Espiritu has built partnerships with industry, universities, and nonpro t organizations, including securing a $1.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to help minority students.

I’ve always been curious about how things work and why things happen, which sparked my interest in science and math. However, an experience I had during an internship solidi ed my passion for STEM. During a drought, our team ew a plane 15,000 feet above ground and dispensed sodium chloride to induce arti cial rain to help an agricultural community. That’s when I realized I could make a difference and help people by pursuing a career in STEM.

Why are community colleges like Wright important?

Community colleges are uniquely positioned to connect more students to opportunities, and in the case of Wright College, to a strong STEM program. Many four-year schools can be costprohibitive, but at Wright, we create intentional guaranteed admission pathways so students can accomplish their immediate and long-term education goals without going into debt.

Why is engineering a good career path for women and people from diverse backgrounds?

Engineering is all about problem solving, and having diverse perspectives and

backgrounds at the table can be key to solving problems successfully. The challenge is that women and people of color don’t often see others who look like them in the STEM eld, which can be discouraging. When we break those stigmas—something our program aims to do—it can make a huge difference in young peoples’ con dence and aspirations.

How has your program grown?

Where do students nish their fouryear degrees?

We of cially launched the program in 2018 with a handful of students. Today, just ve years later, we have over 500. The program has become so popular because our students, after earning their associate degrees, transfer to top universities across the country, including the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign, UIC, Illinois Tech, University of Michigan, Northwestern University, Columbia University, and more.

Why is mentoring diverse students important to you?

When I immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines, I didn’t know a single soul. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my mentor who guided me. Many of our engineering students are rst-generation college students, which means they’re also navigating something entirely

new. Mentorship helps to answer their questions about college and provides them with a sense of belonging.

What is your proudest accomplishment?

Starting the engineering and computer science program at Wright has been my proudest accomplishment, not only because of its growth but also because of its impact. There is no greater feeling than when a former student walks through my door after graduating from a top program and earning an incredible job to tell me that they attribute their success to this once small program I started ve years ago.

What advice do you have for business owners looking to hire engineers?

First, of course, hire our alumni! But here’s why that’s important: the students who complete our program are not just diverse—they are deeply talented and quali ed. When employers build a company culture that prioritizes inclusivity, they don’t just attract the best talent—they retain those employees, too.

Myesha McClendon

Vice president of aviation

Milhouse Engineering & Construction

With more than 18 years of diversi ed experience in electrical engineering, Myesha McClendon manages multimillion-dollar projects for government and private clients. Her responsibilities include design, construction, budget, scheduling, site supervision, quality assurance and quality control. She is engineering design manager for O’Hare International Airport’s Global Terminal CDA project. She also serves as co-coordinator for the Chicago chapter of MathCounts, a national math club and competition for middle school students. She and her sister are co-founders of the Myesha & Michelle McClendon Scholarship Fund for African American women pursuing undergraduate degrees in engineering through the Alpha Kappa Alpha Educational Advancement Foundation. McClendon is an associate board member with Milhouse Charities.

Laura McGovern

Executive vice president and chief process and innovation of cer

Benesch

Laura McGovern leads rmwide efforts to optimize production processes and keep Benesch current with industry trends through technology initiatives, project management and company knowledge sharing. For more than 30 years, she’s led the Illinois MathCounts Program, a national competition for middle school students. Through MathCounts, she enables engineers and engineering rms to interact with students during the competition to encourage them to pursue STEM curriculum. McGovern is a board member of the Illinois Engineering Initiative, which works to retain engineering talent in Illinois through scholarships. Prior to her current role, she led the Illinois division’s civil and electrical group at Benesch, working on high-pro le projects including the Jane Addams Tollway reconstruction.

Tonia McManaman Senior project manager

In nity Electrical Group

Tonia McManaman’s key projects over the past year have included the installation of electric car chargers, switch gears and transformers; new conduit infrastructure for beroptics; and the construction and electrical installation for shops within shops at leading retailers. Over the past year, McManaman has focused on the installation of dozens of electric vehicle charging stations at more than 15 sites across the Chicago area. Each involved coordinating efforts with retailers, mall owners, municipal building departments and utility companies. McManaman was also involved with the total gut and renovation of Chicago’s Grant Park North and South garages and the development of a comprehensive inventory management system for the Chicago Department of Water Management.

Lia Merminga

Laboratory director

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Lia Merminga was appointed in April 2022 to lead the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The rst woman to lead Fermilab, she is one of the world’s leading particle accelerator physicists and is championing experimental techniques to advance the understanding of matter, dark matter and the origins of the universe. She’s leading the development of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, or DUNE, an international agship experiment to unlock the mysteries of neutrinos. With a budget of $4 billion, DUNE is the largest international experiment ever built by the Department of Energy on U.S. soil. Merminga is a fellow of the American Physical Society and a graduate of the DOE’s Oppenheimer Science & Energy Leadership Program.

NOTE WORTHY

Monica Metzler Executive director Illinois Science Council

Monica Metzler is executive director of the Illinois Science Council, an independent 501(c)3 she founded as the rst organization in Chicago to raise the understanding of science and serve an adult audience as a complement to student-focused STEM education. This past June, she re-established the Chicago Science Festival, which she created in 2015 as an annual celebration and showcase of local scientists. The event hosts 150 people to hear scientists and view demonstrations from multiple Chicago-area science institutions. Metzler was named a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition for her work in science communication and outreach.

Zaida Morillo

Structural group manager Primera Engineers

Zaida Morillo leads a team of engineers, oversees the analysis and design of bridge structures, and is responsible for strategic planning and project management at Primera. She recently obtained six of the seven available structural pre-quali cations in Illinois, helping Primera become one of just 22 rms with these credentials. Shortly after the rm was awarded two bridge projects, Morillo helped put Primera on the map in a highly specialized service offering. She was the engineer of record, discipline lead and quality assurance and control reviewer for the reconstruction of various bridges, walls, gantries and sign structures for the $4 billion Illinois Tollway I-294 reconstruction project. Morillo is active with Engineers Without Borders professional and student chapters.

Cindy Murcia

Senior vice president and chief technology controls of cer Wintrust Financial

Cindy Murcia leads Wintrust’s IT risk management, IT production support and IT disaster recovery teams, anticipating and mitigating exposure to the risks of critical data loss from accidental deletion, natural or human disasters and cyberattacks, She also led the maturity efforts for IT’s disaster recovery program. Murcia identi ed key changes to the testing for all of Wintrust’s applications and technical infrastructure, and also designed a new disaster recovery metric that’s used to predict potential risks. She created the framework for future disaster recovery testing and developed a rst-ever disaster recovery tabletop exercise strategy. Murcia is vice president of the Young Men’s Service League’s Panther chapter, a mother-and-son philanthropy organization.

Principal and unit manager Wiss Janney Elstner Associates

Tracy Naso is co-manager of WJE’s Chicago of ce, an interdisciplinary rm of engineers, architects and materials scientists, where she is technical adviser and a professional mentor. She recently served as project adviser for the evaluation and repair of a hospital parking garage after the failure of a beam support threatened to delay the facility’s opening. She’s an active member of several technical committees with the American Concrete Institute and Post-Tensioning Institute, which promulgate codes and standards for concrete structures. Naso serves on an ad hoc group called ADEPT focused on promoting diversity in talent pipelines by mentoring high school students interested in structural engineering.

Principal, Chicago of ce leader, Americas board member and digital leader Arup

Cierine Nicolas is project director and principal of the Fermilab Integrated Engineering Research Center. Located within a 6,800-acre campus, Fermilab’s new facility unites researchers and engineers to foster collaboration, improve operational ef ciency and support ongoing particle physics research. A specialist in high-rise and high-performance buildings, Nicolas has a comprehensive background in of ce, corporate and mixed-use developments, as well as the hospitality, restaurant, cultural, performing arts, residential, sports, educational and government sectors. She has served with the College of Architecture’s board of advisors at the Illinois Institute of Technology as well as a team leader for special events with the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

Tracy Naso

Cierine Nicolas

While women account for nearly half of the U.S. workforce, they make up only a third of the STEM workforce, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Of ce and the National Science Foundation.

Angela V. Olinto

Dean of the physical sciences division and Albert A. Michelson distinguished service professor in the department of astronomy and astrophysics University of Chicago

Under Angela V. Olinto’s leadership, the physical sciences division has received more than $125 million in gifts and research grant awards. She helped launch the Institute for Mathematical & Statistical Innovation, the Data Science Institute and several new academic programs in data science. Under her direction, the division has experienced a substantial increase in undergraduate enrollment and applications to Ph.D. programs. As a scientist, Olinto has contributed to the study of the structure of neutron stars, primordial in ationary theory, cosmic magnetic elds and the nature of dark matter. Olinto helped create the rst annual South Side Science Festival, an event that attracted more than 2,500 community members to UChicago’s campus.

Leslie Oster

Director of the Master of Science in Law program and clinical associate professor of law

Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

Leslie Oster oversees pedagogy, recruitment and admissions for a population representing approximately 85 STEM-based disciplines, while ensuring that the curriculum represents the intersection of STEM, law and business. Under her direction, the MSL program surpassed 600 graduates this spring, and from 2019 to 2022, 56% of students in the program were women. She has participated in the Grace Hopper Celebration, a conference for women and nonbinary technologists; provided panelist support and MSL sponsorship for the Chicago Women in STEM Initiative; and collaborated with Chicago innovation hub 1871 to present programming for law school students. Oster also led MSL in its partnership with Chicago Public Schools on a series of career-focused roundtables called Mobilizing STEM Leadership.

Didem Ozevin

Professor of civil, materials and environmental engineering University of Illinois Chicago

Didem Ozevin is director of the school’s Nondestructive Evaluation Laboratory. She is principal investigator of multiple federally funded research projects and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program. The primary objective of this project is to develop a high-temperature, multi-functional sensor to enable in ultrasonic structural health monitoring of piping systems within liquid metal-cooled fast reactors. The project aims to integrate these sensors into the asset integrity management system at Argonne National Laboratory, a proactive measure to ensure the continuous operation of nuclear reactors. Since 2012, Ozevin has been a council member of the International Society for Structural Health Monitoring of Intelligent Infrastructure.

Jamila Parham

Founder

The Tech Unicorn

Jamila Parham created The Tech Unicorn to be a catalyst to amplify voices in underrepresented and forgotten communities. In the past year, Parham has organized a free cybersecurity STEM workshop for public school students during national Cybersecurity Awareness Month and led impactful discussions at Women Impact Tech, sharing tools, resources and strategies with over 1,000 attendees. The Tech Unicorn placed in the top three nalists for Black Girl Ventures’ Purpose Public voting competition. Parham has been recognized as one of Verizon’s 10 brilliant professionals breaking stereotypes in their professions. Parham is a member of the Project Manager Institution and external connections chair for the Black at Microsoft employee resource group.

Kara Rodby

Tammy Pearce is a practicing structural engineer, a business-development associate and the chair of Graef’s rmwide DEI council. She recently undertook the design of Habitat for Humanity’s new home prototype. She is vice president of the board of Habitat for Humanity Chicago, where she is also chairs its governance committee. Pearce also serves on the board of ACE Mentor (Chicago) and chairs its alumni committee, and she is a board delegate for the organization Commercial Real Estate Women.

As a group leader, Michele Piotrowski is responsible for managing Engineering Enterprises’ Itasca of ce and eight direct reports along with direct project involvement in and management of complex infrastructure projects. She has recently been part of the planning process behind several sustainable drinking water projects in the Chicago area while also assisting seven southwest suburbs with their water audits and nonrevenue water-reduction plans as they convert to Lake Michigan water. In addition, Piotrowski has led water audit discussions at statewide conferences and regularly conducts training sessions for water utilities throughout the state. She specializes in water works system modeling and water tower construction and rehabilitation.

Christine Reed specializes in project delivery on complex transportation projects such as the Interstate 190 reconstruction. Reed and her team are managing the implementation of the $5 billion CREATE program, a rst-of-its-kind partnership between the U.S. Department of Transportation, the state of Illinois, Cook County, the city of Chicago, Metra, Amtrak and the nation’s freight railroads. The program will invest billions in critically needed improvements to increase the ef ciency of the region’s rail network. She serves as liaison with the city and state agencies that regulate the region’s highways. Reed is a member of the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Of cials and the Mid America Association of State Transportation Of cials.

Senior vice president of network engineering and operations and transformation

T-Mobile

Edwige Robinson is responsible for 23 states with a P&L of $3 billion, leading more than 5,000 employees and contractors who design, build and maintain a 5G network. In 2022, after she led organizational transformations by moving T-Mobile from legacy systems to more agile systems, the company saw a 35% increase in ef ciency. She co-creates strategy with the presidents of consumer market, T-Mobile for business and customer service to ensure that the network has sustainable growth and supports emerging AI technologies. This approach increased the company’s Net Promoter Score by +20 and helped propel the company to a No. 1 ranking in customer experience.

Technical principal Volta Energy Technologies

Kara Rodby leads technical due diligence for about half of Volta’s deal ow in battery hard technology. This involves reviewing investee technical data with management teams, quickly developing expertise on a range of technical topics, identifying key risks and reviewing intellectual property and competitive landscapes. She also executes research and techno-economic analyses to develop investment theses more broadly for the company. Rodby led the co-investment project for Volta’s limited partners to invest in Iontra (a portfolio company), and now serves as a board observer, helping with investment syndication, strategic partnership discovery and overall business guidance. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rodby founded the Graduate Womxn in Chemical Engineering group.

Under Joanne Rodriguez’s leadership, Mycocycle has moved into a new lab facility and raised $2.2 million in seed funding. In August 2022, Mycocycle partnered with Lendlease, Rubicon Technologies and Rockwood Sustainable Solutions to successfully complete a pilot project using mushrooms to decarbonize construction waste. Considered a rst-of-its-kind project, it used mycoremediation to treat asphalt shingle waste from 214 homes on the Fort Campbell Army base, diverting it from land lls and creating a new bio-based raw material that can be reused into new building materials or soil additives. Rodriguez is a board member of the Chicago Academy of Sciences/Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

Tammy Pearce Associate and engineer Graef

Michele Piotrowski Vice president Engineering Enterprises

Christine Reed

Associate vice president and highway department group director HNTB

Edwige Robinson

Joanne Rodriguez

Founder and CEO Mycocycle

Sara Rossio

Chief product of cer

G2

Sara Rossio oversees the company’s engineering and product development, managing the entirety of G2’s product portfolio and overseeing a team of 338 in an organization of about 650 employees. Under her leadership, G2 has hosted hackathons in Bangalore and Chicago, with 50% of the ideas being put into production quickly. This initiative already has driven an estimated $1 million in cost savings and has the potential to impact future revenue by more than $10 million. This year G2 also reached 2 million trusted reviews in its software marketplace. Rossio is executive sponsor of G2’s Veterans & Military Families ERG and represents G2 in its partnership with P33 and TechChicago.

Allison Sacerdote-Velat

Senior director

Chicago Academy of Sciences

Curator of herpetology and director of the Calling Frog Survey

Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum

Over the last 12 to 18 months, Allison Sacerdote-Velat helped secure grants for smooth greensnake population monitoring and recovery and forest amphibian conservation and response to drought. She is involved in a number of community science projects, assessments for smooth greensnake conservation and research on the effects of disease and environment on endangered species. Sacerdote-Velat’s accomplishments include incubating and hatching 1,138 snakes, releasing 1,037 to supplement declining populations and reintroducing 101 snakes to two sites. Her efforts have contributed to the recovery of the smooth greensnake population, serving as a model for rangewide conservation. Additionally, Sacerdote-Velat has served on the Fermilab National Particle Accelerator Ecological Land Management Committee since 2015.

Callie Sher

Founder

Organomics Pet Food President

Nutripack

Callie Sher leads the planning, development and maintenance of food safety and quality systems for the pet food business with varying degrees of complexity and system maturity. She is responsible for assuring that the facility is compliant with internal policies and external regulations systems. In 2022, Sher received a grant from the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center for Daily Management and has, in turn, applied Kaizen, Gemba Walks and lean manufacturing concepts to her team, increasing production speed by 15% and the output/revenue by 20%. Sher is an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as well as the Jewish United Fund, Special Olympics and Project Books.

Amanda Schalk

Co-founder and chief operating of cer Enzyme by Design

Amanda Schalk is principal investigator at Enzyme by Design, which researches biologic anti-cancer drugs. In that role, she designs experiments, oversees lab assistants who carry out the experiments and evaluates results. She’s also a research assistant professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. Schalk is an awardee of participation in the National Cancer Institute’s NExT program to develop a cancer therapeutic through IND-enabling. She is a member of Women in Bio-Chicago, the Association of Women in Science and the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology. Schalk is a frequent speaker at biotech events on efforts to position Chicago as a biotech hub.

Marzia Sedino

Senior associate principal

Skidmore Owings & Merrill

As a leader of SOM’s international sustainability practice, Marzia Sedino ensures that her diverse team of MEP engineers, facade consultants, sustainability experts, and health and certi cation specialists work collaboratively to minimize whole-life carbon and optimize operational energy. She is launching a new service for evaluating and measuring whole-life carbon emissions for architecture to give clients a holistic view of a project’s environmental impact and lifecycle. She also led the publication of the rm’s rst Climate Action Report, showcasing its sustainability goals and accomplishments. Recently, she’s worked on the sustainability visioning and design of the New York Climate Exchange. Sedino hosts student workshops with World Chicago and TechGirls.

Thrupti Shivakumar

CEO and board member Cohesion

Thru Shivakumar leads Cohesion in the execution of its strategic vision as well its product vision. Among recent accomplishments, the company had four U.S. patents published; it launched the rst single-layer-data product across all major building systems, collecting a million data points per day per building to create the rst automated ESG snapshot report based on real-time data; and it launched what it calls the rst Indoor Air Quality Optimization product that actively responds to elevated pollutants by pulling in fresh air in real time. Shivakumar is on the technology advisory board of the Green Buildings Initiative and serves on the workforce advisory committee of BOMA National.

Eileen Smith

Senior vice president, data and analytics

Cboe Global Markets

Eileen Smith leads the team responsible for the global data platform, corporate business intelligence, global client relationship management software and tools, market-based quantitative research and analytics engineering. Over the past 18 months, she oversaw the migration of the corporate data platform to Snow ake, a cloud-based data platform. An analysis created by her team that leveraged the new data capabilities helped drive the decision to implement new options products that, in turn, have made a signi cant revenue contribution to Cboe. Smith is a named inventor on seven Cboe trading system patents and was a founding board member of the Cboe Women’s Initiative.

Mary Smith

Chair and CEO

Caroline & Ora Smith Foundation

Mary Smith started her foundation to support and train Native American girls in STEM elds; her efforts have affected the lives of more than 100 children in the Chicago area over the past 12 months. Along with Chicago Public Schools’ American Indian Program, the American Indian Center of Chicago and the St. Kateri Center, she co-sponsored a STEM Summer Camp and a STEM Winter Camp for area Native American children. The foundation also collaborates with organizations across the country, including AT&T, Microsoft and various museums. Smith is on the STEM advisory board of the Partnership for Education & the Advancement of Quantum & nanoSystems and is a board member of the Field Museum.

Sangeeta Shah Director of engineering Clearcover

Recently Sangeeta Shah reoriented teams around changing business objectives and helped build a strategic product road map focused on growth and cost reduction. She sponsored a continuous learning initiative to level up engineers in the organization as well as Clearcover’s annual hackathon, which resulted in several solutions being brought to market. She helped integrate real-time AI inference models, improving risk selection during the quoting process and introducing processes that reduce the deployment cycle time by 75% for one of the largest and most critical software repositories. She also led the innovation technical strategy for Clearcover’s embedded insurance solutions. Shah is a founder of Clearcover’s Women in Insurance & Technology ERG.

Shantel Smith

Senior vice president, global cloud transformation

TransUnion

Shantel Smith leads global cloud transformation, which is TransUnion’s largest technology investment to date. She and her team are responsible for building a common global platform to enhance automation and security and pave the way for accelerated product innovation. She also led the Global Decisioning application cloud transformation, deploying a cloud-native platform that delivers services worldwide while migrating customer con gurations with minimal disruption. Her most in uential project is TransUnion’s multiyear mission to migrate the current tech stack to a hybrid, multicloud environment. Smith is a core member of TransUnion’s Women of Global Technology community and is leading a ve-month pilot to match female-identi ed associates with leadership mentors.

Kris Sorich

Senior landscape architect

Chicago Department of Transportation

Kris Sorich drives the design and manages the construction deliverables for capital-improvement projects incorporating public spaces in the city’s rights of way. She also manages the Historic Boulevard Enhancement Program. North Lawndale’s Independence Boulevard is the inaugural design segment, with a focus on new infrastructure, trail creation and community-led improvements. Also scheduled for construction is CDOT’s Milwaukee - Belmont to Logan pedestrian-friendly spaces around the square and the Blue Line station. Sorich provided analytics to determine locations and led a multistakeholder engagement process to achieve universal approval of the vernacular design. She volunteers at Habitat in the Right of Way-UIC and with the Cook-DuPage County Technical Advisory Committee on surface and subsurface geology.

Pati Vitt

Director of natural resources Lake County Forest Preserves

Pati Vitt develops and maintains land management and restoration programs at the Lake County Forest Preserves, managing controlled burning, farmland management, reforestation, threatened-species monitoring and invasive-species control. Recent activities include partnering with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to secure $11 million in funding to restore native habitats in the upper Des Plaines River watershed and acquiring 77 acres of shoreline at Openlands Lakeshore Preserve.

Vitt is team lead for the Manage Healthy Landscapes Initiative of the Chicago Wilderness Alliance. She also works with the Midwest Climate Collaborative in developing a Midwest-wide climate research agenda; Vitt is team lead for the organization’s biodiversity and ecosystems components.

Kari Steele

President

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago

Kari Steele leads MWRD, a governing board that oversees a $1.4 billion budget and is responsible for protecting waterways and water quality throughout the Chicago area. The MWRD manages 76.1 miles of navigable waterways connecting the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Steele oversees seven wastewater treatment plants as well as the tunnel and reservoir plan, one of the largest civil engineering projects in the world. Her civic work focuses on environmental preservation, hosting community service days that promote the proper disposal of medicines and the recycling of paper and electronics, as well as initiatives like the Canal Shores Golf Course Pre-Earth Week workday to remove debris and plant tree saplings.

Daria Terrell

Orthopedic surgeon, chair, department of surgery St. Bernard Hospital

Dr. Daria Terrell cares for patients with degenerative, overuse and traumatic conditions of the bones and joints through both surgical and nonsurgical treatments. A key area of interest is research into the prevention of osteoporosis. Terrell has also been a physician champion of her hospital’s efforts to address patient safety. She is organizing efforts to address compliance with heart failure and hypertension treatments using novel approaches that integrate use of health-related apps. As a co-leader of a multilevel STEM-based Girl Scout troop since 2018, Terrell has developed numerous activities to engage her troop in fun- lled activities that encourage their interest in science-related elds. Terrell is a member of the Cook County Physicians Association.

Meghan Webster Principal Gensler

Meghan Webster leads a studio focused on education, health care, life sciences and critical facilities markets. In this role, she is responsible for leading a P&L for the rm, recruiting and developing talent, maintaining operational excellence and driving business metrics. Under her leadership, the studio’s revenue has grown more than 25% in the last scal year. In September 2022, her team opened Woolsey Hall at Wichita State University’s business school; she is now working on a campus master plan for 202434. Webster has been a member of and leader at the Urban Land Institute since 2013 and serves on ULI Chicago’s Women’s Leadership Initiative Advisory Board.

Murphy Westwood

Vice president of science and conservation

The Morton Arboretum

Murphy Westwood oversees 50 scientists and conservationists, the research and urban forestry programs, and an herbarium. She led a 10-institution coalition that discovered Quercus tardifolia, an oak thought to be extinct that’s been hailed as crucial to understanding biodiversity. She also led a ve-year 2022 study on the state of U.S. trees and spearheaded the arboretum’s centennial initiative planting of 3,000 trees across the Chicago area. She is advancing the study’s actionable recommendations through the arboretum’s global tree conservation program. She also leads the ArbNet international network of 2,340 arboretums. Westwood is a member of the International Oak Society’s scienti c and education committee as well as the International Dendrology Society.

Global innovation process director

ITW

Maria Thompson partners with all levels of business leadership across the test and measurement, electronics, polymers and uids, welding, construction, food equipment, specialty products and automotive segments. She works with ITW’s global innovation process to govern B2B, B2C, & B2B2C new-product development projects, and develops innovation strategies, metrics and tools to enable practice sharing throughout all ITW units. She has facilitated face-to-face and virtual workshops with more than 230 new-product development project teams and more than 3,300 employees in more than 20 countries. Thompson serves on the board of advisers of the University of Illinois Chicago’s Information & Decision Sciences program and is the ITW representative to UIC’s College of Engineering advisory board.

Kate Wolin

Principal Circea

Partner

Pace Healthcare Capital

Adjunct professor

Kellogg School of Management

Kate Wolin consults with a range of companies on integrating behavioral science into product strategy to drive adoption, create a more personalized experience and extend user engagement. She teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management and, as a partner at Pace Healthcare Capital, invests in digital-health and health care tech companies. She is mentor for the Zell Fellows Entrepreneurial Fellowship Program at Northwestern, leveraging her experience merging science with real-world problems. Wolin serves on the board of Prismatic, a nonpro t dedicated to teaching Chicago youth the skills to advance, lead and pivot with resiliency, and is on the boards of Vincere, YourCoach and Femmistry.

Vice president, Bartosch Patient Activation Institute

Upfront Healthcare

Lindsay Zimmerman is spearheading research and pioneering technologies that break barriers between patients and their care, compiling data on roadblocks that range from appointment booking problems to follow-up compliance issues, digital literacy, language barriers and broadband internet access limitations. Under her leadership, OSF Healthcare reversed care disparities in vulnerable populations by leveraging Upfront to develop a scalable intervention to close breast cancer screening care gaps. More than 1,000 women were reached through a targeted digital outreach program. Zimmerman is a co-founder of the Cook County Health Foundation’s associate board and a member of The Night Ministry’s performance measurement committee.

Maria Thompson

Lindsay Zimmerman

NOTE WORTHY

Women represent just 5% of software developers, 16% of engineers and 27% of data center technicians, according to Statista and Zippia.

Owner of Schaumburg of ces hit with $83M foreclosure suit

The complaint comes despite some big leasing wins during the pandemic at the two-building, 890,516-square-foot property next to Wood eld Mall

A local real estate firm that bet heavily before the COVID-19 pandemic on reviving a big office complex in Schaumburg has been hit with an $83 million foreclosure lawsuit, another high-profile example of distress as weak demand for workspace and high interest rates keep torturing landlords.

A venture of Skokie-based American Landmark Properties recently defaulted on a $95.5 million loan tied to the Schaumburg Towers office complex at 1400 and 1450 American Lane in the northwest suburb, according to a complaint filed Aug. 25 in Cook County Circuit Court. A venture of Chicago-based lender Prime Finance Partners alleges in the lawsuit that American Landmark failed to pay off the mortgage when it matured June 9 and now owes just more than $83 million from a combination of the outstanding loan balance and other fees.

The two 20-story buildings next to Woodfield Mall add to a historic wave of distress flooding the office market. A combination of companies cutting

back on office space with the rise of remote work, higher borrowing costs and banks wary of the office sector have clobbered office property values, leaving landlords with maturing debt scrambling to hold onto their properties.

Distress rises

Many owners have surrendered buildings to their lenders rather than face a foreclosure process. As of the end of June, the total value of distressed ofce properties nationwide had jumped 75% from the beginning of the year to $24.8 billion, according to research rm MSCI Real Assets. e total marked the rst time since 2018 that neither retail nor hotel properties were the biggest contributors to commercial property distress, the rm’s data shows.

Since March, owners of a handful of large o ce properties in the Chicago suburbs have been hit with more than $360 million worth of foreclosure lawsuits, including complexes in Rosemont, Rolling Meadows and Lisle, as well as Schaumburg Towers.

American Landmark’s case,

however, stands out from the crowd because the landlord had some leasing success at Schaumburg Towers during the pandemic. e 890,516-square-foot property — which previously housed the headquarters of insurance giant Zurich North America — was half-empty when American Landmark bought it for $87 million in 2018. At the time, payroll software specialist Paylocity was in the early stages of a 15-year, 300,000-square-foot lease to anchor the complex.

American Landmark proceeded to pump almost $19 million into renovations and new amenities, which helped it land a series of new leases even as demand sunk during the public health crisis, according to a yer from brokerage Cushman & Wake eld marketing the property for sale earlier this year. A 55,000-square-foot lease with Ally Financial signed in 2021 — a rare COVID-era expansion by the company — led a total of 160,000 square feet of new leasing at Schaumburg Towers since 2020, according to Cushman. e buildings were a combined 77% leased as of earlier

this year, better than the 72% average for suburban o ce buildings at the time and well ahead of the average among top-tier, or Class A, o ce buildings in the northwest suburbs, according to data from brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle.

But American Landmark’s recent sales e ort did not result in a deal, ultimately leading to the alleged loan default in June.

Equity at risk

If Prime Finance Partners seizes the property, it would not only wipe out American Landmark’s equity in the complex but also the interest of Chicago-based Pearlmark Real Estate Partners, which provided a $14.5 million mezzanine loan

on top of the senior mortgage. A Pearlmark spokeswoman declined to comment. Spokesmen for American Landmark and Prime Finance did not respond to requests for comment. American Landmark is well known locally as the former owner of Willis Tower, having been part of a joint venture that sold the city’s tallest building for $1.5 billion in 2015. The firm’s local portfolio today includes a pair of properties in the Illinois Science & Technology Park in Skokie and two office buildings at One and Two Oak Brook Place in the western suburb.

The Real Deal Chicago first reported the Schaumburg Towers foreclosure lawsuit.

Motorola wins order to halt Chinese competitor’s radio sales

Hytera was told to pay $49M in royalties. When it didn’t, a Chicago judge turned up the heat.

es, which was later reduced to $544 million.

A federal judge plans to stop a Chinese company from selling its two-way radios worldwide as punishment for not paying $49 million in royalties to Motorola Solutions after being found guilty of stealing its trade secrets.

It’s just the latest twist in the saga between Chicago-based Motorola and Hytera Communications that dates back to 2017, when Motorola sued the former distributor over its signature hand-held radios.

In a case whose details read like a spy novel, Motorola accused Hytera of hiring three engineers who were working for Motorola in Penang, Malaysia.

Motorola says the men secretly took about 10,000 documents containing some of the company’s most important technology, including source code for software, which allowed Hytera to launch its own line of handheld radios that it had been unable to build.

Motorola won a civil case in early 2020 in which a Chicago jury found that Hytera stole its trade secrets and infringed on its copyrights. e court ordered an award of $765 million in damag-

Motorola wanted the court to stop Hytera from selling radios and tower equipment with the stolen technology, but it instead ordered the Chinese company to pay a royalty.

Contempt order sought

Hytera was ordered to pay $49 million in royalties for sales that already had occurred, but it never paid up. So Motorola went back to court, seeking a contempt order.

U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold issued a ruling late last month in favor of Motorola and chastised Hytera because “it has not complied with the very order it sought.”

“Hytera has not paid a single cent of what it owes, and Motorola has shown clearly and convincingly that Hytera’s e orts described in the written documents and at the contempt hearing were neither reasonable nor diligent.”

Hytera, whose U.S. subsidiaries have led for bankruptcy, asked for more time. Pacold had run out of patience.

“Hytera (had) nearly eight months to secure funds to pay its royalty obligation on time,” she wrote. “Instead, Hytera waited

until four weeks before the payment was due to begin making calls to its lenders to seek additional capital to pay what it owed.”

She pointed to evidence presented by Motorola during an Aug. 18 hearing that Hytera’s parent company has $16 million in unrestricted cash and $700 million in net assets.

“A worldwide injunction halting the sales of a major driver of revenues is likely to induce Hytera to use its existing assets to immediately make the deposit

along with the required late-payment fee,” Pacold ruled. “Hytera sought an ongoing royalty as opposed to an injunction, and it litigated forcefully against a permanent injunction.”

Details of the injunction are still being worked out.

“We are pleased that the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has found Hytera in civil contempt,” Motorola said in a statement. “We will continue to hold Hytera accountable for its egregious conduct and defend Motorola Solutions’ valu-

able intellectual property.”

e drama is far from over. A criminal case against the company and seven employees is pending in federal court.

Motorola spent tens of millions bringing the case against its Chinese rival, and CEO Greg Brown has publicly cautioned other companies to think twice about doing business in China. A patent case against Hytera is still awaiting trial in federal court in Chicago. Hytera has countersued Motorola for unfair competition in an antitrust case.

Danny Ecker

John Pletz

Schaumburg Towers at 1400 and 1450 American Lane I COSTAR GROUP

CRAIN’S DINING AND ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE

From private dining to specialty steakhouses, here are options for your next business meal.

BRASS TACK

11 East Walton, Chicago, IL 60611 312-646-1402 • brasstackchicago.com

Brass Tack’s private dining, nestled on Waldorf Astoria Chicago’s third oor, offers premier spaces for corporate dinners, holiday gatherings, and personal celebrations. With panoramic views of the vibrant Gold Coast area, its unparalleled cuisine and service guarantee an impressive experience for guests.

THE M ROOM

450 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60654 312-224-1650 • mroomchicago.com

Located in Chicago’s River North, The M Room Team presents a variety of neat pours in addition to craft cocktails featuring The Macallan, allowing guests to have an experience perfectly catered to their palette. Additionally, The M Room features Tasting Menus designed to highlight the ingredients and avors used in The Macallan whisky making process.

BLVD STEAKHOUSE

817 West Lake Street, Chicago, IL 60607 312-526-3116 • blvdchicago.com

Located in the Fulton Market District, BLVD Steakhouse is a classic American steakhouse inspired by Hollywood’s Sunset Blvd. Helmed by Celebrity Chef/Partner Joe Flamm, the restaurant embodies the glamour and luxury that de ned Old Hollywood offering sophisticated yet approachable service along with prime cuts and fresh seafood, innovative twists on 1950s cocktails, and an award-winning list of wines.

REMINGTON’S AMERICAN GRILL

20 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60602 312-782-6000 • remingtonschicago.com

Located across the street from downtown Chicago’s cherished Millennium Park is Remington’s – a classic American grill and steakhouse serving up warm hospitality, unparalleled service, and satisfying cuisine. Remington’s menu features classic American fare and Chicago Steakhouse classics. The luxurious and rich interiors create an appealing ambiance for travelers and locals alike with the perfect setting for social gatherings and private parties.

ROSE MARY

932 West Fulton Market, Chicago, IL 60607 872-260-3921 • rosemarychicago.com

Located in the Fulton Market District, Rose Mary is inspired by Celebrity Chef/Partner Joe Flamm’s Italian heritage and the bold, bright avors of Croatian cuisine. The award-winning restaurant offers a seasonal menu featuring house-made pasta and risottos, fresh seafood, and grilled meats, along with craft cocktails and a diverse list of Eastern European wines.

FILLMORE

120 West Monroe Street, Chicago, IL 60603 312-312-2142 • llmorerestaurant.com

West Coast American-Asian-Sushi. Inventive in spirit and modern in approach, Menu signatures include premium steaks and seafood, hearth-roasted sh and chicken, Wagyu burgers, healthy salads and more. Creative, hand-rolled sushi, sashimi and nigiri play the menu’s center stage along with bourbons, Japanese whiskeys and sakes. Mention this ad and receive a 15% discount on your next visit.

ROSEBUD RANDOLPH

130 East Randolph Street, Chicago, IL 60601 312-473-1111 • rosebudrestaurants.com

Rosebud Randolph, located steps away from Millennium Park, features three levels of stunning dining spaces, making it the perfect spot for any occasion. The menu highlights century-old, Italian, family recipes including hand-made pastas, meatballs, steaks, seafood and more. Rosebud Restaurants have been serving Chicago and the surrounding suburbs since 1976.

CRAIN’S DINING AND ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE

showcases a variety of Chicagoland restaurants, bars, private spaces and entertainment venues. This special advertising guide will highlight new menus, spotlight chefs and promote any upcoming special events. To reserve your spot in the guide, please contact Menia Pappas at menia.pappas@crain.com.

The Obamas are getting new neighbors in Kenwood

Construction has started on a new house on the once-controversial lot next door to former President Barack Obama’s Kenwood home.

Some steel framing was up on the Greenwood Avenue site, Crain’s confirmed last week. This is the lot that became notorious with Obama’s critics after the Chicago Tribune reported that the wife of political influencer Tony Rezko bought it on the same day in 2005 that the Obamas bought the house next door.

e property’s owners, Robyn-Ashley Taylor and Maurice Taylor, did not respond to a request for comment.

When complete, the yellow brick house will be at least a $4.2 million property. The Taylors, who in late 2021 paid $699,000 for the site, filed permits in March that estimate the cost of construction at a little over $3.5 million.

The combined $4.2 million does not include interior finishes, landscaping and other components not covered by construction costs.

Vintage homes

The exterior of the house, designed by Space Architects & Planners, looks something like a contemporary sibling of the Obamas’ house, built in 1916 with a high pyramidal roof, red brick exterior and a white-columned porch. The new neighbor, called Greenwood Residence on Space’s website, will be yellow brick with a white-columned porch, two big rectilinear

window bays on the second floor and a tall triangular pediment on the third-floor level.

e architectural echo is appropriate for a neighborhood whose character is imbued with stately vintage homes, courtyard apartment buildings and a beautiful historic synagogue right across the street from both the Obama and the future Taylor homes.

The former president and first lady, who since leaving the White House in 2017 have primarily lived at homes in Washington, D.C., and Martha’s Vineyard, bought their Kenwood house in for $1.65 million in June 2005, when Barack Obama was a U.S. senator.

The next year, the Chicago Tribune reported that on the same day the Obamas bought their house, Rita Rezko paid $625,000 for the empty lot next door. The empty lot and the Obama lot had been one parcel under one ownership until 2005, when they went on the market separately.

The Obamas later bought onesixth of the Rezko lot, 1,500 square feet along the property line, for $104,500, and Rezko footed the $14,000 cost of building a fence between the properties, the Tribune reported.

That the Obamas and Rezko’s wife initially purchased on Greenwood Avenue on the same day “rais(ed) questions about the relationship between the two men,” the Tribune reported, “as Obama struggles to distance himself from Rezko,” a fundraiser and adviser to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who months before had been indicted on charges of fraud and influence peddling.

Obama maintained that he

had been vigilant about keeping his family real estate transaction ethical and apart from the Rezkos’ deal. Although Rezko had been a financial supporter of Obama, the future president said of the real estate situation that “my working assumption was that as long as I operated in an open, up-front fashion, and all the T’s were crossed and I’s were dotted, that it wouldn’t be an issue,” according to the Tribune.

Sales of lot

Nevertheless, the whiff of scandal lingered over the deal for years, before Rezko was sentenced to prison in 2011. Obama was not implicated, but his detractors used the real estate transactions as evidence that Obama was closer to the corrupt Rezko than he let on.

Rita Rezko sold the lot, in its reduced size, in December 2006 for $575,000. With the $104,500 from the Obamas, her proceeds totaled $679,000, a profit of $54,000.

That buyer sold the lot in March 2008 for $675,000 to a couple who planned to build a home on the site but who instead put it up for sale in 2009 at $1.3 million. It was on and off the market for nearly 12 years before the Taylors bought it for $699,000.

The Taylors’ $4.2 million-plus investment is above the highest recorded sale price for a Kenwood home, the $3.96 million that buyers paid in 2021 for a mansion a few doors up the same block.

The record home price in Kenwood’s sibling neighborhood Hyde Park is $4.2 million. That was also a 2021 sale.

In this view from Hyde Park Boulevard, the Taylors’ construction site is in the foreground and the Obama house is in the background, behind the row of trees. I DENNIS RODKIN

Dennis Rodkin

To answer the question, scientists at Fermilab and around the globe will conduct an elaborate experiment that will have the attention of the physics community focused on the Chicago area for the next several decades.

“ e reason there’s such worldwide interest is there’s possibly another Nobel Prize at stake,” says Mark Messier, a physics professor at Indiana University who is among the researchers involved with the project at Fermi and who worked on a groundbreaking neutrino experiment in Japan in the late ‘90s. “In the pantheon of physics topics, it belongs right up there with the Higgs boson.”

e Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, known as DUNE, is a $4 billion project that involves more than 1,400 collaborators — more than half of them outside the United States — from more than 200 academic and research institutions in 30 countries.

“It’s the largest project Fermilab has ever done, the largest project the high-energy physics community in the U.S. has ever undertaken,” says Mossey, U.S. project director of DUNE.

Fermilab, opened in 1967, is one of two national laboratories in the Chicago area that are closely tied to the University of Chicago. Although largely overlooked by the public, Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont are highly visible to government agencies that fund much of the nation’s basic research and to the top scienti c minds from around the world. ey’re key economic assets, especially amid an unprecedented wave of federal funding that’s be-

gy. Up to 500 people will be working on the project at any particular time, many of them at Fermilab.

Hard to detect

As the name implies, the focus of DUNE is neutrinos, which are among the smallest but most abundant particles in the universe and may hold the key to unlocking its origins. While the Higgs boson is often called the God particle, the neutrino earned the nickname the ghost particle.

for your whole life but almost never interact with you — which is what makes it great to study.”

But not easy. Neutrinos are difcult to detect. Seeing them requires specialized detectors, located a mile underground in chambers that are kept at subzero temperatures.

Scientists must rst generate the tiny particles, which is where Fermilab comes in. e national lab has long been home to accelerators, which are crucial to studying particle physics.

would answer more questions about neutrinos, including a key theory that they oscillate, or change form, which would potentially explain the discrepancy between matter and antimatter in the instant that the world formed. It’s not as simple as a one-and-done experiment.

“ e experiments being done are more like building circumstantial case: You’re ruling out other explanations,” Blucher says.

tors will observe them on the other end.

Fermilab’s accelerator produces a beam of protons, which are slammed into a small piece of graphite. e particles that come o are then focused by electromagnets and delivered down a pipe into a device that absorbs everything but the neutrinos, which then make the 800-mile trip to detectors in South Dakota.

“ ere’s no other experiment in the world that’s like this,” says Sam Zeller, a scientist who got her start as an intern at Fermilab and now is overseeing the construction of the detectors in Batavia. “We have never sent a beam of neutrinos from an accelerator this large a distance. We’re building a specialized neutrino beam, detectors that use new technology. We’ve never done this combination before. We kind of just dreamed we could do it.”

Cutting-edge technology doesn’t come easy, or cheap.

“ ere are some instances where you have an idea for a big project, and you get the money, and you buy a bunch of stu and connect it,” says Blucher, who has been involved with DUNE since its outset. “Here we’re designing something that no one has ever designed. ere’s no place to go to buy the stu . We have to establish we know how to build it rst.”

One example is the equipment used to detect the neutrinos.

ing unleashed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has made the labs a focus of his economic-development strategy to attract more companies and high-paying jobs to the state.

e DUNE project means a billion dollars in construction work at Fermilab for new facilities and equipment, which will be funded by the U.S. Department of Ener-

DISCOVER

From Page 3

average estimate for 2023 earnings per share. McLean, Va.based Capital One, a Discover rival, was trading at nearly nine times 2023 earnings estimates.

“ is is a really attractive asset that’s trading at historic lows,” Miller says. “ ere’s de nitely an opportunity. . . .Discover is not a

“ ey have no size, almost no mass, no charge and almost never interact with anything else, but they have an identity,” says Ed Blucher, a University of Chicago researcher who has been studying neutrinos for most of his career. “It is by far the most common particle. ere are a few hundred of them per cubic centimeter. If you could see neutrinos, a room would be lled with them. ere are trillions per second going through your body

massive company. It is at an acquirable size.”

Potential suitors could include larger regional banks lacking major credit card operations. BMO Financial Group, parent of Chicago’s second-largest bank by deposits, ts in that category. A BMO spokesman declined to comment. Less likely, but not outside the realm of possibility, would be private-equity rms, which could team up on an o er.

e lab is named for Nobel Prize-winning U of C scientist Enrico Fermi, who is known for his work on the Manhattan Project, which developed the rst atomic bomb. He also came up with the name “neutrino” and is credited with a theory that ultimately aided in their discovery.

A smaller version of the DUNE experiment, called NOVA, launched nearly a decade ago and involved sending neutrinos 500 miles from Batavia to Ash River, Minn.

In 2015, the U.S. physics community, led by the Department of Energy, decided to undertake a more ambitious project that

Credit cards are a critical linchpin at banking giants like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. Run well, a credit card business earns some of the banking industry’s highest returns. e franchises just aren’t typically even regarded as dealmaking possibilities.

Banking in turmoil

at said, the banking industry is in turmoil, still shaken by the

“ e neutrino explanation seems plausible. ere are a couple things that need to be true for the explanation to be valid — which will not mean that you proved it. One of the key things is the measurement that DUNE is focused on. It will be a big checkmark on the things that have to be true.”

800-mile trip

e oscillation that researchers are looking for happens at a particular energy and distance, which is why they’re shooting a beam of particles 800 miles to South Dakota. Detectors at Fermilab will observe the neutrinos’ form before they make the journey. Another set of detec-

failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank earlier this year. Regulators, too, are preparing to impose higher capital requirements on the largest banks in the country. Credit cards typically entail particularly high capital levels to support the business.

A Discover spokesman declined to comment.

John Owen, a board member who is serving as interim CEO during the search for Hoch-

ere are 50 or 60 people around the world working on the detectors, which are made up of big wire chambers that will be housed in giant cryostats, or containers lled with lique ed argon gas that allow the devices to be cooled to 300 degrees below zero. Some of the components are being built at U of C, others in the United Kingdom. e most visible work on DUNE so far has been taking place at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, where workers are more than halfway done with excavating 800,000 tons of rock for the caverns that are nearly 500 feet long and 100 feet tall, which will house one set of detectors. All the equipment has to be disassembled on the surface, lowered into the caverns and then reassembled.

“ e detectors are being built to last,” Blucher says. “ ey’re giant containers lled with liquid argon that will remain lled for the next 20 to 25 years.

“ ey do not have stu inside that you can just go in and service. Once you ll it with liquid argon, you really want it to work because it’s very unforgiving if there are big problems then.”

schild’s successor, responded cautiously when asked on an Aug. 17 conference call with analysts to provide reassurance that Discover’s future is solid even with the management uncertainty.

“On the M&A front, I really can’t add much to that,” he said. “ at’s not something that we really can comment on. I would tell you our rst priority is executing our plan and organic growth and driving the business model we have.”

The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, known as DUNE, is a $4 billion project that involves more than 1,400 collaborators in 30 countries.

The most visible work on DUNE so far has been taking place at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, where workers are more than halfway done excavating 800,000 tons of rock for the caverns that are nearly 500 feet long and 100 feet tall, which will house one set of detectors. RYAN POSTEL/ FERMILAB

medical, law and business schools and attract stellar students and topight faculty from around the world. ey receive megabucks research grants and bequests from deep-pocketed donors. And the stated missions of both schools emphasize excellence in teaching and academic research.

So how do Division 1 sports advance that mission at Northwestern?

“I don’t see how big-time athletics is helpful to serving the school’s mission,” says Chicago attorney David Baltmanis, who earned his undergraduate and law degrees at Northwestern and is a Wildcats fan. “It’s its own separate thing. e association between big-time athletics and universities is kind of an anachronism.”

With recent consolidation and the creation of megaconferences, the price of Division 1 competition in dollars and institutional commitment is rising. Northwestern competes in an arena where athletic expenses at big public universities are growing two times faster than academic budgets, says Amy Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which promotes reforms to strengthen the ed-

set responsible expense targets and withhold a portion of conference revenue if a school exceeds the targets.

Amid the rising costs, schools over the next 10 years will have to decide whether big-time sports are consistent with their missions, Perko says, adding, “Or can they provide athletic opportunities in other ways?”

In the wake of allegations of widespread hazing in football and other sports, Northwestern spokesmen have been unavailable for comment on the scandal or the large questions it poses. A University of Chicago spokesman declined to comment on the school’s decision to drop big-time athletics.

Northwestern boosters typically say sports build enthusiasm among alumni, bring them back to campus and boost donations.

Fired Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald amassed a winning record over 17 seasons. When he was a player, the Wildcats went to the 1996 Rose Bowl. e women’s lacrosse team just won its eighth national championship, and the Wildcats eld hockey team won a national championship in 2021.

with it? Money spent on athletics is money that’s not available for labs, theaters and scholarships, analysts point out.

Fitzgerald was earning $5.3 million a year, three times more than the NU president. Basketball head coach Christopher Collins and former athletic director James Phillips also earned more than Northwestern’s president, according to the university’s most recent 990 ling with the Internal Revenue Service.

“Given the economics of scarcity, you have to make choices,” says Allen Sanderson, senior instructional professor in economics at the University of Chicago.

At schools with big-time programs, booster clubs raise money to recruit athletes and help players get endorsement deals, competing with traditional fundraising for academic programs. And critics are quick to point out that recruited athletes could win admission over more academically quali ed applicants.

Big Ten payout

a request for comment.

In the modern era of lucrative media deals, it’s hard to imagine Northwestern would consider exiting the Big Ten. Memories are short and Northwestern’s conference peers have survived embarrassing scandals. Big-time programs, once created, are hard to get rid of, experts say. Alumni would likely raise loud objections. But the decision could be made for Northwestern, if powerhouse college football teams divorce from their parent conferences and become part of a national conference, as some reformers have suggested. “Once that happens, does Northwestern t in?’ Baltmanis says. “ ey wouldn’t be guaranteed a place at the table.”

To be sure, there’s no evidence that athletics have interfered with Northwestern achieving its academic mission. It’s No. 10 in U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of the top U.S. universities. It boasts a $15 billion endowment and raises big money for research and academic programs.

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ucational mission of college sports.

e Knight Commission and other groups are trying to tackle the larger question of reform. For example, in 2021, the commission proposed that each athletic conference

ABBVIE

From Page 3

provisions are the Biden administration’s attempts at controlling drug prices for the government and for Americans, particularly the 65 million people on Medicare. Medicare enrollees taking the 10 drugs selected for negotiation paid a total of $3.4 billion in out-of-pocket costs in 2022 for these medications, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Imbruvica’s inclusion wasn’t a surprise, as industry analysts and observers had anticipated it. Even AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez warned investors about the possibility on the company’s last earnings call in July.

at could explain why AbbVie’s stock price was resilient Aug. 29, down less than 1% and trading at about $147.

“A lot of people expected Imbruvica to be on that list and that’s probably partly why the impact hasn’t been too bad on the stock

Northwestern President Michael Schill in July alluded to the question of mission in a statement to the faculty and sta , saying that what makes the university special is its breadth and depth. “We not only have the very best in scienti c, humanistic, social science and professional academic research and education as well as amazing performing and creative arts, but we also have a world-class intercollegiate athletics program,” Schill wrote. “In the wake of this unfortunate situation, my job is to work closely with you to not just restore trust in the athletic program, but to make it better and more closely integrated with our academic mission.”

Is athletics part of the school’s academic mission or in competition

price,” says Damien Conover, director of health care equity research for Morningstar.

Imbruvica made up 13% of AbbVie’s $58.1 billion sales in 2022, according to the company’s most recent annual ling with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. But the drug has been under pressure with declining sales over the last few years as it faces competition from AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa, says Gavin Clark-Gartner, a biotechnology equity researcher at Evercore ISI.

“We forecast Imbruvica sales continuing to decline year over year irrespective of Medicare price negotiation,” he said. “And furthermore, AbbVie shares the Imbruvica pro ts with Janssen. All this means that any potential impact from the IRA Medicare price negotiation on Imbruvica has a minimal impact on AbbVie’s earnings.”

AbbVie did not respond to a request for comment Aug. 29 about the impact Medicare negotiation will have on its business, but Chief Operating O cer Rob Michael ac-

Despite a payout from the Big Ten Conference this year of nearly $60 million, Northwestern athletics are most likely not self-supporting, says William E. “Brit” Kirwan, chancellor emeritus of the University System of Maryland and former president of e Ohio State University.

Ohio State, the University of Michigan and other college football powers have huge stadiums that typically sell out. ey are able to return some funds to the universities, although it may be only a token payment, Kirwan says. In contrast, Northwestern’s Ryan Field seats fewer than 50,000, and most games have plenty of seats available. Consequently, many institutions, including Northwestern, charge fees and nd other ways to subsidize intercollegiate sports. “I can assure you that at Northwestern, some of the tuition is siphoned o to athletics,” Kirwan says. (Michigan students pay to attend football games, while Northwestern undergrads get in for free after paying an annual $63 athletics events fee). A Northwestern representative didn’t respond to

knowledged the possibility and tried to mitigate investor fears about the topic on the company’s last earnings call.

“We have modeled it, but we feel good . . . we can still deliver on our long-term growth expectations,” Michael said, according to a transcript.

While Imbruvica negotiation dents AbbVie’s business, the largest threat remains Humira biosimilar competition, Conover says.

“ is Imbruvica negotiation is very secondary to that,” he says.

Humira sales

With at least eight biosimilars coming onto the market this year, including Hyrimoz from CVS Health, Humira sales have begun to decline in 2023. Global net Humira revenues were down 25% to $4.01 billion in the second quarter, with sales of Humira falling 26% in the U.S. Overall, AbbVie’s second-quarter net revenues were down 4.9% to $13.8 billion, and its stock is down nearly 10% since the beginning of the year.

Humira is not expected to be tar-

By the same token, the lack of Division 1 sports has in no way held back the University of Chicago from realizing its mission. It continues to churn out Nobel Prize laureates, attract top students and faculty and reel in donations. Since 1998, the school has risen to No. 6 from No. 14 in the U.S. News ranking. e university also o ers students the opportunity to compete in sports at the Division III level. e men’s soccer team, headed by former coach Julianne Sitch, won its rst NCAA championship in December.

And by casting o big-time sports, the University of Chicago has avoided the problem of allocating resources between academics and athletics as well as questions about its true priorities.

Northwestern has managed to balance the demands of top-tier athletics and academics, at least so far. But the University of Chicago shows that big-time sports aren’t necessary to ful lling the mission of a school dedicated to top- ight academics.

geted by CMS negotiations because it already faces market competition that’s expected to lower costs for patients seeking the drug and others like it. However, the rheumatoid arthritis medication was among Medicare Part B drugs — single-source medications and biological products — that will face a penalty under a separate provision in the In ation Reduction Act that prohibits drug prices rising faster than in ation.

Looking ahead, industry analysts predict other AbbVie drugs, including rheumatoid arthritis drug Rinvoq and chronic lymphocytic leukemia drug Venclexta, might be targeted by Medicare negotiation in the future.

AbbVie’s Michael told analysts the company is anticipating Medicare negotiations to apply to Rinvoq at some point in the future but that he doesn’t expect it to interrupt development plans for the drug.

“When I think about AbbVie right now, I don’t see many unknown threats out there,” Conover says. “I think it’s primarily known threats that still have to unfold.”

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Amid the rising costs, schools over the next 10 years will have to decide whether big-time sports are consistent with their missions.

Amy Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics