Crain's Chicago Business, October 2, 2023

It hasn’t been this hard to afford a house in 15 years

Thanks to the double whammy of rising home prices and rising interest rates, Cook County’s affordability hasn’t been so bad since 2008. In the surrounding counties, it’s even worse. I

The double whammy of home prices and mortgage interest rates both going up has made buying a house harder to a ord in much of the Chicago area than it’s been at any time in the past 15 years, according to a new report. In some parts of the region, it’s even longer.

Attom, a property data rm, put out a report out Sept. 28 that compares home a ordability during the third quarter of the year with historical averages, county by county across the country. In 99% of

Johnson still crafting limits on natural gas

Legislation brewing at City Hall that would set carbon emission standards e ectively banning the use of carbon-emitting gas in most new buildings in Chicago has yet to be introduced amid opposition and competing priorities, but it is likely to move forward later this year.

e Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition, a group of environmentalists, community groups and labor unions, is working with the administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson to craft a proposal that would set emission standards for all new construction and current properties that undergo “extensive renovations” after July 2025.

By Dennis Rodkin

the U.S. counties that Attom analyzed, a ordability was below the historical norm in the past year, continuing “a two-year pattern of homeownership getting more and more di cult for average U.S.

See AFFORDABILITY on Page 30

e proposal would deliver on a campaign promise of not only Johnson, but many of his allies in the City Council, to meet the city’s climate goals by moving away from gas and toward electric and other renewable energies to heat homes and commercial buildings.

But the ordinance has yet to be introduced as Johnson has focused on other e orts, such as phasing out the city’s lower wage for tipped workers and raising the tax on high-end property sales.

e coalition hoped to have it in-

troduced at the Oct. 4 City Council meeting but concedes it will not move until later this fall.

Jason Lee, a senior adviser to Johnson, told Crain’s there is “only so much bandwidth in the council at any time . . . for big-ticket items” and that additional conversations with trade unions and others who opposed the legislation is needed before it’s introduced.

But Lee said Johnson is still committed to the ordinance and believes the legislation, paired with other e orts to combat climate change, could position the city as a “leader on climate policy,” which could be marketed to

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An ordinance that would effectively prohibit the use of the carbon-emitting fuel in new buildings is expected to move this fall

Justin Laurence

This house on Lincoln Avenue in Arlington Heights sold in mid-September for $750,000. I PARKVUE REALTY

Mayor Brandon Johnson

See GAS on Page 28

MORE: Chicago’s home price growth is the stongest among major U.S. cities. I PAGE 4

Coping with the trifecta of Chicago sports sadness

Brant Brown is a hitting coach for the Miami Marlins, whose game with the Mets was rained out in New York on Sept. 26. But around 9:30 p.m., his name was invoked so vociferously throughout Chicago that Brown might have heard it 805 miles away in the Big Apple.

Reliable Seiya Suzuki simply whi ed on Sean Murphy’s y ball to right eld in the eighth inning of the CubsBraves game in Atlanta, allowing two runs to score and saddling the Cubs with a 7-6 loss that blew up their playo credibility.

Suzuki’s misplay was achingly reminiscent of a Brown ga e in Milwaukee 25 years ago. Geo Jenkins’ ninth-inning y to left eld glanced o Brown’s glove and sent three runners home — “Oh, no!” analyst Ron Santo wailed in torment — awarding the Brewers

an 8-7 victory in a game the Cubs had led 7-0.

Billy Goat Curse enthusiasts went to DEFCON 1 in dissecting another star-crossed Cubs calamity, but the team regrouped over the nal week and earned the National League’s lone wild-card slot by beating San Francisco in a play-in game. e World Series-bound Braves swept them out of a rst-round playo series, but it marked the start of nine postseasons in 25 seasons, the most e ective stretch of baseball in Cubs history.

Suzuki’s blunder dampened hopes of going 10-for-26 — raw anger, followed by an ominous sense of dread permeated the North Side. As of this writing, the team’s playo odds were still real, if rather slim. But consider: Back in April, or even July, would Cub fans not have found the prospect of meaningful games in September quite enticing?

And given the presence of such prime-of-life performers as Nico Hoerner, Dansby Swanson, Suzuki and Justin Steele, meaningful Septembers could become a

regular occurrence.

Re-sign Cody Bellinger and the odds increase dramatically, although if I were David Ross, I’d resolve to give my starting pitchers a longer leash. Ross is dealing with an overtaxed bullpen, and it’s his own doing.

Just two years ago, the avoidance of a 100-loss season was the only attainable goal for the Cubs as September wound down. e White Sox were 93-win division champions in that 2021 season. ings can change quickly in baseball. Now it’s the Sox who are trying to escape the very de nition of a season from hell.

So they’ve turned the rescue plan over to a front-o ce functionary who was around for, if not totally complicit in, the descent into disarray. And he’s bringing back an overmatched manager who demonstrated no pro ciency in getting the clubhouse gured out.

Chris Getz and Pedro Grifol. Good luck selling that package, Brooks Boyer. e White Sox marketing chief might have the hardest job in sports. His customers

fall into three categories: apathetic, angry or disgusted.

One of them called the other day, insisting he’s fed up enough to opt out of the partial season-ticket plan he’s had for years. e owner doesn’t care, the GM was part of the problem, the manager is an empty suit, dumb mistakes abound, nobody hustles. It was an all-encompassing rant that might have included the vendors if I hadn’t cut him o .

“It could be worse,” I pointed out. “ ey could be the Bears.”

Indeed. e Sox have Luis Robert, who is good, and Dylan Cease, who can be. e Bears have Cairo Santos. Yes, the kicker. It’s come to this: e kicking game is the lone area of the Bears’ operation where you can say they’ve got it right.

It’s also come to this, as has been noted elsewhere: e Bears opened as 2.5-point underdogs at home against a winless Denver team that surrendered 70 points the previous week.

A stadium deal and more revenue streams was thought to be

Job No. 1 for Kevin Warren when he took over as Bears president 10 months ago. He’ll be taking a look at football operations, too. Neither the coach nor the general manager was his hire, and if he likes what he’s seeing, he sees things di erently than the rest of us.

Justin Fields bears the brunt of it, as is always the case with NFL quarterbacks. He holds on to the ball too long, he struggles to see the eld and perhaps the game is too fast for him, as more astute football minds than mine have suggested.

But would any current NFL quarterback, including awless Patrick Mahomes, or any of the 36 Hall of Fame QBs fare better with the supporting cast Fields has been given?

e best assessment of the Bears’ current state comes from another friend.

Arlington Heights, he says, is looking to rebuild the racetrack. Crain’s contributing columnist Dan McGrath is president of Leo High School in Chicago and a former Chicago Tribune sports editor.

Northwestern Medicine names its rst health equity chief

Transplant surgeon Dr. Dinee Simpson, who founded Northwestern Medicine’s African American Transplant Access Program, has been named to lead the system’s approach to enhancing health equity in the communities that Northwestern Medicine serves, the system said in a press release.

e new role for Northwestern Medicine builds on Simpson’s work developing the African American transplant program, which seeks “to increase equitable access to transplantation and to help patients address cultural concerns and overcome modi able structural and institutional barriers to receive care they need,” the release said.

Simpson will continue providing clinical leadership over the program.

“I am beyond proud to be a part of this institution that has called out health equity as a main pillar of its core values,” Simpson said in the release. “Health equity is a space where there is always room for discovery, growth and improvement. It is with humility that I embrace this opportunity to guide Northwestern Medicine’s system-wide approach as we leverage the strengths of our clinicians, administrators, educators and researchers to better serve our communities. We must continue to critically evaluate and address health disparities for all and seek new ways to enhance wellness in all the communities we serve.”

Simpson joined Northwestern Medicine in 2018. In a February Northwestern Feinberg School of

Medicine podcast about the African American transplant access program, she was described as one of nine Black female transplant surgeons in the country.

She has a clinical focus on liver and kidney transplants and is an associate professor of surgery in the division of organ transplantation at the Feinberg School of Medicine. She is also vice chair of faculty development and diversity in the department of surgery.

Simpson was a diversity, equity and inclusion adviser for the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and chaired the society’s ASTS Boldly Against Racism Task Force. She also sits on the board of directors for the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois.

“Dr. Simpson is deeply committed to health equity, and she has long endeavored to address the issues that prevent patients from accessing high-quality care to achieve their highest quality of health,” Dr. Howard Chrisman, president and chief executive o cer of Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, said in the statement. “Her background in transplant health equity, as well as her ability to listen and partner with communities and other leaders, will help us reduce barriers and better serve our patients and their families.”

In late August, Northwestern Medicine’s Canning oracic Institute announced an equity access-oriented program to bring culturally competent medical care to Hispanic patients who prefer to communicate in Spanish.

In addition to its agship

Streeterville hospital, Northwestern Memorial, the academic health system has hospitals in Geneva, DeKalb, Lake Forest, Palos Heights, Win eld and McHenry County. e system is building, among other projects, a $100 million care center in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood set to open in 2025.

Personal Attention, Local Experts

Dan McGrath

Dr. Dinee Simpson, founder of an African American transplant-access program, will lead the system’s efforts to enhance wellness in the communities it serves

Jon Asplund

Dr. Dinee Simpson

Signature Room in former Hancock tower closes

The sudden closure is a gut punch for North Michigan Avenue as it labors to recover from the public health crisis I

The longtime operator of the Signature Room restaurant near the top of the former John Hancock Center has closed the business, citing “economic issues” tied to a slow post-pandemic recovery for North Michigan Avenue.

In a message posted Sept. 28 at the restaurant space on the 95th and 96th oors of the tower at 875 N. Michigan Ave., Signature Room owners Rick Roman and Nick Pyknis wrote that the restaurant was “permanent closing” as of that day.

Roman and Pyknis also wrote a message to employees that Crain’s reviewed that said, “Together for over 30 years, we have had the privilege and honor of serving Chicagoans and visitors from all over the world; celebrating engagements, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, and many other special occasions.”

“Unfortunately, economic issues after the closure of our city

Layoffs, cutbacks follow shake-up at debt-heavy Duly

Katherine Davis

After overhauling its C-suite, Chicago’s largest physicians group is shedding sta , cutting compensation and reducing services as it battles industrywide headwinds and lugs a heavy debt burden from a 2017 private-equity deal.

Downers Grove-based Duly Health & Care laid o a number of workers in September across the organization, the second round of job cuts in recent months, current and former employees say.

An earlier wave of layo s took place in May, according to an internal memo obtained by Crain’s. Written by former CEO Tami Reller and current Chief Physician O cer and co-Chairman Dr. Paul Merrick, the memo did not disclose how many jobs were cut or why the layo s were necessary, but it acknowledged that Duly faces nancial challenges.

By Danny Ecker

“ e fact that all organizations in healthcare are facing similar market challenges and are also taking similar actions does not make this easier for us, in any way,” the memo reads. “In many ways, it is harder for us given our independent nature and how much we support each other.”

e total number of layo s couldn’t be learned. Duly employs several thousand people, about 1,000 of them doctors. It’s not clear if physicians were among those laid o .

Privately held Duly is not required to disclose nancial information, but other recent actions

by the company indicate the organization is under nancial strain.

In a Sept. 13 memo to employees, Je rey Softcheck, senior vice president of human resources and total rewards, wrote that Duly’s board decided not to fund a discretionary employee profit-sharing program this year. e memo does not explain the reason for the decision but says the company’s top priority is to ensure its “stability” and “sustainability.”

strain come amid widespread health care industry challenges, many of which were compounded by COVID-19 and in ation.

“We understand that pro t sharing is an integral part of our commitment to recognizing your hard work and dedication to the company’s success,” Softcheck wrote. “ is decision was not made lightly, and we want to assure you that it does not re ect the value we place on your contributions.”

Another document sent to employees in August revealed Duly

on Page 30

Landlord putting $50M into Wacker Drive, Loop of ces

AmTrust Realty is betting two of its downtown of ce buildings can weather the storm created by the remote work movement

Danny Ecker

A New York real estate rm is betting $50 million that two of its downtown Chicago o ce buildings can win over tenants at one of the toughest times on record for landlords.

AmTrust Realty announced it will pour the new equity into renovations at its 41-story o ce tower at 1 E. Wacker Drive and 25-story building at 33 N. Dearborn St., two of seven o ce buildings the rm owns in the

heart of the city. e investment is a long-delayed rst part of a $100 million plan that AmTrust laid out nearly two years ago to reinvest in its local portfolio.

e upgrades show the rm’s conviction in the recovery of the pandemic-stung downtown ofce market, where vacancy sits at a record high and demand remains soft from a wave of companies adjusting to the remote work movement and shedding unwanted workspace. at has combined with higher interest

rates and landlords with maturing debt to fuel a massive wave of foreclosures across the local o ce sector. AmTrust has two large distressed o ce buildings along LaSalle Street. Against that ugly backdrop, the rm is wagering that at least two of its properties “have a reason to exist” as o ce buildings and can weather the turbulence, said AmTrust President Jonathan Bennett, who joined the

The area’s largest physicians group, owned by private equity, is retrenching amid nancial pressures and industrywide challenges

Duly’s debt burden and nancial

The Signature Room

The former John Hancock Center at 875 N. Michigan Ave. I FILE PHOTO

Chicago’s home price growth is the strongest among major U.S. cities for 3rd month in a row

Rodkin

If the story of Chicago’s real estate market were in a story told by Aesop, it would play the role of the tortoise that slowly but steadily outdistances the speedy but easily tired hare. e nation’s housing markets that rose fastest during the boom eventually wore out, yet Chicago’s solid but not as ashy home price growth keeps going.

For the third month in a row, home prices grew faster in the Chicago area than in any other major U.S. metro area, according to new data from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices released Sept. 26. Chicago-area single-family home values rose 4.4% in July compared with the same time last year.

e report echoes one that came from Illinois Realtors on Sept. 21, showing that Chicago-area home prices are growing at twice the speed of the nation’s. e two reports di er on their timeframe and type of measurement — Case-Shill-

er is an index, while the Realtors’ is a simple mathematical calculation — but the message is similar: Home prices in Chicago are growing fast compared to other big cities.

Chicago had the strongest price growth among 20 major U.S. metros that the Case-Shiller Indices track. Chicago rst took the top spot in the index’s report for the month of May, which was released in late July.

It’s a signi cant change from the period between September 2019 and January 2022, when Chicago consistently ran at the back of the pack, in the 18th to 20th spots.

e key di erence lies in the notion that what doesn’t boom doesn’t bust. Chicago’s home price growth was vigorous during the boom, up by more than 10% 17 times, according to the index. But other cities were notching growth of 25% and more.

Once- zzy places like Phoenix and Las Vegas sputtered in the wake of in ation- ghting interest-rate increases and are now

seeing price declines rather than growth. e biggest declines in the index’s report are in Las Vegas, where prices are down 7.2% from a year ago, and Phoenix, down 6.6%.

More affordable

Even with the increases, Chicago remains more a ordable than many other cities. Selma Hepp, CoreLogic’s chief economist, said in an email to Crain’s that “Chicago home prices are now catching up with the gains seen in other markets. For example, prices in Chicago are up some 36% since the onset of the pandemic while (some) markets in Florida are up almost 60% during the same period. In addition, Chicago is generally more a ordable among the bigger metropolitan areas.”

In both cases, the gure shows a smaller year-over-year drop than the index’s report showed in August. In Las Vegas, the di erence is a full percentage point. e decline reported for Las Vegas in August was 8.2%.

Nationwide, the gure is better than August as well. Prices nationwide were at in that month’s report and up 1% in the latest report. Chicago’s is only slightly better than August. e increase reported for Chicago that month was 4.2%, only a bit lower than the Sept. 26 report of a 4.4% increase. Nevertheless, it’s an increase.

“ is recovery in home prices is broadly based,” Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, said in prepared comments.

After Chicago, the biggest increase was in Cleveland, up 4%. “ e Revenge of the Rust Belt” continues, Lazzara said, evidently unaware that these cities assiduously scraped o their rust years ago.

On one block in Peoria, four historic mansions for sale

Dennis Rodkin

In Peoria, four old mansions within about eight doors of each other in a blu top historic district are all for sale.

All four mansions on High Street were long ago divided into apartments but still present the grandeur of their original facades to the street, from the imposing Second Empire look of one, built in 1859, to the wood-beamed and peak-roofed Tudor handsomeness of another, built in 1900.

“ ey’re beautiful old houses, and they’re so big they wouldn’t be here anymore if they didn’t turn into apartments,” says Fulvio Zerla, the owner and manager of three of the buildings that are on the market and several others on High and adjacent Moss Avenue. “Eventually they would have been demolished, and you wouldn’t see

the history there.”

High Street is part of the High Wine Historic District, whose name is a reference to the high alcohol content of whiskey, an industry Peoria dominated in the 19th and early 20th centuries. On the walking tours that Gary Eberling of the Peoria Historical Society leads in the High Wine District, “people are so impressed with the houses,” he said. “All the spectacular architecture.”

Eberling disagrees with Zerla that the houses wouldn’t be standing if they hadn’t been cut up. Some mansions on the street still in single-family use have been attentively restored by their owners, he said. But he acknowledges that in the mid-20th century, when most of these historic district homes became apartment houses, it may have been the most viable way to keep them intact.

Zerla, who retired from a career in chemistry at Caterpillar, the construction and mining equipment maker formerly headquartered in Peoria, said he has the three on the market because he and his wife, Deborah Franklin, are in their 70s and ready to get out of property management. e three are individually priced from $435,000 to $799,000.

eir rm, Zerla Properties, owns at least nine historical homes in Peoria, all of which will eventually go up for sale. “He doesn’t want to ood the market with them,” said Zach Oyler, a Re/Max Traders Unlimited agent representing two of the Zerlaowned mansions.

In the two mansions and a third, less grand, High Street property Oyler represents for Zerla are a total of 22 apartments.

For Zerla, “it’s always been a big priority to preserve the character of the buildings,” Oyler says.

Inside the old James Quinn mansion, a Queen Anne built in 1870, is abundant historical wood-

work, including pocket doors and ceiling beams, as well as replaces and an ornate carved wood staircase. e magni cent Erastis Hardin house, built in the Second Empire style in 1870, has leaded glass windows, wood pillars anking doorways between rooms and high wood wainscoting in the dining room of one apartment.

e other mansion for sale on High Street, a stone-andshingles Victorian built in 1900, is 10 units. Its asking price is $600,000. Listing agent Jessica Ball, from the same brokerage as Oyler, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rental portfolio

Zerla, who grew up in Italy and came to the U.S. half a century ago, said that in his home country, “I understood the value of these old buildings, some of them from centuries ago,” including the house he grew up in.

After Peoria’s Catholic diocese received 10 or so mostly rundown houses from a donor, Zerla bought

nine of them in 1994 for half a million dollars, he says. “It would be an adventure,” he recalls thinking. Overnight Zerla became both a rehabber and the owner of a rental portfolio. He later sold two, both still intact as singlefamily homes.

In the rental buildings, Zerla says, he replaced roofs, girded up foundations, updated utilities and made other improvements to make them desirable as rentals. Despite having spent “several hundred thousand dollars” on upgrades and maintenance over the years, Zerla says he’s “thrilled” with the rental income he’s cleared on the buildings. Oyler, the listing agent, said the close-to-downtown location and the historical features of the buildings have made them popular with renters who teach or study at Bradley University or work at the nearby hospitals, including the University of Illinois College of Medicine Peoria and OSF Healthcare, both of which are a few blocks’ walk from the mansions.

600 W. High, for sale by an owner Crain’s couldn’t reach, has an asking price of $600,000. I RE/MAX TRADERS UNLIMITED

W. High St., for sale at $799,000. I KELLER WILLIAMS PREMIER

611 W. High, one of Zerla’s properties, is for sale at $435,000. RE/MAX TRADERS UNLIMITED

443 W. High, another of Zerla’s properties, is priced at $699,000. RE/MAX TRADERS UNLIMITED

A new report echoes a recent one from Illinois Realtors in saying home prices are going up faster here than in other big metros

Dennis

This house on Newgard Avenue in Rogers Park sold for $842,000 in July. I RE/MAX PREMIER

Mansueto hopes Messi will boost struggling bet on Chicago Fire

From free tickets to synchronized LED bracelets, the billionaire is pulling out all the stops

From free tickets to see superstar Lionel Messi to synchronized LED bracelets, billionaire Joe Mansueto is pulling all the stops to boost his struggling, multimillion-dollar bet on Chicago soccer.

Mansueto’s Major League Soccer team, the Chicago Fire, is counting on an upcoming match against Messi’s Inter Miami to help break with years of stagnant valuations for the club and some of the lowest attendance rates in the US league.

e Oct. 4 game is on track to sell out Soldier Field’s roughly 63,000 seats, which are only a quarter full at the average Chicago Fire game, said Dave Baldwin, the club’s new president of business operations. e event is on pace to be the highestgrossing MLS regular season match of all time, according to a team spokesperson.

“One of the things that we’re really focused on is using this match against Inter Miami to convert casual fans into more consistent attendees,” Baldwin said in an interview at Bloomberg’s o ce in Chicago. “We’re hoping that over time people that came out to watch Messi will slowly convert to be Fire fans.”

To squeeze more recurring revenue out of the one-time match, anyone who purchases a season pass for next year — or splurges as much as $50,000 a year for a suite — gets free tickets to the Messi game, according to Baldwin. Chicago Fire has “already tripled the number of new season tickets that we sold in all of 2023,” Baldwin said.

Some fans will also get free parking, which can sometimes cost more than the tickets themselves. On top of these perks, Chicago Fire is distributing about 40,000 LED bracelets that light up at the same time to create a visual spectacle, similar to the ones used at recent Coldplay concerts. Individual tickets for the game are running from $99 to nearly $5,000 — well above the $22 to $425 range for the Fire’s Oct. 7 match against Charlotte FC.

e Chicago Fire is one of the few

US soccer teams to play in a football stadium, which typically have a higher seating capacity than soccer venues. As of Sept. 20, about 57,000 tickets had been distributed. e bundles show how MLS teams are cashing in on the supersized boost that Messi has provided since joining the US professional league in July. His tour around the country has seen prices skyrocket for matches in Dallas, New York, and elsewhere — with some selling out in minutes. e rising revenue could help owners by pushing more MLS club valuations past the $1 billion mark, MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in July.

Chicago Fire was valued at just over $535 million as of 2022, according to Sportico. It was the only franchise that didn’t increase in value from 2021 to 2022 while teams in Dallas, Houston, Austin and Miami had double-digit growth.

Mansueto, who founded Morningstar and still owns about 40% of the company, took over the Fire at the end of 2019 in a deal that valued the team at about $400 million. He then spent $65 million to move the club back to Soldier Field from a stadium in Bridgeview, and is now investing another $100 million in a training center.

Still, in a city that already has well-known baseball, football, hockey and basketball teams, soccer has lagged.

But Baldwin, who joined Chicago Fire in January, is optimistic. e team’s revenue this year is projected to jump almost 80% and the club has already sold 27 suites for next season, up from none this year.

e Inter Miami game is likely to be bigger than a 2011 friendly match against Manchester United, which lured more than 61,000 fans to Soldier Field. en there’s the 2026 World Cup, which is shared between the US, Canada and Mexico, and is expected to make the sport more popular with Americans.

“If you take a look at the expansion fees that are now getting paid, it’s a fantastic indicator of how serious the MLS is perceived by potential suitors that are looking to purchase a team,” he said.

yBIsis Almeida and Felipe Marques, Bloomberg

BLOOMBERG

Lionel Messi

Northwestern aims to launch more women-led spinouts

With FoundHer, the university aims to help its female faculty members in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines commercialize inventions and spin them out into standalone companies

Katherine Davis

When Northwestern professor Dr. Ruchi Gupta was preparing to bring her scalp irritation balm to market, she admits she needed guidance on how to launch a business.

“You can have the best product in the world, but how do you get it out?” Gupta says.

After years of work, she eventually launched her company, Yobee, in April, with the help of a new initiative at Northwestern University. Called FoundHer, the program helps female faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines commercialize their research and innovations and spin them out into standalone companies.

e initiative aims to boost the number of women commercializing their inventions, much like has been done before by their male counterparts at Northwestern, such as biomedical engineering professor John Rogers, who holds about 80 patents and has founded several startups. Nationwide, female inventors made up just 13% of U.S. patent

holders in 2019, according to the latest data from the U.S. Patent & Trademark O ce.

“Our goal is to help and amplify women academic entrepreneurs and innovators at Northwestern,” says Alexandra de Paz, associate director of new ventures at the Innovation and New Ventures O ce and the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute at Northwestern, who designed and leads FoundHer.

Entrepreneurship skills

FoundHer gives faculty one-onone mentorship from seasoned entrepreneurs, access to local and national venture capitalists, and executive training. Participants also receive help putting together polished pitch decks they can show to potential investors.

“As academic researchers and doctors, this whole business and entrepreneurship side is very new,” Gupta says. “For women, it’s not something that you often think you can also do — at least I didn’t.”

Gupta participated in FoundHer’s rst cohort alongside just two other faculty members — Julie Kim, a professor of obstetrics and gyne-

cology and founder of organ physiology in vitro company NUVitro, and Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, an associate professor of neurobiology and founder of neuroplasticity drug discovery platform Neuroplastica.

“Keeping the size small really helps deliver quality mentoring and education,” de Paz says.

e three-month program wrapped up in June and the second cohort begins next spring. To be considered, cohort members must have established some level of intellectual property protection on their invention or research and have already launched an earlystage company or demonstrated strong interest in starting one, de Paz says.

Mentors in the rst cohort included Chicago Biomedical Consortium Executive Director Michelle Ho mann, Qral Ventures General Partner Dimitra Georganopoulou and adjunct Northwestern professor and EdgeOne Medical President Lilli Zakarija. Moving forward, de Paz says she aims to expand the program to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.

Like other research universities, Northwestern typically owns the intellectual property created by faculty members, meaning when professors launch standalone companies, they are often licensing their invention from the college, giving Northwestern royalties over time.

FoundHer was inspired by a similar program called Equalize, which is sponsored by Washington University and Osage University Partners, as well as the Propel Program at Northwestern’s own Garage, an incubator for student startups, de Paz says.

“I took inspiration from them, thinking ‘How could I adopt this model?’ ” de Paz recalls.

For Gupta, Northwestern has

been integral to the development of Yobee long before the FoundHer program started. Northwestern helped her attain a patent on her scalp balm formulation and tested the product in peer-reviewed clinical trials at its a liated health system and Lurie Children’s Hospital, where she is also a pediatrician. e research showed Yobee, which is made from natural ingredients like probiotics, honey and vitamin B12, relieved dry, aky, in amed and dandru -prone scalps.

“It just worked on everyone who had tried it, for the most part,” says Gupta, who has been at Northwestern since 2004.

Yobee’s restorative scalp mask for adults retails at $45 for a 4 oz. container on its website and Amazon. Gupta expects to do $50,000 in sales this year and is looking to expand her product line, saying customers have inquired about shampoos, conditioners and skin lotions. To support the expansion, Gupta is fundraising. So far, she says she’s raised $1.4 million from friends and family, but aims to use what she learned in FoundHer to land checks from institutional investors, too.

“I’m hopeful that more and more universities will do this and support their women faculty to go into entrepreneurship,” Gupta says. “We would have amazing new ideas and products coming out of it.”

Dr. Ruchi Gupta

BIGGEST WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESSES CRAIN'S LIST

Ranked by 2022 revenue. Crain’s estimates are in gray.

HEICO COS.LLC 70 W. Madison St.,Chicago60602 312-419-8220;HeicoCompanies.com

2 THE MCSHANECOS. 9500 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.,Rosemont60018 847-292-4300;McShane.com

3 UNITED SCRAP METALINC. 1545 S. Cicero Ave.,Cicero60804 708-780-6800;UnitedScrap.com

4 PROSPECT AIRPORT SERVICESINC. 2130 S. Wolf Road,Des Plaines60018 847-299-3636;ProspectAir.com

PAINTERS USAINC. 570 Mitchell Road,Glendale Heights60139 630-653-8715;PaintersUSA.com

HOME CORPORATE HOUSING 1250 N. LaSalle Drive,Chicago60610 312-638-0891;SuiteHomeChicago.com

Landscape design, construction and maintenance

industrial, concrete coating contractor

Fully furnished, short-term apartment rentals

ResearchbySophieRodgers(sophie.rodgers@crain.com). |Companiesonthislistmustbeatleast51%woman-ownedandbeheadquarteredinCook,Kane,Lake(Ill.),DuPage,Will,McHenryorLake(Ind.)counties.NOTES: e. Crain's estimate. 1. Company estimate.

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Look at the stunning artistic details inside a Kenwood mansion

Hand-crafted work intact from the early 1900s includes carved human and animal gures, a mural of a hunt and stained-glass windows

An early 1900s mansion in Kenwood lled with carvings, murals and other hand-crafted details from the era is coming on the market for the rst time in at least two decades.

Built in the rst few years of the 1900s for a lumber executive and his family, the eight-bedroom house on Greenwood Avenue is priced at $2.95 million and listed with Susan O’Connor Davis of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago. e price factors in the house’s need for restoration, including replacement of dated utility systems, she said. Already listed on a private network, the property was publicly listed Sept. 26.

Designed by William Carbys Zimmerman — whose later architectural works include the Illinois Supreme Court building in Springeld and the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse in Wicker Park, among many other buildings — the house has a mural of hunters and falcons over the main replace, detailed carved wood elements in the paneling and staircase, and a plaster

ceiling ornamented with geometrical tracery. Carved human and animal gures appear in several places, including on the replace mantel and in a doorway.

“Nothing has been done to ruin the beauty” of the home’s original look, says Davis, who is also the author of “Chicago’s Historic Hyde Park,” a 2013 book on historic houses in Kenwood’s sibling neighborhood. “When you think about the fact that 20% of Kenwood and Hyde Park was demolished” in the mid20th century, “we’re lucky this one survived.” She does not have information identifying the artists of individual details, such as the murals.

e sellers could not be reached.

According to the Cook County clerk’s online records, the family of Nevenka Soldo and the late Jago Soldo bought the house sometime in the 1990s, though it’s not clear precisely when or what they paid for it. Davis declined to comment on the sellers.

e original owners of the house were Charles Goodyear, head of a Chicago-based lumber rm that bore his name, and his wife,

Henrietta. In 1902, e Economist reported that Zimmerman was designing for the Goodyears a house “after the English type,” and that it “will be elaborately nished” throughout its 18 rooms, “some of which will be very large.”

e Goodyears sold the house in 1911 to Wellington Leavitt, head cattle buyer for meatpacking giant Swift & Co., according to the Chicago Tribune.

Set on a 16,000-square-foot lot, the equivalent of about 5.1 standard 25-by-125 lots, with a coach house out back, “it’s an urban estate,” Davis says.

e property is about two blocks north of both the home of former President and rst lady Barack and Michelle Obama and the Kenwood home that holds the sale-price record, at a little below $4 million. Also on the Obamas’ block is a new house under construction at a total cost of at least $4.2 million.

While it’s not possible to estimate the cost of updating the property, it’s likely the combined cost of buying and rehab would land in the range of those two homes.

Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid Coupe pictured. ©2023 Porsche Cars North America, Inc. Porsche recommends seat belt usage and observance of traffic laws at all times. European model shown. Some options may not be available in the U.S.

Dennis Rodkin

A pass-the-popcorn moment for Chicagoans

Is it possible to defame an entire city?

We’re not lawyers, but we’re pretty sure the answer is no. Even so, Chicagoans who love their hometown can hardly be blamed if they have felt from time to time that the Windy City has come in for a reputational beating it doesn’t fully deserve — and that despite the city’s well-known challenges, some people have distorted the picture beyond recognition.

So it’s been a pass-the-popcorn experience lately to watch billionaire Citadel founder Ken Gri n — one of Chicago’s most vocal and long-standing critics — lash out at the producers of a new lm that depicts his role in the GameStop memestock scandal of 2021.

It was only a few years ago, but you’ll be forgiven if you don’t recall the particulars: We’re talking about the nancial frenzy that captivated the world as a group of investors, organized primarily through a Reddit forum, banded together to drive up the stock price of the struggling video game retailer GameStop.

is grassroots movement, fueled by social media and facilitated by commission-free trading platforms like Robinhood, aimed to disrupt the Wall Street hedge funds that had heavily shorted GameStop’s stock.

As GameStop shares skyrocketed, hedge funds faced massive losses, and the narrative evolved into a David vs. Goliath battle between retail investors and institutional giants. Amid the blowup, platforms like Robinhood temporarily curbed trading in GameStop, sparking accusations of market manipulation and raising questions about the role of tech in democratizingnance. Ultimately, the saga exposed the power of online communities to in uence nancial markets and ignited discussions about market regulation, equity, and the future of online trading — and, of course, eventually inspired a Hollywood movie.

As has been widely reported, Gri n

PERSONAL VIEW

isn’t pleased with how the just-released Sony Pictures lm “Dumb Money” portrays his involvement in the RobinhoodGameStop debacle. Puck News, however, recently took the revelations of Gri n’s pique to an entirely new level, claiming they’ve gotten their hands on one of the threatening letters that lawyers for Gri n sent to Sony’s counsel, part of what the publication describes as a spicy behindthe-scenes legal ght that’s played out even as the movie begins its theatrical rollout.

“Dumb Money,” according to the letter, which Puck says is based on an early draft of the script and the trailer, “crosses the line

into the knowingly false and defamatory portrayal of Ken and Citadel Securities.”

As Puck points out, Gri n seems most unhappy at the alleged suggestion that Citadel Securities, his trading rm, colluded with the company behind the Robinhood trading app to halt trading on GameStop during the short-squeeze meltdown of January 2021. e lm “revives and ampli es this many times debunked collusion narrative” and “e ectively accuses Gri n of committing perjury when he denied colluding with Robinhood during his congressional testimony on the matter,” the Gri n letter states, according to Puck’s reporting.

e nished version of “Dumb Money” actually notes that those collusion allegations were never proved, and the closing credits note that a lawsuit over the subject was dismissed and an SEC probe cleared Citadel.

As has been widely reported, Grif n isn’t pleased with how the just-released Sony Pictures lm “Dumb Money” portrays his involvement in the Robinhood-GameStop debacle.

Gri n’s lawyer, Tom Clare, tells Axios that his Aug. 17 letter to the producers resulted in Sony tweaking the movie. “ e original script contained numerous fabrications,” he says. “ anks to our letter, Sony corrected them.” e lmmakers categorically deny, however, that Gri n or his lawyers prompted any changes to the nal cut.

“Anyone who sees this movie will know instantly: Ken Gri n had no role in shaping it,” the executive producers say in a written statement to Axios. “He doesn’t want you to see this lm. Which is why you should.”

e bottom line: Powerful billionaires can hire armies of lawyers, spin doctors and communications chiefs to protect their reputations and attempt to bully the chroniclers of their actions into submission. What they can’t do is counteract the impression that those billionaires are too thin-skinned to withstand the sort of criticism they routinely dish out to others — and indeed to entire cities.

Commercial land development is the riskiest transaction in the real estate business — far riskier than investing, owning, managing, lending, brokering or flipping. Like the late Major Leaguer Tony Gwynn, if you’re batting .338 as a developer, that’s a Hall of Fame career. To be successful, developers must master the art of managing a longterm project with massive — sometimes seven-figure — cash outlays during predevelopment. This money is fully at risk

and rarely available from traditional lenders. Developers cannot be successful without patient equity capital from family, friends or institutional sources.

Because of historical discrimination in lending and real estate practices, most would-be Black and Brown real estate developers are starting from a deficit in family resources and the required seed money. That’s a big reason why major real estate projects in our city have rarely, if ever, been owned or led by

Black or Brown developers.

I am the bene ciary of a 50-year-old family business that de ed the odds and double-digit interest rates of the late 1970s to invest in real estate on the South Side of Chicago. My parents were public-school teachers who prepared me for higher education, including the University of Chicago Law and Booth Business schools. e combination of a top- ight education and kitchen table experience in community development allowed me to successfully navigate a

corporate real estate career and enter Chicago’s real estate community on surer footing than many of the emerging developers starting today. My “overnight success” came after my rm redeveloped two vacant South Side Target stores into large employment call centers for Blue Cross Blue Shield and Discover Financial Services.

As a mentor to aspiring Black and Brown entrepreneurs, I’m frequently

See DEVELOPERS on Page 11

BLOOMBERG

Why Black and Brown developers rarely lead major real estate projects — and why that needs to change

Ken Grif n

DEVELOPERS

From Page 10

asked to share the secret to becoming a successful real estate developer. Of course, the answer always includes hard work, building your network, seeking mentors and being students of the business.

But the truth is, after years of hard work in the field and advocacy for equity and opportunity in the profession I love, I know there will not be meaningful diversity in commercial real estate development until government, philanthropy and business work together to fairly allocate equity capital. Further, until these barriers to finance are broken down, we will not be able to transform our disinvested communities.

In 2019, I came together with institutional investment professional Gwendolyn Hatten Butler and one of Chicago’s leading zoning attorneys, Graham Grady, to create the Chicago Emerging Minority Developer Initiative. CEMDI is funded by The Chicago Community Trust and managed by Chicago TREND and is designed to accelerate the business plans of emerging commercial real estate developers of color.

The three of us wanted to go beyond inspirational talk and move as quickly as possible to empower a new generation of real estate developers with the tools to pursue catalytic projects in their own communities.

We dreamed of creating 10 new developers by the end of this decade, each of whom could comfortably pursue projects of $20 million or more in our neighborhoods, and a few who could scale to the top and build skyscrapers downtown. Today, unfortunately, our early excitement around the possibility of igniting a revolution in Chicago’s commercial real estate industry is giving way to economic headwinds, loss of momentum for initiatives to end racial disparities after George Floyd and the hardening of structural barriers in an industry that has less than 2% participation by Black or Brown professionals.

When emerging Black- and Brown-owned financial firms are funded, they consistently outperform established managers. I submit funding emerging real estate developers will also be good business and sound public policy. Chicago, with its history of promoting fairness in institutional investment management, is uniquely positioned to take the lead in creating a new pool of equity capital for emerging developers and break down the barriers.

The Kresge Foundation in Detroit piloted an $11 million emerging developer fund. The Motor City’s successful turnaround powered by this equitable approach should encourage Chicago’s financial, government and philanthropic establishment to go even bigger.

The lack of access to predevelopment funding necessary to keep projects moving is a high structural barrier most emerging developers cannot overcome. To truly revitalize our South and West Side neighborhoods, we must secure a fresh source of equity capital to propel emerging developers to scale. With fair access to capital, emerging developers can take entrepreneurial risks and build the high-impact projects we need to reverse historic disinvestment.

Leon Walker (right) is managing principal at DL3 Realty and co-founder of the Chicago Emerging Minority Developer Initiative.

JOHN R BOEHM

Dental of ce chain Dentologie raises $25 million for expansion

With eight locations around Chicago, the millennial-focused chain, led by a former Redbox CEO, is planning to open more local of ces this year and enter a new market in 2024

Dentologie, a chain of dental ofces in Chicago, raised $25 million to fund expansion.

e infusion from investors, including San Francisco-based C&S Family Capital and Detroit- and London-based Beringea, willnance new Chicago locations and expansion into new markets, Dentologie said. With eight locations around Chicago, Dentologie plans to open two more local o ces this year and enter a new market in 2024.

Dentologie opened its rst ofce in the South Loop in 2013 and o ers a full range of dental services. It seeks highly visible, street-level o ce space in dense areas with heavy foot tra c, like River North and Wicker Park. Upcoming locations include Lakeview, Lincoln Park and Oak Park. Dentologie hopes its conveniently located o ces, and tech-forward o erings like online and mobile app scheduling, will attract millennial patients.

“We’re in downtown areas, street-level, branded locations, very convenient to where you live or work,” says Gregg Kaplan, the founder and former CEO of Redbox, who joined Dentologie as

CEO in 2022 and is also an investor in the company. e rent is more expensive than, say, the 17th oor of a Loop o ce tower, where many urban dentist o ces have long called home, but Kaplan says the price is worth it. About 26% of all Dentologie patients come in o the street, Kaplan adds.

“We’re getting a massive amount of patients because we’re just doing what normal consumer retail does,” he says.

Patients tend to be millennials, ranging from 25 to 45 years old, who are often paying with private insurance plans. Dentologie says it doesn’t accept Medicare or Medicaid, plans for elderly and low-income patients, respectively, citing low reimbursement rates.

To date, Dentologie has served about 60,000 individual patients.

e company declined to disclose revenue gures, but the newnancing round brings Dentologie’s total funding raised to $41 million. Past investors include Chicago-based Hyde Park Venture Partners and 81 Collection, as well as New York private-equity rm Warburg Pincus.

During Dentologie’s early years of operation, Dr. Suhail Mohiuddin and his co-founders opened

n

new locations with traditional expansion nancing, like loans. Mohiuddin also promoted Dentologie on social media. Better known on Instagram and TikTok as “Dr. M,” Mohiuddin has amassed nearly 1 million followers across social media platforms. He provides dental advice to viewers but also uses his accounts to advertise Dentologie’s services.

“Democratizing oral health education was kind of the mission of my own ‘Dr. M’ platform,” Mohiuddin says. “Inadvertently, it also kind of advertises for Dentologie as well.”

Labor shortage

While Dentologie is gearing up for expansion, operating an independent dental practice has become more di cult in recent years, says Derek Kaulfuss, a partner at consulting rm Plante Moran who specializes in health care transaction advisory services. Aside from rising interest rates driving up the cost of opening and operating a practice and ongoing challenges with too-low reimbursements from insurance plans, an industrywide labor shortage is making it harder to hire dentists, too.

“ e cost of labor is at its highest it’s probably ever been, with the

war on talent and the war on wages” Kaulfuss says.

Despite shortages, Kaplan says Dentologie hasn’t had much trouble recruiting dentists. While he admits Dentologie still has to put in work to recruit new employees, the company has about 180 workers, nearly 30 of whom are dentists. He adds that many of the same attributes the company uses to attract patients help recruit workers as well.

“ ey kind of want the Google equivalent in the dentistry world, and that’s what we’re bringing,” Kaplan says.

e same sort of strategy worked on him. Despite having no prior health care experience, he says, he took on the top job at Dentologie because he believes in the company’s potential and gured his consumer retail experience would be useful to the

company’s growth.

“I think this can be scaled rapidly and become a meaningful, successful business,” Kaplan says. “(We’re) kind of running the Redbox playbook: Let’s optimize with a couple locations and then scale quickly when we’re ready.”

Midway International is getting into the airport lounge bonanza

Airports and airlines are in a race to give customers more space and amenities

John Pletz

Midway Airport is getting into the lounge act.

e airport plans to open a lounge a year from now. It comes as traditional full-service airlines — such as United, Delta and American — are expanding and upgrading their lounges for premium customers.

Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, airports and airlines have found a growing but lucrative segment of travelers who are willing to pay for premium accommodations — from extra legroom on board a plane or reserved space in a lounge.

In addition to traditional carriers, nancial-services companies such as American Express and Capital One are building lounges at some airports.

“Lounge activity has gone way beyond o ering a perk to premium-class travelers. It’s now a very

robust pro t center,” says Jay Sorensen, president of consulting rm IdeaWorks in Shorewood, Wis., which publishes a report on ancillary revenue that shows Delta Air Lines received about $800 million from its lounges last year.

Southwest Airlines, the dominant carrier at Midway, doesn’t o er lounges.

e new lounge at Midway will be in the airport’s Center Market area where its main concourses intersect. Passengers who want to use the lounge will pay $50 for a

day pass. Midway will partner with Priority Pass, a company that manages access to airport lounges around the world.

At 3,300 square feet, the lounge will be much smaller than those at O’Hare operated by individual airlines.

“ is new lounge in the heart of Midway is the next step in elevating the passenger experience as Midway continues to see travel numbers that outpace pre-pandemic statistics,” city Aviation Commissioner Jamie Rhee said in a press release.

A rendering of the lounge planned at Midway International Airport.

Katherine Davis

Dentologie chooses street-level of ces to attract walk-in patients.

Pritzker, GOP trade barbs in ght over Gotion’s battery plant

The governor charges that the plant’s foes are putting ‘ xenophobia’ and partisan politics ahead of a $2B investment that will create 2,600 jobs

With political conservatives and Illinois Republicans stepping up their attacks, Gov. J.B. Pritzker is out with a vigorous defense of the proposed Gotion battery plant in Manteno, charging that its foes are putting “xenophobia” and partisan politics ahead of a $2 billion investment that will create 2,600 well-paying jobs here.

Pritzker’s statement came in a letter last week to Illinois Senate GOP Leader John Curran, who with some colleagues had sent Pritzker a letter earlier in the week questioning his decision to do business with a Chinese rm and approve $538 million in state incentives for its facility.

e letter pulls no punches.

“You and your members express your opposition to a major economic development announcement, and that can only be seen as doubling down on your own irrelevance,” the letter says.

“While I am succeeding at creating jobs in every region of this state — even areas represented by Republicans — your caucus members are resorting to xenophobia that has the potential to deter future investors from around the world because you are hoping for some grotesque short-term political gain.”

Claims of communist ties

Curran’s letter echoes claims by some on the political right that the plant will serve as a base for Chinese communist spies, with the battery maker’s parent rm charter reportedly including standard language pledging to “carry out party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.”

Responds Pritzker, “I will not apologize for beating out other states to bring $2 billion in investment and 2,600 jobs to Illinois. e federal government, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, has reviewed and approved investments by Gotion in other states such as Ohio, Michigan and California. Trillions of dollars from China have been invested in the U.S., including in manufacturing facilities and many

U.S. companies — including Fortune 1000 companies based in Illinois — that have manufacturing facilities in China. is investment in Illinois is strictly about business and building economic prosperity for Illinoisans; it creates jobs and brings billions of dollars in investment to Illinois as we build our leadership in the EV space.”

Curran had no immediate response to the Pritzker letter, but released a statement saying there is “nothing extreme” about asking questions about a major state project, especially one involving a company “with ties to the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese military contracts.” Added that statement, “ is is not a kingdom — it is a democracy where transparency is supposed to be at the forefront of all we do.”

No security risk

Earlier, the state Republican Party said in fundraising appeal that that plant would be located “RIGHT NEXT” to a military base. But local o cials say the only facilities that are at all military are an air National Guard center 15 miles away in Kankakee and an Army reserve training facility in Joliet, 30 miles away.

According to the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, Gotion’s companion battery factory in Michigan has been reviewed and certi ed by the U.S. Treasury Department as posing no risk to American security. Similar action is expected here, according to the group.

Purchasers of vehicles equipped with Gotion batteries likely will be eligible for federal tax credits. Foes of the deal say that eventually could amount to billions of dollars. Gotion has not released a list of clients, but industry sources say one of them is Rivian’s assembly plant in Normal.

Pritzker also is seeking other battery plants, including one that could lead to the reopening of the shuttered Stellantis plant in Belvidere as a major EV assembly center. But members of the Illinois House Freedom Caucus have scheduled a press conference for this week in Manteno to protest the Gotion deal.

Greg Hinz

BLOOMBERG

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

BANKING / FINANCE

J.P. Morgan Private Bank, Chicago

Brent Penrose has joined

J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Chicago as an Executive Director and Banker. Brent works with highly successful business owners, C-suite executives, family of ces and individuals of signi cant wealth. He leads with planning, rst identifying each individual’s purpose and passion, then developing appropriate strategies that target these sophisticated goals. Brent joins the rm from UBS.

BANKING / FINANCE

J.P. Morgan Private Bank,

Grif n Leahy has joined

ENGINEERING

Milhouse Engineering and Construction, Inc., Chicago

Milhouse welcomes Anna Vargas as Vice President of Power Engineering, Midwest. Anna leads the group’s business development, client relations, talent management, growth, and quality. With 18+ years of utility operations experience, Anna has a proven track record of implementing people- rst business strategies and excelling in program and project management. Her expertise in the eld further strengthens Milhouse’s ability to deliver engineering excellence to the utilities sector.

Winnetka

J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Winnetka as a Vice President and Banker. Grif n works with entrepreneurs and C-suite executives to ensure they are meeting their goals over a long-term time horizon. He has an insider’s perspective on the aspirations that drive entrepreneurs, as well as the challenges and opportunities they face. Grif n joins the rm from Morgan Stanley.

BUSINESS SERVICES

Canon Business Process Services, New York

Canon Business Process Services announced two executive appointments.

Peter Kowalczuk has been appointed as chairman and CEO of Canon Business Process Services, in conjunction with his current position as president of Canon Solutions America. Mr. Kowalczuk will help evolve Canon Business Process Services’ status as an acknowledged outsourcing industry leader.

Mark Walker has been promoted to president of Canon Business Process Services. His most recent position was COO and CTO. During his 20 years with the company, Mr. Walker streamlined operational ef ciency and optimized services that enable clients’ business transformation. His leadership background and expertise in digital technologies make him uniquely positioned in his new role.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Standard Valuation Services, Willowbrook

Cecelia Tankersley has joined the commercial real estate appraisal rm Standard Valuation Services as Quality Control Manager. Her background in the appraisal, mortgage, and AMC industries will be invaluable as she directs Quality Control policy and procedure. She looks forward to further enhancing the client experience of realizing market value for properties across the United States.

To

HEALTH CARE

MHN ACO, Chicago

Yasin Patel joined the provider-owned accountable care organization, MHN ACO, as president and CEO. He will lead the ACO in its mission to improve quality of care and health outcomes for Medicaid and Medicare patients. Patel has over a decade of experience in the healthcare industry and a record of successfully developing innovative health solutions and improving outcomes. Most recently, Patel served in leadership roles at Signify Health, where he oversaw clinical strategy and quality.

Crane & Norcross, Chicago

Crane & Norcross elevates Chris Shouldice to partner. Chris advises the real estate realm’s business owners, property managers and developers on property tax law and assessment challenges, securing favorable assessments and negotiating large settlements and recoveries for clients. Beginning his career in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Of ce, Chris gained experience navigating the complex tax appeal process and has since established a strong track record of delivering client success.

LEGAL

Holland & Knight LLP, Chicago

McCready Law, Chicago

Rudy Longman has provided over 10 years of committed service and has consistently fought for Indiana individuals who have been injured through no fault of their own. Rudy began his career in the eld of personal injury law as a Butler University undergraduate student and continued his studies at Valparaiso University Law School. He is admitted to the Northern and Southern Federal District Courts in Indiana and has active licenses to practice law in all state courts in both Michigan and Indiana.

NON-PROFIT

Brightpoint, formerly Children’s Home & Aid, Chicago

Mario Perez has joined Brightpoint, formerly Children’s Home & Aid, as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Of cer. Mario brings 20+ years of experience including serving as the former Executive Director of El Hogar Del Niño, recently acquired by Brightpoint. In his new role, Mario will be responsible for implementing a comprehensive business strategy that will position Brightpoint to be the leading provider of prevention-based services in Illinois.

FULL-SERVICE REAL ESTATE

Mortenson Properties Inc., Chicago

Dan Ryan has joined Mortenson Properties Inc. (MPI) as managing director where he will lead and manage all aspects of MPI’s business nationally, from new real estate investments to asset management. Dan brings nearly three decades of commercial real estate experience to Mortenson, having spent 28 years at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) in Chicago. Dan will also be partnering with Sheryl Van Anne, Mortenson’s vice president and general manager in Chicago, to advance solutions for local customers.

Aaron O’Donnell and Abigail Flanagan have joined Holland & Knight as partners in the rm’s Real Estate Practice Group. Mr. O’Donnell represents institutional, private equity, developer and corporate clients in all aspects of real-estate transactions, including the acquisition, nancing, joint venture structuring, development, and disposition across various asset classes including student housing, multifamily residential, healthcare, industrial, of ce, retail, and hospitality. Ms. Flanagan represents purchasers and sellers of commercial properties on development projects, assemblages and portfolio sales and acquisitions. Mr. O’Donnell was previously a partner with Polsinelli and Ms. Flanagan was previously with Greenberg Traurig.

TECHNOLOGY

G2, Chicago

Eric Gilpin has been appointed as Chief Revenue Of cer (CRO) at G2, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace. In this role, Gilpin will oversee all aspects of G2’s revenue generation, including global sales and customer success, enablement, partnerships, and revenue operations. An experienced leader with 20+ years of experience building and scaling large technology businesses, Gilpin comes to G2 from Upwork, where he helped lead the company to a successful IPO in 2018.

O’Donnell Flanagan

Kowalczuk Walker

LAW FIRM

LAW FIRM

LEADERS IN DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

Notable leaders in DEI are entrusted with making sure their organizations create and maintain a workforce, supplier chain and ecosystem that represents all people, regardless of such factors as skin tone, gender, age bracket or physical and neurological characteristics.

DEI leaders nd novel ways to accomplish this work. They establish mentorships and scholarships and create, nurture and sponsor employee resource groups. They also, via corporate or personal philanthropy, volunteer for and nancially support nonpro ts dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion in the Chicago area.

— 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 DEI 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.

Javid Aboutorabi

Director of community affairs

Clark Construction Group

Javid Aboutorabi develops subcontractor and workforce utilization plans, coordinating networking to maximize the involvement of small business rms. He launched Clark’s Strategic Partnership Program in Chicago, which focuses on promoting the growth and building capacity of MWBEs and small businesses in the construction industry. There are more than 1,400 SPP graduates in eight markets, with Chicago as the second-largest. Most recently, he established a mentorship with PAC Leaders, an up-and-coming diverse general contractor, as a construction management partner on a residential project. He holds positions on boards focused on DEI including Chicagoland Associated General Contractors, the CTA Diversity Program, HIRE360 and the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Mona Asra

Associate managing directormanager, inclusion and diversity | people, culture and brand CIBC

In her short time at CIBC, Mona Asra has launched several cohorts with Year Up and Genesys Works to create new diverse talent pipelines into CIBC. She has forged new partnerships with the Association of Latino Professionals for America, the National Black MBA Association, CareerSpring, Chicago Scholars and Out in Finance to diversify recruitment pools. She is working with her team to restructure seven employee resource groups to support a national expansion and aim toward launching two new ERGs focused on veterans and diversabilites. Asra is also working on developing DEI seminars and resources around topics such as unconscious bias, intersectionality+identity and empathic leadership to promote an inclusive workplace.

Shannon Andrews

Chief equity and inclusion of cer

Cook County Health

Shannon Andrews focuses on the operational functions that contribute to inequalities and building on the system’s dedication to the communities it serves by advocating for racial diversity, equity and inclusion. She develops programs that create a positive care environment for patients and foster a positive work environment for employees. She also serves as the lead procurement of cer for Cook County Health, ensuring that it exceeds its diversity standards in contracting and vendor partnerships to support growing minority- and women-owned businesses. Andrews is an active member of the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing, the American Contract Compliance Association, the Illinois Association of Public Procurement Of cials and the National Forum for Black Administrators.

Dee Atkins

Chief of community engagement and equity Thresholds

Dee Atkins executes externalfacing racial justice and equity priorities with all stakeholders for Thresholds, one of Chicago’s largest mental health and substance-use recovery agencies. She works alongside Thresholds’ talent team to ensure that its engagement and mobility, hiring practices and policies represent a culture of belonging, inclusion and equality for more than 1,200 employees. She also addresses agency procurement processes and supplier diversity by advising senior leaders to ensure that Thresholds gives opportunities to businesses owned by people of color and/or women. Atkins is an active participant in Chicago’s Community Violence Intervention Collaborative. She also is a member of the Chicago mayor’s Equity Advisory Council and is on the Community Advisory Council of West Side United.

Daniel Anello

CEO

Kids First Chicago

Daniel Anello’s team is helping Chicago Public Schools launch an extensive redrafting of its school accountability policy. Kids First Chicago has also been supporting parents in pushing for fair mappings for CPS’ new elected school board. Preliminary maps created by state legislators propose seven white, seven Black and six Latino districts, while the CPS student population is 11% white, 36% Black and 29% Latino, according to Census gures. Anello’s core role is to open the door to information-sharing for CPS parents who often struggle to navigate a complex system. He is a board member of the Chicago Urban League and The Cafe Group, an advisory board member for the Illinois Justice project, a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and a Leadership of Greater Chicago alum.

Keiana Barrett

Chief diversity and engagement of cer

Sterling Bay

Keiana Barrett leads the MBE/ WBE engagement strategy across Sterling Bay’s portfolio, engaging with minority- and women-owned construction and professionalservices rms to participate in the developer’s projects, generating millions of dollars in revenue for these businesses. She leads Sterling Bay’s diversity and inclusion advisory council, a group of real estate and construction industry leaders and advocacy representatives. She’s an integral part of SB Connects, Sterling Bay’s internship program, and works with HBCUs to identify candidates looking to gain exposure to the real estate industry. This summer, three students were awarded scholarships toward their next school year after completing the internship program. Barrett serves on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Economic Vitality & Equity Transition Subcommittee.

Daniel O. Ash President

The Field Foundation of Illinois

Daniel O. Ash collaborates with the strategic partners and grantees to advance social justice by building community power in Chicago’s most divested communities. He oversees the distribution of $6.5 million annually in grants. In his rst year he increased funding partnerships to nearly double the foundation’s impact on Chicago’s South and West sides and was named to Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson’s transition subcommittee on Human Rights, Equity & Inclusion. Ash is the board chair of the Chicago Learning Exchange, leading a mission to catalyze racial equity, access and quality in Chicago’s out-of-school time ecosystem. He is board chair of Deeply Rooted Dance Theatre, which diversi es the aesthetics of contemporary dance by uniting modern, classical and African American traditions.

Ervin Blanco

Vice president and district manager

U.S. Bank

Ervin Blanco leads 21 Chicagoarea retail branch locations and manages more than 100 employees and 19 direct reports. In this role, he’s charged with employee development, customer growth and satisfaction and community engagement. He’s also an employee leader in U.S. Bank’s business resource groups, serving on the boards of the Chicago chapters of the Spectrum LGBTQ+ and Nosotros Latinos BRGs. These business resource groups are focused on heightening awareness of both the LGBTQ+ community and Latino culture. Ervin serves as the DEI ambassador for U.S. Bank in Illinois. His most recent community activities include volunteering with the Center on Halsted, the LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Deidre Boone

Head of diversity, equity and inclusion

Cboe Global Markets

Deidre Boone develops DEI initiatives and advises on diverse recruitment strategies. She implemented new dashboards to give visibility into the human capital statistics of divisions; developed DEI social impact goals and helped set measurable DEI senior leadership goals; rolled out a DEI roadmap, and built a new DEI function into the human resources organization. In 2022, the promotion rates of women and underrepresented minorities increased in the aggregate across all levels; 50% of summer 2023 intern roles were lled with women and underrepresented minorities; and Cboe’s associate resource groups expanded, including PRISM+ (People Respecting Individuality & Sexuality in Markets) and the Cboe Veterans’ Initiative. Asian, Black, Hispanic/Latin, Parental and Environmental ARGs are being readied for launch.

Joy Canonigo

Director of diversity, equity and inclusion

Discover Financial Services

Joy Canonigo is leading the rollout of a DE&I learning roadmap and implementing a new neurodivergent hiring program. She co-led the rollout of Discover’s rst ESG report, where she was responsible for the social pillar/DE&I report integration. Canonigo created Discover’s rst DE&I leadership training in 2022, the “I” Challenge (Inclusion Challenge), which was delivered to more than 2,000 people. The training program achieved a three-percentage-point increase in both engagement scores and inclusion index scores. In 2023 the “I” Challenge was expanded to all employees at Discover. Her neurodivergent hiring program, called ND Connections, has achieved more than 10 hires. Canonigo is a member of PayTech Women, Bridge, Disability:IN, Out&Equal and the Conference Board.

Eva Brown

Executive director-head of business growth and entrepreneurship, nancial health and wealth creation for Advancing Black Pathways

JPMorgan Chase

Although Eva Brown’s work is global, she has been responsible for executing impactful programs that promote black economic advancement in Chicago. Through her work, Advancing Black Pathways has led largescale events focusing on providing resources and the tools on wealth accumulation, including topics around investing and home ownership. These events provide participants with information on areas that impede wealth-building. Brown is also responsible for co-developing a unique capacity-building program that helps diverse service-based businesses participate in the JPMorgan Chase corporate supply chain. She is the vice chair of the Women’s Business Development Center and also is a member of IMPACT Alumni, Chicago Urban League.

Lois Castillo

Head of diversity, equity and inclusion

Basis Technologies

Lois Castillo helps develop workplace culture and enhance corporate infrastructure to foster greater inclusion in the digital media industry. She expanded Basis’ community involvement with diverse partnerships such as MAIP, Code Nation, COOP, She Runs It and Urban Alliance. She has increased the company’s diversity and inclusivity training. Castillo infused DEI into Basis’ strategic plan and cultivated partnerships with Chicago-based community and industry groups to tap more diverse talent pools and provide access and connections to diverse talent. Basis’ involvement with events supporting BIPOC talent expanded to a $450,000 investment in 2022.

Castillo is an Urban Alliance mentor, a mentor for junior women professionals at She Runs It and executive director of the Toni Morrison Foundation.

Maryam Brown

Vice president, people and culture and operational excellence

Milhouse Engineering & Construction

Under Maryam Brown’s tenure, Milhouse has more than doubled its total workforce. It has increased the number of womenidentifying team members working in STEM-related elds to exceed the industry average, and the number of women team members has grown more than 10% across the organization. Under her leadership, Milhouse invests in team members through a wide range of initiatives, including a communication site that gives them a pathway to explore the Milhouse culture. These programs include interactive collaborative activities, “social squads” for learning together and a standing committee that connects leadership and team members on key DEI related topics. Brown volunteers with Milhouse Charities, a 501(c)3 nonpro t dedicated to advancing underrepresented youth in STEM disciplines.

Peg Buchenroth

Executive vice president, human resources

Addison Group

Peg Buchenroth leads all HR shared services functions within Addison Group, including DEI efforts across the company’s family of brands. She works in partnership with the Addison Group’s DEI advisory board to set strategies and develop tangible programs. Buchenroth and the board established seven employee resource groups that work to facilitate diverse and educational events, hosted the company’s rst annual DEI Summit and created an internal role to promote the continued growth of DEI initiatives. She also led efforts to update internal hiring questions by removing unconscious bias and added a DEI component to internal employee training that is focused on inclusion, cultural awareness and allyship. Buchenroth also initiated a T-shirt drive bene ting the Center on Halsted.

Sirmara Campbell

Chief human resources of cer

LaSalle Network

Sirmara Campbell supports LaSalle’s 300 employees across ve of ces nationwide while also overseeing HR efforts for 2,000 temporary employees on assignment at clients. She helped create a workplace with a C-suite that is 50% women, an executive management team that is 80% women, a management team that is 60% female and a staff that’s 70% female. Most leaders started at LaSalle in entry-level roles and climbed the ranks with her guidance. LaSalle Network retained 100% of its working mothers during the pandemic and didn’t lay off a single staff member. Campbell is involved with and provides mentorship to various organizations including By the Hand, Kids Above All, Coffee, HopHop & Mental Health, Cristo Rey’s Work Study Program and Year Up.

Maria Castro Regional external affairs manager

Comcast

Maria Castro joined the community investment team at Comcast in 2005. She helps implement and manage programs that deliver social and business value to their nonpro t organizations and communities. Maria promoted the Comcast RISE (Representation, Investment, Strength, & Empowerment) program to thousands of small businesses through a partnership with the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Women’s Business Development Center. She also helped small businesses apply for small grants and marketing support. She helps promote the federal government’s Affordable Connectivity Program in the Chicago region. Castro chairs the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Chicago chapter. She is also founder of Love Purse, a nonpro t assisting more than 10,000 women victims of domestic violence and human traf cking.

Kevin Chaplin

Managing director, data and analytics/DEI executive sponsor

Slalom

Kevin Chaplin oversees Slalom Chicago’s data and analytics practice as well as leading its DEI initiatives. The goal is to increase allyship and employee retention through inclusive hiring partnerships, organizing optional discussions between candidates and leaders of Slalom’s employee resource groups and implementing unconscious-bias and inclusive-language training.

Chaplin helped build the inaugural version of Slalom Sphere, an initiative that connects employees from diverse backgrounds through one-on-one activity.

Slalom’s 2022 employee engagement survey showed a 5% increase in employees who believe their workplace is equitable. He also helped double the overall participation and quadruple the senior leadership participation in local employee resource groups. He is a member of the Justice Journey Alliance.

Jennie Colburn

Managing director, regional DEI lead Protiviti

Jennie Colburn is central region lead for DEI, where she provides guidance on DEI initiatives to regional of ces and 12 employee networking groups. She organizes and supports all DEI activity in the Chicago market, including spearheading the funding, organizational support and recognition of all ENGs. Under her leadership the Chicago of ce launched four new employee network groups: the Asian Social Professional Innovative and Resourceful Employees, the Black Employee Inclusion Network Group, the Latin/Hispanic Employee Network Group and proMIND, which promotes mental wellbeing. A series of newly supported community outreach programs were initiated by these groups. Colburn is on the board of CJE SeniorLife, a Jewishbased organization focused on advancing the quality of life for the aging population.

Tanjia Coleman Director of DEI NorthShore–Edward-Elmhurst Health

Tanjia Coleman develops DEI goals and drives execution of an overarching strategy affecting clinical and corporate team members. She also drove the creation of NorthShore–EdwardElmhurst Health’s inaugural DEI Report. She designed a mandatory DEI training for more than 16,000 team members and developed voluntary DEI training with University of Chicago accreditation, enabling physicians to receive continuing-education credits. Coleman guides NS-EEH’s three employee resource groups, expanding that number from two. Coleman manages a McKinsey Leadership Program, giving high-performing candidates of diverse backgrounds access to coaching and sponsorship from the NorthShore–Edward-Elmhurst Health C-suite.

Sandra Cordova Micek President

and CEO

Window To The World Communications

Since being named president and CEO of WTTW-WFMT,

Sandra Cordova Micek has prioritized DEI as the underpinning of the strategy and operations of the organization across content, community engagement, culture and sustainability. During her tenure, Cordova Micek has initiated a DEI employee resource group and dedicated employee communications; a new community engagement initiative and structure with externally facing activities focused on impact in early-childhood education, access to the arts and society and culture across Chicago, and a series of new content initiatives re ecting the community. Cordova Micek is on the boards of PBS, Ravinia Festival, the Chicago Community Trust and the Economic Club of Chicago.

Rukiya Curvey Johnson

Vice president, community health equity, and executive director of the Rush Education & Career Hub for the Rush System for Health

Rush University Medical Center

Rukiya Curvey Johnson helped establish the Rush Education & Career Hub, which provides Black, Latino and other underrepresented young people with hands-on learning opportunities that open doors to careers in health care and science, technology, engineering and math while also improving health care-provider diversity. She’s served more than 4,000 students, parents and educators at more than 20 West Side schools, providing more than 25,000 paid, work-based learning hours each year. She also created an apprenticeship program to grow health care IT opportunities. Curvey Johnson serves on the steering committee of the Chicagoland Healthcare Workforce Collaborative.

Trisha Daho

Founder

Empowered

Trisha Daho’s DEI/culture consultancy performs assessments, DEI audits, strategic development, initiative implementation and inclusive, equitable leader development as well as DEI-culture-crisis services for Chicago organizations. She chairs the DEI committee of its business networking group, Provisors, and implemented a mentoring system for people of color and women in the organization. Daho also instituted accountability for each subgroup to ensure that members are tapping into diverse places to recruit new members. Daho is an outside consultant to Second Story, a nonpro t focused on awareness-building in the DEI space. Recent accomplishments include changing performance management processes to include requirements around equity and inclusion.

Diana Derige

Vice president, health equity strategy

American Medical Association

Diana Derige oversees strategic development and programming for the Center for Health Equity at the AMA. She led the management, launch and implementation of the AMA strategic plan to embed racial justice and advance health equity. She also leads and manages the AMA’s investment and collaboration with West Side United, an organization that addresses health inequity in 10 neighborhoods on Chicago’s West Side. In 2020, the AMA invested an initial $2 million to build alliances with organizations, groups and neighborhoods that have experienced historical disinvestment, followed by another $3 million investment in 2022. Derige is a board member of the Alliance for Women’s Health and Prevention, and the board chair of Prevention First.

Leading by example to see tomorrow transformed.

A shlie Stapleto n Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Ashlie leverages the power of diversit y, equity, and inclusion to transform tomorrow through the built world. Thank you for your outstanding contributions, and congratulations on being named one of Crain's 2023 Notable Leaders in DE&I.

Lourdes Diaz

Vice president, head of diversity and inclusion

US Foods

Lourdes Diaz has advanced D&I at US Foods, achieving key milestones: 47% of new or open leadership roles have been lled by women or people of color; the company has spent $723 million with more than 500 certi ed diverse suppliers and $2.4 billion with 2,600 small businesses across the United States; and more than 3,300 associates have participated in one of US Foods’ employee resource groups. Diaz led the development and expansion of dedicated ERG development programs, associate and customer DEI training and bias training. She is on the boards of Alivio Medical Center and the Multicultural Food & Hospitality Alliance, part of the National Restaurant Association’s Educational Foundation.

Sherri Dublin

Vice president DEI, culture, talent acquisition and communications Centers of Expertise Ingredion

Sherri Dublin is responsible for advancing workforce engagement and strengthening Ingredion’s culture. Recent accomplishments include the sponsorship and creation of the Argo Higher Education Foundation Mamie Till-Mobley & Emmett Till Memorial Student Art Show & Fundraiser; diversity programs for people of color and women that in 2022 resulted in promotions for 10% and 36% of the populations, respectively; the launch of global business resource group mentoring; and an inaugural Global Inclusion Week that helped increase business resource group membership. Ingredion also partners with The Hatchery, a nonpro t food-business incubator on the West Side, to support budding entrepreneurs. Dublin is vice president of Fox Valley Hands of Hope.

Natae S. Eaves Vice president JPMorgan Chase

Natae S. Eaves is program manager for the Business Solutions Team, or BeST. Launched in 2019 and the rst of its kind, BeST focuses on advancing equity by expanding JPMorgan Chase’s talent pool to include neurodivergent people and people from the intellectually and developmentally disabled community. She is responsible for driving the program to expand geographically, cultivating relationships within JPMorgan Chase and sourcing talent from local community partners. The program has grown to 38 participants across JPMorgan Chase within various markets, with additional expansion efforts underway. Eaves serves on the board of Disability Lead, a network of people with disabilities who use their power to create an equitable and inclusive society.

Adam Engle Director, Fund for Equitable Business Growth

The Chicago Community Trust

As the rst director of the fund, Adam Engle leads a multi-funder collaborative of Chicago-based and national foundations and nancial institutions focused on reducing the racial and ethnic wealth gap in Chicago. Since its creation in 2019, it has made grants of more than $10 million to a range of organizations and programs supporting Black and Latinx entrepreneurs; a $300,000 grant to support Chicago worker cooperatives and funded a pilot tech platform to share data between business owners and their advisers. Engle serves on the Small Business Subcommittee of the Cook County Bureau of Economic Development’s economic development advisory committee. He is board treasurer for the Chicago Arts Partnership in Education and on the board of Social Enterprise Chicago.

Dana Erdman Vice president of technology and innovation, DEI of cer Bulley

& Andrews

Dana Erdman leads the company’s employee-driven DEI initiative. Under her direction, B&A has committed to the Associated General Contractors of America’s Culture of Care, changing the way it operates its job sites by enacting a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination and incorporating gender-neutral restrooms on job sites and at headquarters. She also championed a multicultural holiday bene t, empowering employees to celebrate holidays that are most meaningful to them. She oversees internal town hall discussions, led by employees, on topics such as racial discrimination, gender identity, implicit bias and the challenges women face in the construction industry. Erdman has spearheaded the company’s participation in a number of events, including the rst Construction Inclusion Week.

Sponsored Content

NOTABLE SPOTLIGHT with Denise Lewin Loyd

With a background in engineering, what led you into organizational behavior and speci cally DEI?

A teacher, researcher, and keynote speaker focused on the power of diverse teams, Denise Lewin Loyd balances roles as associate professor of business administration and associate dean for equity at Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. To drive engagement, Loyd helped create the Gies Of ce of DEI and developed af nity groups, while coordinating faculty workshops and student curricula. She also led Gies’ collaboration with the Education Justice Project to deliver business workshops at the Danville Correctional Center and provide business books to the prison library.

Loyd earned a bachelor’s degree in civil and architectural engineering and a master’s in civil and environmental engineering before pursuing her PhD in organizational behavior. She is involved in IMPACT Chicago - Empowerment SelfDefense for Women and Girls, and the Chicago chapter of Black Alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

My lived experience made me interested in the dynamics of interacting with others who are different. At my rst construction management job, I was the only woman and the only person of color on the project management team. I’ve seen rsthand that when we recognize the value of the different perspectives and experiences that people bring to the table, diversity can really improve our outcomes.

What is your proudest accomplishment so far in your role as Associate Dean for Equity?

Creating af nity groups within Gies College of Business for Black faculty and staff, LGBTQ+ individuals and allies, and women. I’m proud of that because it’s something we’ve never had before in the College of Business. Being the only woman and the only person of color in my construction project management work, I know that being in the minority can be quite isolating. There are bene ts to engaging with other individuals who share meaningful identities with you,

so it’s really exciting to see those groups grow.

What are the biggest hurdles you face in your DEI work?

A huge hurdle is time. The faculty, staff, and students are already working really hard. Their schedules are full and over owing, and now we’re doing additional things—a new workshop or Black History Month celebration or marching in the community pride parade. The challenge is not convincing people that DEI is important. It’s just: Where do you t this into your life?

Why is it personally important for you to make time for DEI initiatives?

My research has shown that when we engage with individuals who are different from ourselves—and do so with respect and an appreciation that each of us brings something to the conversation that needs to be heard and valued—our outcomes are better. There’s more creativity, more innovation, better decisions, and fewer mistakes. I’ve been in contexts where someone underestimated the contributions I could make because of my race or gender. Not only is that personally

disheartening, but if you don’t think I have something to contribute, you won’t listen, and you’re going to lose out on that value.

Our whole society has so much to gain if we can recognize that there’s actually a lot of beauty and opportunity in our differences, and we can leverage that to make things better. I want to be part of creating that reality for people to be seen, heard, and valued because it really has an impact.

What has your research taught you about diversity?

The most impactful thing from my research was learning that individuals who were in the majority also shared more information when there was some diversity present in the group. They felt more comfortable and more willing to talk about their perspective.

The bottom line is that diversity impacts majority and minority group members alike. It improves the thinking process for everyone, and helps all of us bring different perspectives to the table.

Gies leader sees power of diversity in driving creativity, innovation

Eric Euting

Associate principal, Americas EDI director Arup

Eric Euting helps drive Arup’s three-year equity, diversity and inclusion action plan, which is a set of commitments to make social justice a fundamental part of the rm’s operations. The plan focuses on diversifying membership by expanding recruiting efforts across all levels with a focus on underrepresented groups; building an inclusive workplace; and embedding equitable approaches into projects and partnerships. Among recent initiatives in the company’s annual EDI report was the addition of an employee resource group focused on disability and mental health, and a reconciliation action plan in Canada and regionwide of ce land acknowledgements in keeping with Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation efforts regarding its First Nations peoples.

Marcus Evans Director of diversity and community engagement

UJAMAA Construction

Among Marcus Evans’ responsibilities is ensuring that there is more than 50% participation from diverse groups across a $100 million annual portfolio. His community hiring efforts have led to more than 100 new jobs in three years. He is also focused on the future of UJAMAA by mentoring youth and promoting diversity while also achieving three times the industry average when it comes to hiring women. Other accomplishments include being a leader on the diversity teams for the O’Hare Terminal 5 Expansion, the Obama Presidential Center, Bally’s Casino Medina, Northwestern Medicine Bronzeville Outpatient Care Center and the 79th Street Health Lifestyle Hub. Evans presides over the U.S. Minority Contractors Association’s Chicago chapter.

Sean Frazier

Vice president/director of athletics and recreation

Northern Illinois University

Sean Frazier has operational responsibility for NIU athletics as well as the convocation center, marching band and recreation. He led campuswide DEI efforts that include the establishment of the university’s Diversity Integration Group and serving as co-chair of a committee to create the Division of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Under Frazier, NIU Athletics has prioritized recruiting, retaining and promoting women, people of color and members of marginalized communities, including the head coaches for men’s and women’s basketball, cross country, football, volleyball and women’s track and eld. His senior staff includes two African-Americans and three women. Frazier co-chairs the DEI working group of the LEAD1 Association, focused on advancing opportunities for people of color in athletics administration.

Marlo Gaal Chief people and diversity of cer

Oncourse Home Solutions

Marlo Gaal is the most senior business partner focusing on executive development, employment brand, talent acquisition, compensation and bene ts and organizational effectiveness. In just seven months, Gaal created an entire DE&I commitment and strategy and launched two employee business resource groups (for women and veterans), executive-level DE&I training and a partnership with the United Way of Metro Chicago to invest in underrepresented communities. She also instituted diverse interview loops to avoid con rmation bias as well as achieve hiring goals. Gaal is a graduate and fellow of the Chicago Urban League and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business’ IMPACT leadership development program.

Alicia Garcia-Abner President and CEO Trinal

Alicia Garcia-Abner oversees daily operations at Trinal, a minority- and woman-owned rm focused on advancing equality in construction and transportation. Recent successes include developing career pathway programs for Walsh-Fluor on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red and Purple Modernization Project, which was a partnership with Chicago Public Schools and City Colleges of Chicago. She also procured contractual agreements to serve as DEI compliance and workforce development consultant on major construction projects with Bally’s Chicago, the Shedd Aquarium, TranSystems/CSX Transportation and Norfolk-Southern. GarciaAbner sits on the committee for DEI for Chicagoland Associated General Contractors and is a member of the U.S. Minority Contractors Association.

ENSURING EQUITY. EMPOWERING LEADERS.

C ongr a tulations, Sharla Roberts.

Your University of Illinois System colleagues and friends applaud this re c ognition of your dedication to diversity, equity and inclusion. We are grateful you and your team help ensure the system and the state provide an equitable and c ompetitive business environment.

Under your leadership, the U of I System Office of Pr ocurement Diversity str engthens Illinois and its c ommunities by el eva ting small businesses and emp owering diverse business owners.

T hank you for your Altogether Extraordinary work, Sharla.

2023 Crain’s Notable Leader in DEI

Corliss Garner

Executive vice president, chief DEI of cer

Old National Bank

Corliss Garner, who serves on the executive leadership team and the bank board, is responsible for the design and execution of ONB’s DEI strategy, affecting more than 4,000 team members, clients and the broader community across a seven-state region. Her team expanded and redesigned the bank’s seven employee resource groups to focus efforts on supporting the career advancement of team members, the needs of the surrounding community and business priorities. She is co-executive sponsor of a project team that increased access to banking services for primarily Spanishspeaking customers. That work included launching Spanish-language options online and on the mobile banking platforms. Garner founded HR2: Her Rise, Her Way, a mentoring circle.

Gary Gassman

Co-vice chair, global insurance department; co-chair, professional liability coverage practice

Cozen O’Connor

As a leader of the rm’s LGBTQ+ attorney resource group, Gary Gassman has played an integral role in building a network of attorneys and staff that has directed multiple rm-wide diversity and inclusion initiatives. During his tenure, the rm achieved its rst Mans eld DEI certi cation and has since been recognized with the highest designation, Mans eld 5.0. He has written and spoken to diverse trade and academic audiences about his personal and professional experiences. He just completed a term as chair of the ABA’s Tort Trial & Insurance practice section. Gassman previously served as the section’s diversity of cer and currently co-chairs the section’s special standing committee on diversity and inclusion.

Angelique Gerlock Senior vice president - talent management and DEI director Byline

Bank

Since joining in 2022, Angelique Gerlock has launched Byline’s DEI learning journey with a focus on cultural awareness and inclusiveness, enhancing the performancemanagement process by adding competencies, one of which is “Valuing Differences.” She also helped enhance the internal and external DEI communication strategy and expanded employee resource groups. She designed and facilitated the company’s rst women’s development program with the goal of building business and leadership skills, enhancing visibility and, ultimately, increasing the pool of female candidates in the leadership pipeline. Employee engagement survey results show 84% agreement, on average, across six diversity and inclusion statements, with increases in scores across all questions over the past two years.

Sean Glowacz Director of community development, AICP Power Construction

Sean Glowacz cultivates relationships by engaging with M/WBE rms and contractor associations while also working with Power’s operations groups to maximize minority participation on projects. He also manages Power’s scholars program, speaking at 32 Chicago high schools in 2022-2023 to promote career opportunities in construction. Through his efforts, the program received 40 applications and ve college scholarships were awarded. Glowacz leads subcontractor onboarding, having educated 85 small businesses, 47 of which have since worked on Power projects. He’s also helped increase project awards to diverse-owned subcontractors and expanded Power’s union training, sponsoring 35 people into union work on Power projects.

Toni Graham Director of community initiatives

Berglund Construction

Toni Graham collaborates with the leadership team to shape policies and programs geared toward attracting and promoting a diverse workforce. She assesses the appropriateness of diversity initiatives, ensuring that each aligns with the company’s vision and values. She established Berglund’s Workplace Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Group coalition, known as WE-DIG. She’s also worked to complete unconscious-bias training classes; reached out to HBCUs to diversity the hiring pool; analyzed hiring practices to support inclusive hiring; helped mentor M/WBE subcontractors; and increased companywide communication to support DEI efforts. Graham serves on the board of Pullman Tech Workshop. which offers South Side workers apprenticeship training, workshops and transitional employment.

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NOTABLE SPOTLIGHT with Angelique Gerlock

Valuing differences to develop talent at Byline Bank

What makes this role a good t for you?

Since joining Byline Bank last year as director of talent management and diversity, equity, and inclusion, Angelique Gerlock has launched several initiatives to enhance Byline’s people-centered culture. In this newly created role, Gerlock manages diverse employee resource groups and inclusive training and development programs, like the company’s rst Women’s Leadership Development Program. Her efforts have driven increased attendance at DEI events, exceeding 800 attendees at 27 events in 2022, along with higher employee engagement survey scores.

Bringing 20 years of banking experience, with roles ranging from retail branch management, to planning and research to talent development manager at First Midwest Bank, Gerlock most recently served as vice president of human resources at Patrick Engineering. Angelique leads Byline Banks’ partnership with the Illinois Diversity Council.

The role is a combination of things that fall under talent management: succession planning, career development, performance management, engagement, and then of course diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s nice because I can blend all these programs together without having to create separate initiatives. I can take my passion for DEI and apply it to the other aspects of my role.

Why are you committed to “Valuing Differences” at Byline?

One of my rst initiatives was building a competency model. We introduced four competencies that align to both our culture and our strategic plan, and “Valuing Differences” was one of those.

Many times, people think of just ethnicity, race, gender and maybe religion. But there are so many different factors that affect how people show up, what they value, and what strengths they bring to the table. We have to value each other’s strengths to be able to continuously improve, collaborate and deliver customerfocused solutions—which are our other core competencies.

Building on strengths and valuing differences has led to a strong culture within our organization. That’s why people choose to work at Byline, because of that culture.

What inspired you to launch Byline’s rst Women’s Leadership Development Program?

Throughout my career, I’ve seen women hold themselves back. I’ve seen even the most senior women back down when they’re challenged because they don’t have the con dence to pursue their ideas.

This program focuses on that inner dialogue that women have. It’s meant to build con dence and teach women to ask for what they want, advocate for themselves, and not apologize for that.

What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve faced in increasing DEI awareness?

I’m fortunate to work for an organization where my values align with the organizational values very closely. The only pushback I get is, “This is a lot to take on. Do we have the resources?” We’re a small team, so if we’re passionate about the project, we’ll get it done.

The only hurdle I’ve had is that the chairs of our employee resource

groups are just as passionate as I am, and sometimes they overcommit, so we’ll have to pull back. It’s balancing our efforts to make sure we’re doing things that make strategic sense versus overburdening our resource group leaders.

What is your proudest accomplishment in your new role so far?

Just like the women in my Women’s Leadership Development Program, I’m not one to toot my own horn. That program has probably bene ted me just as much as the women that have gone through it. That program has already been a success, just based on the feedback I’ve received.

My success is really determined by the success of the people in the organization. So, anytime I get feedback that something I did or said made a difference, that’s a win. Even if somebody says, “Thank you, this program gave me a different perspective,” that’s a measurement of my success and what I’m most proud of.

Lauren Gross

U.S. account manager Auticon US

At Auticon, a social enterprise that addresses the 85% unemployment rate in the autistic community by employing autistic adults as technology consultants, Lauren Gross is responsible for client relationships. Her focus is twofold: creating career opportunities for autistic technologists and helping clients achieve desired business outcomes through the unique talents of Auticon’s autistic workforce. In the past 18 months, she has onboarded major new clients, including Salesforce, UBS, GSK, Genpact, Fugro and Veolia, and also helped Auticon hire 23 new autistic technologists. In 2023, Gross has been either a guest speaker or led neurodiversity/ neuroinclusion awareness and education sessions for six clients. Gross is a member of the Neurodiversity @ Work employer roundtable.

Chynna Hampton

Equity director

IL AFL-CIO & Climate Jobs Illinois

As the equity director for Climate Jobs Illinois, Chynna Hampton is responsible for working with union partners to ensure that DEI objectives are met for people interested in gaining access to careers in the clean-energy sector. She has been successful in assisting with the passage of the Climate & Equitable Jobs Act legislation and is now working with union coalition partners to advocate for a pro-worker, pro-climate agenda in Illinois. This legislation has dedicated $10 million annually to assist community organizations in providing people from Black and brown communities access to careers in the clean-energy sector. Hampton is on the boards I Am A Gentleman, Chi Gives Back and the Illinois Economic Policy Institute.

Colette Hands

Chief human resources of cer Oakton College

Colette Hands has increased the diversity of Oakton’s workforce through a variety of intentional recruitment practices. These include revising job descriptions and requirements, advertising job opportunities in outlets reaching diverse applicants, requiring training for all search committee members related to bias, requiring professional development for all employees related to equity and inclusion, and providing coaching for supervisors. The racial diversity of the administrative team and full-time faculty has grown 5% due to this intentional focus on equity and inclusion from recruitment to onboarding and ongoing professional development. Hands is board vice chair of the Evanston/ Northshore YWCA. Hands was to begin a new position as vice president of human resources at the Field Museum on Oct. 2.

Congratulations to Marlon Lutfiyya, our Director of Talent and Diversity, for being honored as a 2023 Crain's Chicago Business Notable Executive in HR and DEI.

At NGE, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive environment that embraces and celebrates diversity. Marlon personifies our mission with his tireless efforts in recruiting and onboarding traditionally underrepresented attorneys and advocating for equitable distribution of work and resources to foster their growth. He champions open dialogues that challenge biases while driving meaningful change.

Marlon, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to you for guiding NGE toward a more inclusive workplace, one aligned to better serve the needs of both our exceptional team and our valued clients. Learn more about NGE’s DEI efforts: nge.com/dei

Leo Harmon

Senior managing director, chief investment of cer, portfolio manager, Mesirow equity management Mesirow

Leo Harmon is head of the nominating committee for the Mesirow DEI council and is its inaugural chairperson. In that role, he drove the committee’s strategic direction and institutionalized its methodology. The council created a strategic DEI road map, engaged a third party to complete an audit of employee demographics, implemented a DEI and promotion policy and rmwide training on unconscious bias, supported increased hire rates of women and diverse candidates alongside higher retention efforts with diverse employees, and aligned a portion of philanthropy to impact organizations working toward equitable outcomes. Harmon is a member of the National Association of Securities Professionals.

Gerri Harris

Area director, economic inclusion and community affairs

Gilbane Building

Gerri Harris is responsible for developing and fostering relationships with external stakeholders; conducting outreach with small, diverse and women-owned businesses; creating opportunities for historically underrepresented businesses throughout the buy-out process; and tracking workforce and business participation against goals. She also leads Gilbane’s Rising Contractor program, which pairs diverseowned businesses with Gilbane leaders in a one-year mentorship commitment that follows an eight-week business-strengthening program. Harris joined Gilbane on the heels of its commitment to generate $4 billion in awards by 2026 to certi ed M/WBEs and D/ VBEs as part of a comprehensive economic inclusion strategy. Gilbane has achieved 24% of overall DEI goals.

Steven Hunter

Partner, Chicago of ce chair of the litigation & dispute resolution practice group, national co-chair of the Quarles & Brady DEI committee

Quarles & Brady

Steven Hunter devotes more than 400 hours per year to DEI, co-leading a team that addresses issues related to recruiting, retention and promotion of diverse lawyers. In 2020 he challenged the rm to examine how its African American employees, former employees, partners and clients viewed the rm. This led to a six-point plan that included creating an African American employee resource group and conducting semiannual inclusion meetings with African American lawyers and their department chairs. Hunter is a founding board member of the Black Men Lawyers’ Association and chaired the Art Institute’s Leadership Advisory Committee from 2017 to 2022.

Lou Longo

Partner, international consulting practice leader

Plante Moran

As DEI council leader, Lou Longo is the liaison between rm leadership and staff on all DEI matters. His recent contributions include formalizing DEI into the rm’s foundational statement of principles; speaking, along with the rm’s DEI leader, to business and HR leaders on how Plante Moran is creating a culture of inclusion; increasing staff resource groups by 75% and nding additional collaboration opportunities with rm leadership on DEI initiatives; and planning and executing the rm’s rst DEI leadership retreat. Longo also helped revamp how Plante Moran measures the DEI efforts of its partners via metrics that tie directly to annual bonuses. Longo belongs to the American Institute of Certi ed Public Accountants and the Illinois CPA Society.

Mark Hussey CEO and president

Huron

Under Mark Hussey’s leadership, Huron launched a sponsorship program to support the growth and development of underrepresented talent and foster a culture of diversity and inclusion. The program matches participants with senior leaders who act as advocates and also provides outside executive coaching and skills development. Thirty-seven percent of participants in the rst two-year cohort were promoted. For the second cohort, launched in 2023, the rm increased participation by 86%. Huron also hosts monthly dinners and dialogues with employee resource groups, increased women and diversity at leadership levels, doubled paid parental bonding leave for birth and nonbirth parents, and increased nancial assistance for surrogacy and adoption.

Denise Lewin Loyd

Associate dean for equity and associate professor of business administration, Gies College of Business University of Illinois

Urbana-Champaign

Denise Lewin Loyd’s recent accomplishments include leading inclusive teaching workshops for faculty, increasing the DEI content of curricula, and working with leaders of registered student organizations to help them attract a more diverse member base. She led the creation of the Gies of ce of DEI and a postdoctoral program to diversify the professoriate. She oversaw the development of Gies af nity groups focused on Black, LGBTQ+ and women faculty and staff, which increased engagement with DEI for members and allies. She also led Gies’ collaboration with the Education Justice Project at the Danville Correctional Center. Loyd is a member and current co-chair of IMPACT Chicago.

Lynn Janulis

Partner

Marshall, Gerstein & Borun

Lynn Janulis is a partner in Marshall, Gerstein & Borun’s patent prosecution practice and chairs the rm’s DEI committee. She helped the rm earn Mans eld Certi cation Plus in the rst class of midsize rms by surpassing the 30% diverserepresentation level in current leadership roles, client pitch teams and staf ng for client matters. She increased the rm’s involvement with the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity as part of its goal to improve DEI within the legal industry; she helped create a diversity fellowship for summer associates and coordinated the funding of diversity groups. Janulis was a founding member of Women In Bio-Chicago, which promotes careers and entrepreneurship for women in life sciences. Janulis works with Cabrini Green Legal Aid.

Marlon Lut yya

Director of talent and diversity

Neal Gerber Eisenberg

Marlon Lut yya helped design the training curricula that’s included in programs on antiracism, allyship and inequity. He oversees the publication of Neal Gerber Eisenberg’s Heritage Month communications, which provide education about people from different demographic groups. He works with search rms to produce diverse candidates for open positions, helps the rm obtain Mans eld Certication annually and works on the rm’s sponsorship initiative and af nity groups. He also works to integrate new attorneys from underrepresented groups through various processes, is involved in the attorney review process and helped produce diverse summer associate classes. Lut yya is a member of the Association of Law Firm Diversity Professionals and on the board of the National Association of Law Professionals.

Shaun Jones

Global senior director of economic inclusion and supplier diversity

Mondelez International

Shaun Jones manages initiatives that develop and support equitable opportunities for diverse suppliers. In 2022, he oversaw $510 million in spending with women- and minorityowned suppliers, working toward Mondelez’s goal of $1 billion in spending by the end of 2024. He created a road map to support this public commitment and implemented a global-supplier diversity-governance strategy to ensure that at least one diverse supplier is included in all indirect sourcing tenders. Jones launched an educational training module on supplier diversity that helped drive opportunities. Jones also hosted, in partnership with the chief diversity of cer, an Ingredients for Growth week to educate suppliers on how to work with Mondelez.

Gabrielle Lyon

Executive director Illinois Humanities

Since joining Illinois Humanities, Gabrielle Lyon has spearheaded efforts to bring an anti-racist and equity framework to all organizational endeavors. When Lyon joined the organization, 36% of the board of directors identi ed as Black, Indigenous or people of color; today that gure is 53%. She re ned the organization’s grantmaking to increase accessibility for smaller organizations led by historically disadvantaged communities and enabled the creation of new racial equity and small-town funding efforts. She raised funding to bring in EDI technical assistance to build internal capacity. Critical investments include establishing a staff-led EDI committee, comprehensive training for the staff and the board, and developing community agreements and organizational values.

Rana Lee Principal SmithGroup

Rana Lee is responsible for business development and market growth strategy for SmithGroup, a national architecture and engineering rm. She’s also a founding board member and the DEI committee chair of Professional Women in Construction-Chicago, the mission of which is to advance women while promoting diversity within the architecture/engineering/ construction industry. As DEI chair, Lee created Candid Convo, a monthly peer-to-peer DEI discussion event. Understanding that cost is a barrier to entry for many, Lee led an initiative for minority, women and disadvantaged business enterprises to receive preferred pricing for PWC events and membership. PWC-Chicago is the only professional organization in Chicago that offers this bene t as a standard practice.

Pamela McElvane CEO P&L Group (dba Diversity MBA Media)

Pam McElvane works with more than 100 large and midsize companies, providing insights and best practices that help them design DEI and talent strategies. Within the past 18 months she has performed weekly coaching for more than 40 diversity of cers. She hosts a weekly talk show on WCPT-AM 820, “The Inclusive Voice,” which enables the diversity community to share stories and resources. She has collected data from Fortune 1000 companies for 17 years; today, various Chicago-based companies participate in this indexing effort that benchmarks best practices in equality and equity programs in the workplace. McElvane serves on the boards of the Gamaliel Foundation and the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, where she chairs its health equity committee.

Troy McIntosh

Vice president and chief DEI of cer

Idex

Troy McIntosh works with the Idex executive team to build DEI capabilities, establish equitable processes, implement diverse talent strategies and foster an inclusive workplace. Among recent accomplishments, he has developed a DEI strategic road map, introduced an intercultural development inventory and developed strategies to increase women and people of color in leadership by 3% and 7%, respectively. He also partnered with the company’s HR department to strengthen DEI reporting by creating a DEI dashboard, enabling leaders to view the impact DEI practices have on various key performance indicators in their business, including hiring, turnover and retention. McIntosh sits on the diversity advisory board of UCAN.

Corey McQuade Managing partner

Northwestern Mutual-Chicago

Corey McQuade was instrumental in the production of “The Loyola Project,” a 2022 documentary about the 1963 Loyola Ramblers basketball team that broke racial barriers. His partnership with the lm production crew strengthened Northwestern Mutual’s commitment to DEI across the country. McQuade opened a Northwestern Mutual of ce in Hyde Park to support a historically underserved community with nancial expertise and provide career opportunities for aspiring nancial advisers. His emphasis on equity and inclusion has increased diverse recruiting, with people of color now representing nearly half of all recruits. McQuade is a member of the National Black MBA Association. He also supports Loyola University Chicago athletics and the Chicago Sky.

Kellie Medious

Associate vice president of patient access operations and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging of cer

Erie Family Health Centers

Kellie Medious was named Erie’s rst diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging of cer in 2018 and has held the post since then. She is responsible for policies that support patients and staff. Medious led the development of a DEIB infrastructure, secured DEIB training for 600 staff, established 10 Erie DEIB trainers, initiated organizational town halls and helped establish three active employee resource groups. She is leading efforts to ensure that Erie incorporates DEIB metrics into individual and organizational performance measurement. She built diversity and equity within Erie’s patient access center team, making it a point of entry into the health professions for the community.

Marquis Miller

Vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion

Obama Foundation

Marquis Miller provides strategic and programmatic leadership for all staff DEI initiatives, including the creation of a framework for tracking, reporting and communicating DEI metrics. He set consistent messaging and expectations around the foundation’s DEI mission, working with internal leaders on Obama Presidential Center workforce and procurement goals, ensuring a strong business diversity plan and policy, and driving neighborhood organization and leader linkages for Obama Foundation program initiatives. Miller, who is a certi ed diversity professional recognized by the National Diversity Council, served as the city of Chicago’s rst chief diversity of cer. He is a board member or adviser to several community organizations.

Reginald Miller

Vice president, global chief diversity, equity and inclusion of cer

McDonald’s

Reginald Miller focuses on cultivating a diverse talent pipeline and reinforcing a culture of accountability from senior leadership on down. His recent activities include serving as key sponsor in McDonald’s efforts to close small pay gaps identi ed in its 2022 pay analysis, partnering with 420 U.S. system suppliers on McDonald’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge, overseeing more than $1 million in diverse strategic community partnerships and increasing employee membership across McDonald’s nine employee business networks. Other highlights of Miller’s work include spending 25% of McDonald’s 2022 U.S. systemwide expenditures with diverseowned suppliers, reaching the business-diversity-spend goal for the second year in a row.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion – essential ingredients to our culture and growth.

Congratulations, Sherri, on being recognized for your work as a leader and champion for DEI initiatives. Your passion for empowering others to be their true selves every day and your unwavering belief on what is possible makes us proud to call you a colleague.

Sherri Dublin, Ingredion’s vice president of DEI, Culture, Talent Acquisition, Internal Communications and Crain’s Chicago Business’ Notable Leader in DEI!

Terry Miller

Chief of the Department of Diversity & Strategic Development Illinois Tollway

Under Terry Miller’s leadership, the Tollway’s Move Illinois capital program fosters the inclusion of diverse rms and individuals. In 2022, the tollway spent more than $262 million for work performed by small and diverse rms, the second-highest total in the past ve years. The tollway also launched the Small Business Initiative, in which select construction contracts, generally with values of $5 million or less, are identied as being exclusively for small businesses to perform as contractors. More than 200 rms are registered in this program, of which about 70% are disadvantaged or veteranowned businesses. Miller teaches at DePaul College of Law and volunteers with the Wills for Heroes Foundation.

Anita Nelson

Director of DEI and accessibility

Navy Pier

Anita Nelson is responsible for creating an inclusive environment and advancing equity for Navy Pier’s staff and guests.

She recently developed Navy Pier’s rst diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility strategic plan that focuses on recruitment and retention, equity, leadership development and community engagement. Each area includes key performance indicators to measure progress and hold the organization accountable. The strategic plan’s community engagement component focuses on accessibility, closing the racial wealth gap in Chicago and building partnerships with other community organizations that align with Navy Pier’s vision and mission. Nelson has been active with the Chicago Food Depository and Restore Chicago.

Brian Mond Director Mond Properties

Brian Mond operates a development group located in Chicago’s Hispanic neighborhoods. Within his company, he has advocated for inclusive hiring practices, created diverse investor networks with a focus on minority investors, and provided minority contractors with opportunities they otherwise would not have been given. The employee demographics are 100% Latino and English is a second language within the of ce. In 2022, Mond ignited the Latino Apartment Founders fellowship to support aspiring real estate professionals from diverse Hispanic backgrounds. This fellowship provides mentorship, training and access to opportunities that may have been otherwise inaccessible. Mond is a board member of the Southside Builders Association.

Otto Nichols III

Executive vice president and shareholder Clayco

Otto Nichols III is co-founder and lead trustee of the Clayco Foundation’s Juneteenth Fund, established in 2020 to combat systemic inequities and support small local nonpro ts. The Juneteenth Fund has raised more than $600,000 to date and, in 2023, awarded $150,000 in grants to organizations that include Chicago Scholars, Polished Pebbles and the AeroStar Avion Institute. Nichols, who is the company’s lead executive on numerous projects, including O’Hare 21 and the Obama Presidential Center, developed Clayco’s rst DEI operations manual for Chicago to help execute supplier-diversity outreach for every project. He is a member of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce board, the Urban Land Institute and Pedal the Cause.

Juan Morado Jr. Partner; co-chair of the DEI committee Benesch

Juan Morado Jr. developed a DEI strategic plan with policies that increase representation through intentional recruiting and mentorship. These efforts helped the rm achieve Mans eld Rule certi cation. Benesch has also seen a measurable increase in diverse talent at the partner and associate levels as well as in leadership positions. Following his election as president of the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois, Morado identi ed an opportunity gap wherein Latina members lacked access to mentorship opportunities; he bolstered programming to provide them with executivelevel mentorship. He has been appointed to the mayor’s Health & Human Services subcommittee, is board vice president of La Casa Norte and is on the board of Teatro Vista.

Nathalie Nunes

Chief DEI of cer

Sinai Chicago

Nathalie Nunes has led Sinai Chicago’s growth, aligning the business strategy and organizational goals with a DEI strategy. Her leadership is exempli ed by the development of key initiatives, including anti-bias training, caregiver resource groups and the Sinai Stars recognition tool. By heightening awareness at both the board and executive levels, she has fostered a culture of inclusion impacting more than 3,500 leaders and caregivers. Through partnerships with various teams, Nunes has integrated diversity, equity and inclusion principles into existing policies. Nunes has been a member of the Illinois Diversity Council’s board since its inception, contributing to the expansion of DEI initiatives across the state. She’s on the board of Urban Jazz Dance Co.

Daniel L. Morriss DEI partner Hinshaw & Culbertson

D.L. Morriss manages all rmwide cultural initiatives and af nity groups and oversees recruitment, retention, talent development and advancement of diverse attorneys. He has been instrumental in growing the rm’s diverse leadership to 50% from 44%, was strategic in the rm’s Mans eld Rule certi cation and is involved in its pursuit of Mans eld Rule 6.0 certi cation. A recent Law360 Pulse Snapshot notes that minorities make up 15.7% of Hinshaw’s partnership, placing the rm seventh nationwide among rms with 251 to 600 attorneys. In June, The American Lawyer ranked the rm 47th in its 2023 Diversity Scorecard, with Hinshaw improving its ranking by 36 positions from 2022. Morriss has served on the executive board of the Joffrey Ballet since 2016.

Ernesto Palomo

Partner and member diversity and inclusion committee

Locke Lord

Ernesto Palomo has co-led activities focusing on recruitment, retention, equal advancement opportunities and initiatives supporting equal justice and civil rights organizations. His leadership has enabled an expansion of the rm’s D&I education efforts, including mandatory rmwide training that emphasizes identifying and interrupting bias. He identi es local and national legal pipeline, civil rights and equal-justice organizations with which the rm has partnered to advance diversity. His recommendations have resulted in contributions totaling more than $100,000 and numerous pro bono hours. Palomo is treasurer of the Chicago Committee on Minorities in Large Law Firms and a board member of LatinoJustice PRLDEF and Just the Beginning-A Pipeline Organization.

Patricia Mota President and CEO Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement

Patricia Mota’s roles include leading strategy, fundraising and development, leadership programs and expanding HACE’s organizational reach. Key achievements include kick-starting a pilot of the HACE Leadership Academy-Nonpro t Series, which affected the lives of more than 25,000 students and professionals. Today, the budget has quadrupled and membership has tripled to nearly 100,000, with nearly 200 corporate partnerships and an expanded reach across 499 cities and 13 countries. Mota is on the boards of the Chicago Theological Seminar, Associated Colleges of Illinois and the Illinois Treasurer Charitable Trust. She is a member of the Charitable Trust Stabilization committee and the Cook County Council on Digital Equity.

Robert Perkins

Senior vice president, chief global DEI of cer

Mondelez International

Robert Perkins, Mondelez’s rst global diversity and inclusion of cer, is accountable for leading the company’s accelerated DEI strategy. In particular, he is helping to achieve a corporate commitment to double Black representation in U.S. management by 2024. His success can be measured by year-over-year progress: At the end of 2022, Black employees held about 5.5% of U.S. management roles, an increase of more than 70%. The company is also on track to double the number of women in executive leadership positions by 2024 from a baseline set in 2018. Perkins has served on numerous boards, was previously a historically black college and university trustee, and today mentors and sponsors socioeconomically disadvantaged youth, both domestically and internationally.

Larry Phillips

Assistant vice president, inclusion and diversity

Gallagher

Larry Phillips co-created and currently leads Gallagher Connect Partners, an inclusive network of minority-owned, woman-owned, veteran-owned and other diverse-certi ed insurance rms that provides clients with risk-management solutions. The aim is to combat traditional supplier arrangements and level the playing eld by vetting partners to ensure proactive partnerships with diverse trading partners. The network now has more than 75 diverse-certi ed partners in 40 states. The acquisition of new partners has increased 160%, and the number of minorityowned business clients has increased 71%. Phillips has been a governing and junior board member at Boys Hope Girls Hope International since 2015.

Mikal Quarles

Managing director, head of diverse strategies, business banking

JPMorgan Chase

Mikal Quarles oversees the strategies behind Chase’s Racial Equity Commitment. The commitment includes lending initiatives, product development and the Chase mentorship program, which provides small-business owners with access to information and capital. Quarles has hired managers to cover a national team of 51 senior business consultants who work alongside business owners. He was instrumental in the acceleration of the rm’s minority entrepreneurship program in Chicago, overseeing the hiring of critical bankers to mentor business owners and working with community managers. Quarles has helped hundreds of Chicago business owners through workshops and coaching.

NOTE

Ayoub Rabah Regional president, Midwest Coldwell Banker Realty

Ayoub Rabah oversees 6,746 agents across 84 sales of ces in the Chicago area, Michigan, Texas, northwest Indiana and southeast Wisconsin. He has diversi ed his Chicago-area leadership team, adding vice presidents of diverse backgrounds. He is a founding member of the company’s DEI council. His Agents of Change events, which he hosts for agents, feature candid discussions and speakers from organizations such as Freddie Mac who discuss ways to increase access to homeownership for underserved communities. He championed efforts to update marketing materials to celebrate diverse backgrounds. Rabah is a board member of the Chicago Association of Realtors and DEI chair of his cohort at Northwestern University.

Ramu Ramachandran Principal

Perkins Eastman

Ramu Ramachandran is leading the design and research for the $250 million reconstruction of the Illinois Veterans Homes in Quincy and the $90 million Marquette State Veterans Home in Michigan. He has been a champion of Perkins Eastman’s mentorship program and is a founding member of its DEI committee. With a focus on diversifying the rm’s leadership pipeline, he has mentored 10 architects-in-training over the past eight years toward licensure. Volunteering in the national architecture, construction and engineering mentorship program, he co-led a diverse team of 20 students from Chicago public high schools to rst place at the 2023 Construction Industry Round Table national design and construction competition. Ramachandran also serves on the advisory committee on design for MA Center Chicago.

NOTABLE SPOTLIGHT with Juan Morado Jr.

What inspired you to take an active leadership role in DEI?

leader in DEI and set an example for other rms.

As a partner at Benesch and co-chair of the rm’s DEI Committee, Juan Morado Jr. is committed to making the legal profession and the local community more inclusive.

Prior to joining Benesch, Morado served as general counsel for the state’s Health Facilities and Services Review Board. He previously served in the Of ce of the Illinois Governor as Deputy Chief of Staff and Associate General Counsel, acting as the Governor’s Senior Advisor on Transportation and Infrastructure Policy. In 2020, Morado was appointed to the Chicago Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority’s (MPEA) Board, and selected as a Leadership Council on Legal Diversity Fellow. He also serves on the boards of the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois, the Chicago Bar Association, and numerous non-pro ts.

It’s not uncommon for me to be only person that looks like me in many of the rooms where I get to be in, and it’s incredibly important to me to not be the only or the rst, I believe that with this great privilege comes a responsibility to grow diverse leadership in law, in our civic institutions and beyond so that increasingly it re ects our society.

I’ve always been active in af nity organizations. I’m a past president of the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois, and I continue to serve on that board. I don’t have family members who were attorneys, so coming up through law school, it was incredibly inspiring to be part of a community of attorneys in the HLAI that looked like me and had similar life experiences as me.

We have an incredibly diverse population here in Chicago, but we don’t see a re ection of our city in leadership positions—whether it’s law rms, corporations, or government itself. It’s important to me, because of the inspiration I got as a law student, to advocate for more representation at every level. I bring that to my work here at Benesch; I want to see our rm be a

How do you mentor the next generation of diverse attorneys, both within Benesch and within the broader legal community?

I try to save an hour every Friday to meet with a different mentee, whether they’re from Benesch or outside organizations like the JD Mentors Program through the HLAI or the Diversity Scholarship Fund mentorship program. The least I can do is spend an hour with somebody to give them some advice and guidance, because I recognize that they probably, like me, don’t necessarily have somebody in their family they can reach out to.

You’re involved in a long list of community organizations. Why is board service important to you?

I think it’s important that people who look like me are in rooms where important decisions are being made. It’s important that our community is represented in these spaces because our viewpoints haven’t always been considered. If I can bring a particular viewpoint or advocate for resources for my community, it’s an honor to do that.

How do you make time for it all?

The secret is that I usually work till midnight. I make time for events in the evenings, and I always make time for my number one job, which is being present for my family, I’m a husband and a dad to two incredible kids. Quite frankly, that plays a huge role in it for me, being able to set a foundation for my own children and make the world a better place for them.

What advice would you give other leaders who want to make their organizations more inclusive?

The number one thing to keep in mind is that these are not only the right things to do, but they are good business decisions. When you stop thinking about it necessarily as the right thing to do and start thinking strategically about how to be the best organization you can be—one that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive is inevitably going to be a better organization than one that’s not.

Benesch partner promotes a more inclusive legal community

WORTHY 14%

The amount that minority representation has increased in the past decade for C-suite positions at the 50 biggest local companies by revenue, according to Chicago United.

Anajah Roberts

Executive director

Teach For America Greater Chicago-Northwest Indiana

Anajah Roberts leads a multicultural team of people working to train anti-racist educators, deepen partnerships with schools and grow the leadership of TFA alumni. TFA increased the number of incoming anti-racist educators by 46% during record teacher shortages and the COVID-19 pandemic. TFA partnered with the Advance Illinois coalition to persuade the Illinois State Board of Education to increase its appropriation to $7 million from $1.9 million over two years, enabling more students to receive the Minority Teachers of Illinois Scholarship and removing a barrier for teachers of color to enter the eld. Roberts has been a Posse Foundation community scholar interviewer since 2012 and a Young Nonpro t Professionals Network Chicago mentor since 2022.

Lizabeth Stuck

Vice president, MxD Learn

MxD

Lizabeth Stuck leads MxD

Learn, MxD’s workforce development program. She is responsible for the execution of programming and strategies to increase digital manufacturing and cybersecurity. She also leads a workforce program that engages with high-school students in underserved communities, securing $267,000 in funding to support that effort. She has guided MxD Learn into partnerships with 12 diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility organizations to increase access to advanced manufacturing education. She provided $493,000 in funding to DEIA organizations for workforce efforts in digital manufacturing and cybersecurity for manufacturing. Stuck represents MxD as co-chair of the Department of Defense’s DEIA working group and has served for the past several years as a mentor at the Chicago Innovation Women’s Mentoring Co-op.

Sharla Roberts Director of procurement diversity University

of Illinois System

Sharla Roberts oversees the supplier diversity program, leveraging the university’s resources to include academic professional and MBE students to strengthen the capacity of small and diverse businesses. She developed and implemented HeadCount software to track and monitor workforce diversity goals and created policies and procedures addressing DEI. Roberts serves on task forces to address DEI across the UI system. She also served on the chancellor’s African American Advisory Council, which is creating a plan to improve Black student enrollment, staff and academic professionals as well as to better utilize African American-owned businesses.

Roberts serves on the board of the Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council.

Roz Stuttley

Director, equity, diversity and inclusion

Choose Chicago

Roz Stuttley has expanded Choose Chicago’s scholarship program to provide sustaining scholarships to high school seniors and college students. She arranged for leadership and staff training in DEI with a concentration on implicit bias, systemic racism, gender and identity training. She increased the number of diverse vendors and partners the organization works with in its efforts on the City’s South and West sides to promote the career opportunities tourism provides in the local hospitality industry. She also created Student Tourism Days, bringing nearly 50 pre-college students to meet with industry professionals and learn about careers in hospitality. Stuttley serves on Destinations International’s equity, diversity and inclusion committee and on the board of Tourism Diversity Matters.

Olibia Stamatoglou

Managing director, chief nancial of cer and chief compliance of cer

Victory Park Capital

Olibia Stamatoglou created Victory Park Capital’s employeeengagement program, which includes commitments to DEI and employee development. She implemented corporate policies that include ongoing employee training and education to increase awareness of internal bias, and she developed the system for tracking the rm’s diversity performance indicators. As a result, within 18 months VPC increased its female employee base by 64% and its ethnically diverse employee base by 500%. She also coordinated with the Emerge Scholar program to source diverse students for internships. Stamatoglou launched the annual Day in the Life program, a two-day experience to educate high school students on investment management careers.

Ta Juana Tang

Founder and president

Tandem Ventures

Ta Juana Tang facilitated an introduction for a joint-venture relationship between client Leopardo Cos. and minorityowned ALL Construction Group, resulting in the award of a $50 million project, Encuentro Square. This relationship offers ALL Construction the experience of working on an affordable housing project, which will enable it to independently contend for future housing deals. Tang has developed diversityinclusive language for client requests for proposals mandating that majority rms must contract at least 40% of their contract to minority-owned rms and commit to hiring marginalized residents into apprenticeship programs. She also provides pro-bono technical assistance, training and back-of ce support to MWBE rms that lack these essential services in-house. She chairs One on One, a workforce development organization.

Ashlie Stapleton

Director of diversity, equity and inclusion

Pepper Construction

Ashlie Stapleton, an experienced project manager, spent the past year building on Pepper’s ve DEI strategic pillars to create goals and programs that impact employees, trade partners and clients. Under her leadership, this year Pepper hosted more than a dozen lunch-and-learns with minorityand women-owned businesses, an internal Women in Construction Week program and more than 15 community-engagement events. The company also participated in trade fairs and mock interviews, expanded recruiting to historically Black colleges and launched a scholarship/internship program. Stapleton is vice chair of the U.S. Minority Contractors Association STEM advisory board. She is a member of Professional Women in Construction, serving on the mentorship committee for tradeswomen.

Tyronne Stoudemire

Senior vice president, global DEI co-chair, global diversity, equity and inclusion counsel

Hyatt Hotels

Tyronne Stoudemire’s teamand internal corporate stakeholders implement diversity initiatives that include resource groups, mentoring programs for high-potential women and people of color, and enhanced brand marketing efforts focused on multicultural and LGBT audiences. Since June 2020, Hyatt has added more than 360 women into senior leadership roles across the globe, provided $1 million in multiyear grants to six nonpro ts and added more than 500 new Black suppliers to its database. Stoudemire is a member of the Executive Leadership Council and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and he serves on the Metropolitan Planning Council Board. He’s also chairman of the board of the Black Ensemble Theater.

Partner and co-chair of diversity and inclusion committee

Locke Lord

Julie Webb has been integral to the adoption of multiple initiatives in the past 18 months. The rm is pursuing Mans eld Rule 6.0 certi cation from Diversity Lab after earning Mans eld Certi cation Plus status for 2022. In addition, Locke Lord earned the Minority Corporate Counsel Association’s gold seal, being recognized for “exemplary development and solutions in advancing DEI.” She spearheaded the rm’s involvement in the National LGBT Bar Association’s Lavender Law Career Fair and helped set policies that earned the rm a 100% rating on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index. Webb has been an appointed member of the ABA’s Commission on Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity for three years.

Wendy K. White Eagle Company integrator — EOS, president

Tek Pak

In 2022, Wendy K. White Eagle initiated an apprenticeship program to foster talent from the community and the current workforce. She spearheaded a $3.5 million reinvestment, boosting capacity by 40% and acquiring a training center in St. Charles. Under White Eagle’s stewardship, the company raised its diverse workforce aggregate to 59% spread across ve Kane County locations, with many employees having more than 20 years of tenure. Tek Pak particularly emphasizes advancing women in manufacturing through its internal apprenticeship program; today, more than 30% of employees are women, alongside Hispanic, Native American, African American and Asian American personnel. Eight percent of Tek Pak’s vendors are diverse, and it aims for 15% diversity-compliant suppliers by 2025.

Julie Webb

Rashada Whitehead

National managing principal of culture, immersion and inclusion Grant Thornton

Rashada Whitehead, a member of the rm’s 15-person senior leadership team, has implemented an all-encompassing approach to DEI. Over the last 18 months, she spearheaded a DEI taskforce, strengthened diversity recruitment and re ned the onboarding process. She has led multiple inclusion conferences and attracted outside in uencers to speaking engagements. She was responsible for creating the rm’s inaugural DEI report, which outlines speci c goals. Under her leadership, Grant Thornton made a 54% advancement toward its goal of increasing Black and Latino professionals in scal year 2023. Further, the rm saw a 98% participation rate for partners, principals and managing directors in the unconscious-bias training series alongside a 90% participation rate for employees.

Ann Claire Williams Of counsel Jones Day

Retired Judge Ann Claire Williams leads Jones Day’s pro bono Rule of Law in Africa initiative. The rst judge of color on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, she has founded multiple organizations to advance representation and equality in law. These include Just the Beginning-A Pipeline Organization, Minority Legal Education Resources and the Black Women Lawyers’ Association of Chicago. She also founded Jumpstart, a three-day pre-law school preparation program for students from groups underrepresented in law, designed to help them develop the academic and interpersonal skills needed to become successful law students and lawyers. Because of Williams’ leadership, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism and all nine Illinois law schools (six in Chicago) participate in Jumpstart.

NOTE WORTHY 11.4%

John Wober

President Airbrands

As president of Airbrands, a Chicago-based airport concessions rm, John Wober is impacting local DEI efforts by introducing new minority-owned restaurants and vendors to airports. His recent airport development projects are creating hundreds of entry-level, management and construction jobs within the Black and Brown communities hard-hit by COVID-19. Airbrands’ partnerships with various not-forpro ts such as the Cook County Workforce Partnership and Metropolitan Family Services are offering employment and child care resources to disinvested areas. Later this year, through Chicago Hospitality Partners, Wober’s team plans to introduce several local restaurants to O’Hare International Airport. Wober is a member of the Illinois Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Navy Pier Associate Board.

Sandra Yamate CEO

Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession

As a board member, Sandra Yamate is a regular resource on DEI at the Chicago Bar Association. She researched and wrote “Diverse Outside Counsel,” the rst data-analysis study of the diversity spend of corporate clients, lling a gap in law rm/ client accountability efforts. She also prepared “The Use of Diverse-Owned Law Firms” for the National Association of Minority & Women Owned Law Firms, an analysis of corporations’ use of diverse-owned law rms. Yamate developed what is considered the legal profession’s rst course on DEI, which she co-teaches at the Loyola University Chicago Law School. She has designed DEI programs around annual history/ heritage months. Yamate is on the boards of the National Judicial College and the National Association of Women Lawyers.

The amount that minority representation has increased in all executive positions at the 50 biggest local companies by revenue, according to Chicago United.

GAS

From Page 1

“recruit more young people to move to Chicago.”

While the details have not been nalized, the proposal would track closely with a recommendation in Johnson’s transition committee report to require “all new buildings and major renovations to use e cient, all-electric equipment and build rooftop solar-ready infrastructure starting in July 2025 to align with the building code update, and incentivize the adoption of heat pumps, all electric equipment and renewable energy technologies.”

A similar ordinance was almost introduced by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in February, but the former mayor — who would be denied a second term just weeks later — balked at introducing the proposal after opposition from the city’s gas utility provider, Peoples Gas; developers; business owners, and especially trade unions, who all voiced concern about the measure in City Hall brie ngs, according to sources involved in the meetings.

Abe Scarr, state director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group, urged Johnson to prioritize the e ort and “champion” the ordinance despite opposition from some unions.

“Labor for impacted industries obviously has every right, and it’s understandable that they’d push back on this,” Scarr told Crain’s.

“ at said, this is the one, most important thing that the mayor (and) the city can do to lower utility bills, to improve the health of the buildings we live in and to ght climate change.”

e proposed ordinance, as written, would set emission standards in new buildings where a building permit is applied for after July 2025, such as mandating “there could only be so much emissions from appliances in the building,” Scarr said.

e “practical impact of that would be that they couldn’t connect to the gas system,” he said. “We would all assume that buildings would be all electric; that’s the other technology we have for powering homes.”

Under the proposed ordinance,

there would be exemptions for certain buildings “where we think the industry needs a little bit more time to go electric,” Scarr said. ose exemptions include hospitals, commercial kitchens, laundromats and crematoriums, among others.

e ordinance also would apply to “extensive renovations” to existing buildings, tentatively de ned as adding at least 25% more square footage.

Peoples Gas is expected to ght the ordinance. In a statement, the company said it had yet to see a draft of the proposal.

“However, Chicagoans should be concerned about any policy that increases their costs and jeopardizes energy reliability — all without lowering emissions,” the statement said. “Our focus remains on providing customers the reliable energy they depend on while also investing in emerging clean energy technologies such as renewable natural gas and hydrogen.”

Working group

A second component of the effort would, through executive order or resolution, create a working group to study how the city could set new performance standards for existing buildings of at least 25,000 square feet, which could require expensive electric conversions and will receive sti er pushback from opponents.

e group would include representatives from “building owners, labor, environmental and community groups to have a seat at the table in crafting the speci cs of that policy, which would have pretty far-reaching impacts,” Scarr said.

e Building Owners & Managers Association of Chicago, or BOMA, has voiced its concern about the impact of extending decarbonization to existing buildings, said Amy Masters, director of government and external a airs at the group.

“Over the years, we’ve led the nation when it comes to sustainability and green building stock, so there’s a lot of alignment in goals of decarbonization. But there’s a lot of detail that has to be worked out.”

Converting to electric for large, aging buildings would face “signicant cost challenges,” Masters said.

“Some of these conversions could cost millions,” she said. “As we have these conversations, we also want to be able to pair discussions about incentives and ways that we can support buildings to decarbonize as well. Especially given the economic environment we’re in right now with people not returning to the o ce, record high vacancy and building values plummeting.”

Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, said addressing existing buildings would be “more complicated” than new construction but is con dent “we’re going to gure something out.”

Martin and others pointed to the federal In ation Reduction Act as a potential well to tap to help buildings reduce their carbon emissions.

“We’ll continue working collaboratively with the state and the federal government so that we are making this transition as smooth and as e ective as possible, while also meeting our goals,” he said. e trade unions oppose the measure because it could slow down the construction of new buildings that put their members to work.

Peoples Gas has also contracted with unions to replace aging gas lines through a decades-long program that won’t be completed for at least another decade. e laborintensive work could be made obsolete if the city mandates that residential buildings, including single-family homes, that are extensively rehabbed convert to electric.

Ed Maher, a spokesman for the in uential International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, told Crain’s his union has been “working with aldermen to ensure that any decarbonization plan that comes before the City Council is reasonable and well thought out.”

“Many of the items being discussed fail to recognize the realities of the infrastructure that power Chicago homes and businesses,” Maher said. “Any decarbonization plan that bans new natural gas connections places shortsighted limits on the options available to residents and businesses owners in an industry that is positioned for innovation in the coming years.”

Peoples Gas is expected to ght an ordinance limiting natural gas in new buildings. I JOHN R. BOEHM

REPORT FUTURE OF WORK

Downtown Chicago’s hospitality industry is full of opportunities

A strong city needs a strong downtown, and a thriving hospitality industry is part of that foundation.

ere needs to be an ongoing and intentional e ort to support the industry’s growth to keep attracting millions from across the world, which requires the City to be responsive and timely with the award of permits and licensing. We also have a lot of young and diverse-owned restaurants and entities emerging. We need to be acutely aware of the impact that fees, taxes and other nancial obligations can have in weighing down small businesses like these that might prevent them from becoming the next Boka or Lettuce Entertain You.

Carmen Rossi is an accomplished entrepreneur and lawyer with a passion for the hospitality industry. He is the founder, and Chief Executive Of cer of 8 Hospitality Group, a hospitality-development and management company, with an emphasis on food and beverage marketing, branding, promotions, public relations, and operations. Rossi is a board member of the Illinois Restaurant Association and INTERSECT Illinois, a nonpro t organization focused on economic development in the state. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois

Why Chicago? What makes it such a great town for those in the hospitality industry?

ere’s no greater city on the planet than Chicago. It has the seventh largest metropolitan GDP in the world with 77 diverse communities, incredible cultural attractions, a gorgeous lakefront, a talented workforce and more than 55 million tourists returning year a er year. It’s not just a dream to work here as an entrepreneur in the hospitality space, but it’s one of the few cities where anyone with a dream has the potential to bring it to life. I was born and raised in the south suburbs and came to Chicago a er graduating from law school. While I didn’t come from money or have connections, I had the drive to create. So for those looking to get their start in the hospitality industry, know that this is a town that nurtures talent, allows you to make mistakes and li s you up when you get back on your feet. is is where you want to be.

What needs to happen in the next 3-5 years to help this industry downtown continue to thrive and keep millions of people coming back each year to visit Chicago?

Reports demonstrate that workers are slowly but steadily returning to downtown. How is this impacting your industry?

Restaurants, bars and nightlife relied heavily on the downtown work crowd pre-pandemic, but that model has changed — perhaps permanently. e gradual uptick in people returning to work downtown is promising, but we have to think more creatively to plan for what lies ahead. Ultimately, we’re all in this together and the city should engage developers, business leaders and creatives as thought partners to generate new ways to utilize existing spaces, encourage foot tra c and keep making Chicago’s downtown a destination.

How have false narratives about Chicago’s downtown created challenges for restaurants?

is phenomenon is not unique to Chicago, as every major city deals with its own set of issues and many of these concerns are more perception than reality. However, thanks to proactive measures taken by the police department, recent data supports a dramatic decrease in incidents around downtown and across the board. ose of us in the food and hospitality industry must continue to remind customers and visitors of the incredible experiences the city o ers both downtown and across our neighborhoods. Nothing beats driving or ying in and seeing Chicago’s iconic skyline, or fully immersing yourself in the exceptional dining, art and cultural experiences that the city has to o er. We have an exciting and compelling narrative that we need to keep saying loudly for everyone in the back.

How can the new mayoral administration best support this industry as the city continues to emerge from the effects of the pandemic?

It’s clear that the Johnson administration understands the critical role restaurants and entertainment play in our local economy, and I’m encouraged by their creative ideas for bringing assets like State Street back to life. Our city is o en at the forefront of hospitality innovation, and I think our next chapter includes further utilizing existing assets along the lakefront, the river and in our parks to create more cultural and culinary experiences. Speci cally, we need to be creative when imagining how new types of licensing can help support innovation in this space. I feel con dent that this administration understands that. What do you see as future trends in hospitality? What will people see or experience differently in ve years compared to today?

Regardless of the potential impact that technologies like VR and AI may have in the years to come, the human species by design needs real experiences to see, touch and feel things. Hospitality lives at that epicenter. As an industry, we need to keep evolving and meeting people where they are, as we always do. I expect that we will have a broader range of experiences associated with dining as we collectively seek out

culinary experiences that are more than just sustenance. In addition to a vibrant downtown and culinary entertainment scene, I expect to see more of our neighborhoods continue to attract talented, young chefs who can embed themselves in these communities and build their brand by nding real estate that will provide them with better margins for their business.

What’s different about making a restaurant successful today versus when you opened your rst business?

e economics of opening a restaurant or entertainment venue have signi cantly di erent stakes today than when I started in this industry. We’ve always had small margins, but those margins are now smaller than ever. Rising costs of goods and services have grown wildly, which disproportionately impacts hospitality. When I was starting out, I could a ord to make some mistakes and bounce back, but now it’s di erent. It’s an incredibly competitive market, so it forces you to sweat the small stu . You have to stay on top of trends and customer demands that can impact the future of our industry and workforce. For one, I see a strong desire to socialize

without alcohol, and that’s a market shi we have to respond to. Dining today is more than just food; it’s also about the experience - lighting, music, decor, etc. People want to share unique and memorable experiences with others, so we have to continue nding ways to tap into that demand.

What’s your advice for entrepreneurs to best navigate this evolving industry?

ere is nothing but opportunity in Chicago. Lead with your passion, but don’t go it alone. Lean on this community — while we are all competitors at heart, we are also rooting for one another’s success and have one of the greatest hospitality ecosystems in the world with engaged advocates like the Illinois Restaurant Association. So don’t be afraid to ask for help and guidance while on your journey. I couldn’t have built my portfolio of businesses without the consultation and mentorship of others, and I never would have had the same opportunities elsewhere that Chicago has given me. Leverage all that this city has to o er.

CARMEN ROSSI

Founder and CEO 8 Hospitality Group events@8hospitality.com

eliminated palliative medicine services, also known as end-of-life care, as of Aug. 22. e document said Duly is transferring palliative care patients to other providers.

In a statement to Crain’s, Duly spokeswoman Maria McGowan said Duly is committed to providing quality care for patients but declined to provide more details about layo s and other recent changes at the company.

“In light of unprecedented pressures on the healthcare industry from the pandemic, elevated in ation and patient care costs, we have taken steps to improve our operational e ciency and longterm positioning,” McGowan said. “While we’ve made di cult decisions impacting our workforce, we are con dent that these changes will enable Duly to continue to deliver the care our patients and communities deserve.”

‘Burning cash’

e recent cutbacks come amid a slew of top executive changes at Duly. In June, the company quietly replaced Reller with Dan Greenleaf, the organization’s third new CEO in the last four years.

Soon after, several longtime executives left Duly, including its chief nancial o cer and chief operating o cer.

Duly, one of the nation’s largest medical groups — and the largest in the Chicago area by revenue — serves about 2.5 million patients at more than 150 locations in Illinois and Indiana, according to its website. A recent Duly press release says the for-pro t primary and specialty care provider employs 7,000 people, but it’s unclear exactly how many still work for the organization after the sta reductions.

Duly’s net revenue last year climbed 41% to $1.98 billion, according to data the company provided to Crain’s. Duly has attributed the growth to acquisitions of medical groups in South Bend, Ind., and downstate Quincy.

Duly’s growth has also been

AFFORDABILITY

From Page 1

wage earners,” the report says.

In Cook County, the index shows the last time homes were harder to a ord than they are now was the fourth quarter of 2008.

In DuPage and Lake counties, it’s worse: In recent months it’s been harder to a ord a house than at any time since the third quarter of 2007.

And in Kane, McHenry and Will counties, it’s even worse: ere’s not another quarter in Attom’s data, which stretches back to the rst three months of 2005, when homes were harder to a ord than they have been this quarter.

It’s the predictable result of this rare set of circumstances where mortgage rates, rising in response to the Federal Reserve’s in ationghting increases, have more than doubled, making existing homeowners hesitant to sell their house that has an interest rate in the 3%

fueled in part by a $1.45 billion investment in 2017 from Los Angeles-based private-equity rm Ares Management. But as in many private-equity buyouts, Duly borrowed money to help nance the transaction, a Moody’s Investors Service report shows.

In July, the credit rating agency cut Duly’s debt rating to B3 from B2, citing an expectation of elevated nancial leverage through 2024. Moody’s report blames the recent spike in nancial leverage primarily on a surge in medical claims and labor costs. Additionally, Duly’s liquidity has deteriorated due to higher interest rates, increasing capital expenditures and more spending to support its acquisitions, like information technology infrastructure investments, says Jaime Johnson, a vice president and senior health care analyst at Moody’s.

range and buy one at more than 6%. at puts a lid on the inventory of homes for sale, which in turn pushes prices up.

“It’s been very hard on folks who can’t just come up with more money,” says Ryan Gable, a broker at Starting Point Realty, whose Chicago and Schaumburg o ces focus on working with rst-time buyers. While a uent buyers or those with a portfolio of investments might be able to reallocate their cash to go ahead and buy at a higher cost, “working people who can’t do that, my heart goes out to them,” he says.

‘Making hard choices’

Households that have to buy because their family is growing, they’re empty nesters downsizing or they’ve taken a new job “are making hard choices,” Gable says. at may be shifting from looking for a house to looking for a townhouse, as clients of his did, or buying where the schools or other amenities aren’t as high in

Duly’s adjusted debt-to-EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) ratio rose to about 8.3x at the end of March, up from pro forma leverage in the mid-5x range when Ares rst invested in Duly, a separate report shows.

“ at is a high amount of leverage for the rating level,” Johnson says. “We were very concerned that they had been burning cash for some time.”

However, Johnson said she expects leverage to improve in coming months as new doctors join the company, their productivity improves, Duly renegotiates insurance contracts and in ation eases.

Shareholder payout

Adding to the financial pressure, however, is a $209 million dividend Duly paid to Ares investors in 2021. Funded in part

quality as they’d hoped.

Rob Barber, Attom’s CEO, echoed Gable’s sentiment.

“ e dynamics in uencing the U.S. housing market appear to continuously work against everyday Americans,” Barber said in prepared comments that accompanied the report.

Attom calculates homes’ affordability for average wage earners by calculating the income needed to cover major monthly homeownership costs (mortgage, property taxes and homeowners insurance) on the local median-priced single-family home. In Cook County, monthly expenses on the median-priced home would cost 28.1% of the average wage in the third quarter, up from 23.6% at the same time in 2022.

e Chicago area is far from the only place where a ordability is shrinking fast. Nationwide, homes haven’t been so hard to a ord since the second quarter of 2007, according to the index.

meaningfully reducing its cash balance to fund the dividend.

Combined with higher gross financial leverage, this will leave (Duly) more weakly positioned to absorb any unexpected operating setback or incremental debt.”

Ares declined to comment.

Duly’s debt burden and financial strain comes amid widespread health care industry challenges, many of which were compounded by COVID-19 and inflation. The industry has struggled as a labor shortage drives up personnel costs, and prices rise on everything from medical supplies to pharmaceuticals.

The financial pressures, combined with broader industry trends, have helped spur consolidation in health care. Hospital systems have merged to form sprawling chains, while major retail pharmacies such as Walgreens Boots Alliance and CVS Health have purchased primary care companies — Duly competitors — to begin offering comprehensive health care services.

The trend could mean more competitive pressures for Duly. On the other hand, it could also increase the likelihood of Duly finding a buyer, a scenario that Ares might consider if it can find a purchaser willing to take on Duly’s liabilities. Private-equity firms typically look to cash out their investments within five to seven years, often through a sale of the company or an initial public offering of its stock. Ares has held its stake in Duly for six years.

with borrowed money, the dividend prompted criticism from Moody’s in a February 2021 report.

“Moody’s views the shareholder distribution as a credit negative as it points to the aggressive nature of (Duly’s) financial policies, a key governance issue,” the report reads. “(Duly) will be

Mid-2007 was near the height of another housing boom, the one that collapsed later that year amid a global nancial meltdown.

Sam and Annie Carlson experienced the way the dynamic is, in Barber’s words, working against them.

Renters in Chicago, they wanted to buy a house during the pandemic housing boom, but competitive bidding wars turned them o . In 2021, they saw one house in Humboldt Park they liked and thought they might stretch to about $5,000 over the asking price.

It went for $75,000 over ask.

ey got out of the market. “It was too stressful,” says Sam, who’s in commercial real estate. Annie is in tech.

e couple spotted a window opening for them in early 2023, when fast-rising interest rates had shocked a lot of potential buyers out of the market. A house that had the unfortunate luck to have

In the meantime, privateequity firms typically focus on increasing cash flow and cutting costs, says Eileen O’Grady, health care director at the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a Chicago-based nonprofit that’s been critical of private-equity activity in essential industries.

“(It’s) sort of get in, get out quickly and make as much money as you can,” O’Grady says. “The ways that you do that in health care are reducing staff, reducing services.”

hit the market in mid-2022, just when things were unraveling, was still on the market six months later, at about 15% less. e Carlsons went for it, buying with a mortgage whose interest rate was 6.5%, or about twice what it would have been when they rst started their house hunt.

Running all the numbers, Sam Carlson concluded that “we would have had a slightly better deal if we had bought it earlier.” at is, even though the seller had slashed the asking price during a tense time in the housing market, jacked-up interest rates ate away the enhanced affordability.

Sam Carlson is sanguine about it. “If we can re nance in a year or two years, we can bring the cost down,” he says. With the Federal Reserve’s recent statements that it was not raising interest rates again but expects to keep them high for a long time, he says, “it looks more like two years.”

Duly Health & Care’s Downers Grove headquarters I COSTAR

Duly’s growth has been fueled in part by a $1.45 billion investment in 2017 from Los Angelesbased private-equity firm Ares Management.

rm two years ago to help evaluate and devise a path forward for its properties.

“We’re trying to be nimble and we’re trying to be smart. We’re fully committed to the portfolio, but we want to make smart decisions on each one of these assets,” Bennett said.

AmTrust has good reason to believe building upgrades will pay o . e vast majority of new leases downtown over the past three years have been at top-tier, or Class A, buildings that were either new or newly renovated. Companies have gravitated to such properties as they seek workspace that will help compel employees to show up rather than work remotely. e Class A ofce vacancy rate downtown has only ticked up to 18.3% from 18% two years ago, while vacancy at Class B buildings has jumped during that span from 19.1% to 26.5%, according to data from brokerage CBRE.

AmTrust isn’t the only landlord reinvesting in its properties — owners of the Merchandise Mart, 300 N. LaSalle St. and 330 N. Wabash Ave. are also in the midst of or are planning big upgrades to cater to the post-COVID o ce user. But at a time when many others are surrendering their properties to lenders or halting major new spending in their buildings, Bennett sees a pro table path forward for landlords who can prove their long-term commitment to buildings.

“I think it’s an opportune time to pick great assets that we think have great bones and great viability and a great future, (and) invest in them when other people are still kind of frozen and sitting on the sidelines,” he said.

Renovation plans

Work is slated to begin in the next several weeks at 1 E. Wacker, where AmTrust plans an overhaul to the building’s lobby and the creation of new amenities on the building’s second oor, including a tness center, meeting space, and a

HANCOCK

From Page 3

and restaurant due to the COVID-19 pandemic persist. Chicago and Michigan Avenue have been slow to recover. Safety issues and negative publicity continues to deter visitors to Chicago. All of these issues are negatively impacting the health of our restaurant and are issues that are completely out of our control.

“As a result, we are forced to close our doors.”

e closure of the renowned dining spot is a gut punch for the Magni cent Mile, which has struggled to regain its footing in the wake of the public health crisis. Shuttering retailers and reduced foot tra c along North Michigan Avenue have left the renowned shopping corridor with recordhigh vacancy and desperate for a boost that would restore it as a destination for tourists and locals alike.

lounge and bar looking out over the Chicago River. Other renovations are planned for the tower’s entrances, corridors, restrooms and its top- oor tenant lounge.

e plan has already helped AmTrust retain its largest tenant, private-equity rm Shore Capital, which recently extended its lease by roughly three years through early 2033 and expanded in the building by 16,000 square feet. Prior to that move, the 697,000-square-foot tower was 81% leased, according to real estate information company CoStar Group, slightly better than the downtown average. AmTrust has owned the building since 2013, when it paid $102.5 million to acquire it from Kemper Insurance.

AmTrust said its new capital commitment to 33 N. Dearborn St. also helped it recently inked a long-term lease extension with law rm Corboy & Demetrio, the 341,475-square-foot building’s largest tenant. Work is already underway on the building’s renovation, which includes creating a rooftop deck atop a low-rise portion of the building adjacent to its

Many downtown restaurants, meanwhile, are well into their post-pandemic recovery, though rising costs of labor and food have watered down margins that were already thin before the public health crisis began.

In a separate, public-facing letter posted in the Signature Room’s elevator lobby, Roman and Pyknis wrote that the restaurant’s owners “have been faced with severe economic hardship and the challenges have been greater than anticipated.”

Unique offering

e sudden move to close also comes as the owners of the 26,168-square-foot space that houses the Signature Room and Signature Lounge cocktail bar above it look to sell it. A venture led by New York-based Madison Capital and Newark, N.J.-based PGIM Real Estate hired the Chicago o ce of brokerage Cushman & Wake eld earlier this year to sell the property. Marketing materials

AmTrust is planning to reinvest in property a la its 1 E. Wacker and 33 N. Dearborn work, Bennett said. But unlike the latter buildings, where AmTrust’s mortgages have far more time until maturity, the Illinois Center plan will “require some signicant, serious discussions” with a special servicer overseeing the loan and a modi cation of its terms to give AmTrust more time to execute its plan.

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fourth- oor conference center, which will also double in size. AmTrust will also improve the building’s entrance, add new groundoor retail, and upgrade corridors and restrooms.

e building is 83% leased today, according to CoStar Group.

‘Full speed ahead’

AmTrust has also hired Stream Realty Partners to oversee leasing for its entire downtown Chicago o ce portfolio. Former Tishman Speyer and Glenstar executive Patrick Kearney has overseen the Chicago portfolio since joining AmTrust as managing director last year.

Stream has lots of space to ll at Illinois Center, the 2.1 millionsquare-foot, two-tower complex that is on track to be more than half empty as its largest tenant prepares to move out. Ratings agency Fitch recently downgraded AmTrust’s $248 million loan on the building, which is scheduled to mature in August 2025. e loan was packaged with others and sold o to commercial mortgage-backed securities investors.

framed the restaurant as a unique o ering that consistently draws visitors and provides stable cash ow: Roman and Pyknis’ Infusion Management Group recently extended its lease for the property by 10 years and is committed to the space through the end of 2031, according to a Cushman yer.

Infusion has operated the Signature Room since its 1993 debut, and the restaurant’s average annual sales would rank it among the 10 highest-grossing independent restaurants in Chicago, according to the yer. Infusion has a triple-net lease for the property — meaning it covers maintenance and other expenses like taxes and insurance — and recently invested $1.5 million in renovations to the space, the yer said.

“For over 20 years, e Signature Room has thrived as an iconic establishment in Chicago and stands as one of the top-grossing restaurants nationwide. Chicago boasts some of the nation’s nest, and most innovative, dining experienc-

AmTrust is also planning renovations to its 900,000-square-foot building at 33 W. Monroe St. in a “later phase” of its overall plan for its Chicago portfolio, Kearney said. Meanwhile, the rm is continuing work with Chicago developer Riverside Investment & Development on a $258 million plan to convert AmTrust’s mostly vacant o ce tower at 135 S. LaSalle St. into a mixed-use building with 430 apartments. e project is part of the city of Chicago’s LaSalle Street Reimagined initiative, which offers public subsidies to developers to help transform vacant o ce space on and near LaSalle Street into housing.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration has not made it clear whether it plans to move forward with the program, which was created by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. But Kearney said AmTrust and Riverside are moving “full speed ahead” in discussions with o cials from the city’s planning and housing departments about the plan for the building, which previously housed Bank of America’s largest Chicago o ce. e project is one of ve LaSalle Street Reimagined proposals now going through an underwriting process with the city to esh out more details about would-be public nancing.

Another project involved with the program is at AmTrust’s building at 30 N. LaSalle St., though the developer is not part of that plan as it faces a $186 million foreclosure lawsuit from American General Life Insurance. e lender has teamed up with Chicago developer Golub on a $143 million proposal to turn a portion of the building into 349 residential units.

es and this presents a very unique and exciting opportunity for the next operator,” Madison Capital Senior Vice President John CLote said in an emailed statement.

Spokesmen for the Signature Room and PGIM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Madison and a PGIM predecessor paid $141.5 million in 2012 for the Signature Room and the retail space on the tower’s rst and second oor. e deal was part of a series of sales by lender Deutsche Bank — which had seized the 100-story tower after its previous owner defaulted on its debt — that split up 875 N. Michigan Ave. into separate ownership groups for its o ce and parking space, its observatory, its antennas, and the retail and restaurant portion. e tower also includes nearly 50 oors of residential condominiums.

Madison and PGIM also own the lower- oor retail space at 875 N. Michigan.

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130 E Randolph St., Suite 3200, Chicago, IL 60601 (312) 649-5200

AmTrust said its new capital commitment to 33 N. Dearborn St. also helped it recently ink a long-term lease extension with law rm Corboy & Demetrio, the 341,475-square-foot building’s largest tenant. I COSTAR

CHILDR EN IS FACI NG HUNGER.

Let

Only a hunger-free community can really be healthy. When we help feed our neighbors, we truly become a greater Chicago.