Crain's Chicago Business by crainschicago

NASCAR: Race could

bring $113.8M to the city’s economy. PAGE 4

HEALTH CARE: Chicago’s new class of hospital CEOs is taking over. PAGE 3

CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM | NOVEMBER 7, 2022 | $3.50

UNDER

FORTY

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS 2020

PHOTOS BY JOHN R. BOEHM

WILDLY ACCOMPLISHED AND POISED TO DO EVEN BIGGER THINGS I PAGE 21

Making LaSalle M Street livable

See LASALLE STREET on Page 49

CITY OF CHICAGO

Lightfoot’s plan to turn the Loop into a neighborhood involves some tough math I BY DANNY ECKER

ayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to revive Chicago’s Loop by reinventing the struggling business hub hurt by the pandemic as a mixed-use neighborhood hinges on convincing real estate developers that they can make money converting outmoded office buildings along LaSalle Street into apartments. While such conversions look good to builders and investors today as apartment rents downtown hit a record high and office vacancy soars, not all office buildings are well suited to be transformed into residential units, especially not the massive, sunlight-starved ones that line the historic thoroughfare. Floors in vacancy-ridden buildings like The LaSalle Street corridor in the Loop.

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TECH TAKEAWAY

LOOP CAPITAL

Getting to know the head of U of I’s Discovery Partners Institute. PAGE 6

Chicago firm sees asset management as an opportunity for growth. PAGE 2

11/4/22 3:44 PM

2 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Another major purchase for Chicago’s Loop Capital

MHub seeking TIF money to move to Near West Side site The advanced manufacturing incubator is poised to buy a building just west of the Fulton Market District BY DANNY ECKER Advanced manufacturing incubator mHub is poised to move its operations to the industrial corridor west of the Fulton Market District, where it has reached a deal to buy a building—provided it can get some taxpayer help to build it out. The five-year-old nonprofit is under contract to pay more than $32 million for the vacant 80,000-squarefoot building at 240 N. Ashland Ave., where it would relocate from the property at 965 W. Chicago Ave. in River West that it has called home since its 2017 launch, according to sources familiar with the deal. MHub is slated to go before the city’s Community Development Commission this week as it seeks tax-increment financing money to subsidize its relocation and the build-out of its new space, though details were not immediately available. If the sale is completed, mHub would showcase the wild growth in property values on the Near West Side over the past decade and further establish the area west of Fulton Market as a hotbed of light industrial businesses. The planned manufacturing district—formally dubbed the Kinzie Industrial Corridor—has long been populated by brewers, floral shops, caterers, food wholesalers and other similar ventures operating out of vintage buildings. It is also already home to one manufacturing-focused incubator in the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago, which leases out more than 400,000 square feet to industrial entrepreneurs just four blocks west of where mHub plans to plant its flag. MHub, which is framed as a manufacturing-focused version of Chicago tech incubator 1871, stands to raise the neighborhood’s profile as major Fulton Market development projects creep toward it. Naperville-based developer Marquette broke ground earlier this year on a new 12-story, 210-unit apartment building one block south of the

property mHub is set to buy. MHub’s departure from its current home, meanwhile, would highlight River West’s ongoing transformation from a historically industrial pocket of the city into a more gentrified one. A series of big apartment projects and a new Bally’s casino and entertainment complex are on track to change the complexion of the incubator’s current environs. The incubator and Mayor Lori Lightfoot could draw some scrutiny for the use of TIF funds to support the deal, money that is traditionally meant to combat blighted areas. A Lightfoot spokesman did not immediately provide a comment on the proposed TIF subsidy. But the city may highlight mHub’s importance as a launching pad for new businesses that want to grow in Chicago, helping reduce the costs and other barriers involved with physical product innovation for earlystage companies. Alumni include Hologram, a communications-hardware startup that raised $65 million last year; NuCurrent, which developed wireless-charging technology; and Sabanto, an autonomous-technology startup in the agriculture space that recently raised $17 million. A spokeswoman for mHub declined to comment. MHub’s lease for its current 63,000-square-foot space in River West—a former Gonnella Baking building that was redeveloped by Google as a testing lab for Motorola Mobility in 2013—is due to expire next year, according to sources familiar with the agreement. MHub’s purchase of the Ashland building would return the nearly century-old property to its former industrial use. The three-story structure just north of the CTA Green Line Ashland station was built in 1926 and served for years as a machinery manufacturing and distribution facility for the Cameron Can Co.

The acquisition of New York-based bond fund manager Smith Graham brings Loop Capital’s assets under management to over $10 billion BY STEVE DANIELS Loop Capital, one of Chicago’s highest-profile Black-owned financial services firms, has acquired a New York-based asset manager, bringing Loop’s assets under management to over $10 billion. The buyout of Smith Graham & Co. Investment Advisors, which has $3.4 billion under management, is Loop Capital’s second asset management deal of 2022. Before this year, Loop Capital was a bit player in the money management business and had made its name over many years managing debt offerings for municipalities. The money management business gained scale in January with the acquisition from Toronto-based BMO Financial of Miami-based Taplin Canida & Habicht. Like Taplin, now branded as Loop Capital Asset Management, Smith Graham specializes in fixed-income investments. Among its specialties is managing clients’ needs to park cash in short-term vehicles that generate returns. “Asset management is a strategic growth engine for Loop, and this transaction increases our scale while also enhancing the fixed-income solutions, particularly in the area of liquidity solutions,” Loop Capital CEO Jim Reynolds said in a release.

JOHN R. BOEHM

COSTAR GROUP

240 N. Ashland Ave.

Loop Capital CEO Jim Reynolds Terms weren’t disclosed. Loop Capital is seeking more asset-management deals and views the market volatility in 2022 as an opportunity.

ADDING CAPABILITIES

In an interview, Reynolds said he’s interested in adding to the company’s bond management capabilities. “We’re definitely adding onto those,” he said. But Loop’s ambitions ultimately include offering emerging markets stock and debt management, as well as highyield debt investment, he said. In addition, Loop and Magic Johnson, which have invested all of a $1 billion infrastructure

fund they raised in 2016, are in the middle of raising another $1.5 billion for a new round of deals. So far, Loop has been able to finance the cash portion of its deals with internal resources, including the cash the company brought in through the sale of a minority stake to Canadian bank CIBC last year. But Reynolds still is intent on taking Loop Capital public. This year’s market volatility has made initial public offerings extremely difficult, but Reynolds is hopeful to get an IPO done in the second half of 2023. “That would give us a currency to be acquisitive,” he said.

Crain’s John Pletz contributed.

GREG HINZ

WILL RETURN NEXT WEEK

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 3

JOE CAHILL ON BUSINESS

The Loop can't live by business alone

TODD WINTERS

Dr. Omar Lateef, CEO of Rush University System for Health

Chicago’s new class of hospital CEOs takes over Rush, Northwestern, UChicago and others change leaders amid surging costs and big staffing shortages I BY KATHERINE DAVIS

n unprecedented wave of CEO turnover puts some of Chicago’s top hospital chains under new leadership as they emerge from the worst of COVID-19 to face an array of financial and operational problems in an industry reshaped by the pandemic. “There’s a lot of challenges,” acknowledges Dr. Omar Lateef, 49, who was named CEO of Rush University System for Health this summer. “It’s both daunting and exciting.” Lateef isn’t alone. Along with Rush, Northwestern Memorial Healthcare, the University of Chicago Medicine, Sinai Chicago and Ascension Health Illinois all named new CEOs in 2022 or have seen leaders depart and are expected to name a new one. “I can’t point back to a time when I’ve seen the largest and most See HOSPITAL CEOs on Page 48

“THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE THAT ARE STRETCHED THIN WITHIN THE EXECUTIVE RANKS . . . THESE DAYS. WE HAVE HEARD THE WORD ‘BURNOUT’ TOO OFTEN.” Josh Crist, co-managing partner at executive search firm Crist Kolder Associates

New-home sales plunge

Sales of new homes in the Chicago area dropped to their lowest level in almost four years. A big reason: Supply and massive pandemic demand. BY DENNIS RODKIN Sales of new homes in the Chicago area dropped in the third quarter to their lowest in almost four years, due in large part to supply being depleted by the pandemic housing boom. Builders sold 893 new homes in the 10-county area in the third quarter, according to a report from Tracy Cross & Associates, a Schaumburg-based consultant to the homebuilding industry. That’s down 19.2% from the same time a year ago, and the lowest third-quarter figure since 2017. Only one other quarter has been lower: fourth-quarter 2018, with 783 sold. The last quarter of the year is typically slowest. “This is very much consistent

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with what we expected,” said Erik Doersching, CEO of Tracy Cross. Doersching told Crain’s several times in the past two years that because little supply was in the pipeline when the housing boom hit, and it takes a few years to get a product rolling, builders would likely not be able to capitalize on the boom as much as sellers of existing homes would. In October, Doersching said the housing boom “was more like a blip” for local homebuilders. For Chicago-area homebuilders, the peak during the recent boom was first-quarter 2021, when 1,914 new homes sold. Soon after that, existing inventory began to be depleted. Doersching says the experi-

ence of one national builder, D.R. Horton, proves that out. Horton is one of a few builders to have opened a new subdivision during the boom, and it led to a sales spurt. The Texas-based firm launched sales at Stonewater in late summer 2021 and as a result has sold about 100 more houses this year than last, according to Tracy Cross data. Stonewater is a development of detached houses priced in the $310,000 range and attached townhouses priced in the $250,000 range. It’s in Wonder Lake, about 58 miles northwest of the city in McHenry County. “We don’t have others” See HOME SALES on Page 50

ayor Lori Lightfoot’s effort to turn downtown Chicago into a neighborhood faces steep challenges, but it’s worth a try. The city’s economic hub has suffered badly since COVID-19 lockdowns shuttered offices two years ago. More than a year after offices started reopening, commercial vacancies haven’t fallen from record highs. Office demand seems unlikely to return to pre-COVID levels as hybrid working arrangements that allow varying degrees of remote work become the norm in American business. Data from the Loop Alliance shows the number of workers actually present in downtown offices was only 49% of 2019 levels in September. Fewer people in Loop offices means fewer people on downtown streets. Pedestrian traffic downtown in September was barely two-thirds of 2019 levels, according to Loop Alliance tracking figures. Without crowds jamming sidewalks and congregating in plazas, the Loop isn’t the Loop. A midday walk across downtown on any weekday confirms it’s not the thrumming hive of activity it was for more than a century before COVID-19. And as the Loop fades, so does Chicago’s drawing power as a business center. Dynamic downtowns like ours are rare among American cities, and they appeal to workers and companies. The Loop sets Chicago apart, for reasons that survive the pandemic. Before COVID-19, companies were flocking downtown from isolated suburban office parks. They wanted to be at the center of activity, a place where people, ideas and opportunities converge. Workers wanted to be there, too, and the accessibility of downtown to all points of the compass expanded potential recruiting pools. These factors still apply. People want what downtown Chicago offers. But many also crave the convenience of working from home some or most of the time. And as employers make that possible, demand for office space is falling everywhere, not just downtown. Suburban office vacancies are at a record high that exceeds the downtown figure.

WEAKNESS

And that exposes the Loop’s great weakness: a lack of diversification in its customer base. Downtown depends too heavily on a single type of customer: business offices. Sure, there are lunch spots, drugstores, theaters and a smattering of hotels. More residential towers have gone up east of Michigan Avenue, and Millennium Park draws crowds. But in the deep heart of the Loop around LaSalle Street, it’s pretty much all business.

Although hundreds of thousands of people work downtown, comparatively few live there. That’s why the area has always emptied out after 5 p.m. and sees relatively little activity on weekends. Any experienced businessperson can confirm that tying your fortunes to one customer segment is risky. If changing market conditions reduce demand from that segment, your business can go south in a hurry. That’s exactly what’s happening to the Loop.

INCENTIVES

The solution is to expand the customer base. A logical target is the residential market, where the downtown vibe may appeal to renters. Lightfoot aims to tap into it by encouraging conversions of underused Loop office buildings into apartments. The program offers tax incentives to developers who take on such conversions, provided they set aside 30% of units in converted buildings as affordable housing. Lightfoot’s plan will work only if developers decide they can make money on the conversions she envisions. And as my colleague Danny Ecker reports, turning aged office buildings along LaSalle Street into apartment blocks is far from a slam-dunk moneymaker. Many have vast floor areas without access to sunlight, making it hard to reconfigure them into attractive living spaces. Estimating the cost of conversions is another hurdle. A developer can be fairly certain of the likely challenges involved in a new construction project. Century-old office buildings, by contrast, are full of sometimes costly redevelopment pitfalls that appear only after work has begun. Then there’s the chicken-andegg challenge of attracting the amenities that make an area livable while you’re still trying to lure residents. Of course, the city also has to get crime under control. And Lightfoot’s insistence on an affordable housing requirement that’s 50% higher than the general set-aside requirement for new apartment buildings shrinks the margin of error on projects with unknown risks. Still, there have been successful residential conversions downtown. And programs like Lightfoot’s have worked elsewhere, most notably in lower Manhattan, where property tax abatements spurred a wave of office-to-residential conversions. In another encouraging development, Google’s plan to acquire the Thompson Center and fill it with thousands of workers could boost demand for downtown housing. The Loop needs more people. A residential makeover could deliver them.

11/4/22 3:47 PM

4 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Morningstar’s exit from China is costing $30 million The work formerly done by hundreds of Chinese workers in Shenzhen is moving to offices elsewhere in the world, including Chicago It is costing Morningstar more than $30 million to reverse a decision made nearly two decades ago in China. The Chicago-based financial data provider said in July it was shifting tech work done in its Shenzhen, China, office to other countries. The decision eliminates “several hundred” jobs, according to a Bloomberg report back then. The vast bulk of the costs to Morningstar—$26.3 million—is for severance, according to a Securities & Exchange Commission filing Oct. 28. Morningstar’s leadership has provided relatively vague explanations for the change thus far. CEO Kunal Kapoor cited “the increasingly complex business environment” in China in an internal memo dated July 11 that Bloomberg obtained. “We are shifting non-Chinamarket-focused work to alternate locations, so this decision is not a cost-savings measure,” the company said in an Aug. 26 SEC filing. “With almost 20 years’ history of operating in China, Morningstar remains committed to its long-term presence and is in the process of redefining its strategy to cap-

italize on the growing potential within the domestic market.” A spokeswoman declined to comment beyond Morningstar’s SEC filings. Morningstar is hardly the only U.S. financial services company to invest substantially in China over the past 25 years. For example, Northern Trust, Chicago’s largest locally headquartered bank, has offices in Beijing and Hong Kong, although those are home to employees serving clients within China and not handling back-office or tech duties for global operations. Northern’s Beijing office opened in 2005, not long after Morningstar’s Shenzhen opening.

GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS

Operating in China has become difficult with repeated strict government quarantine orders in response to COVID flare-ups. Morningstar opened the Shenzhen office in the early 2000s, seeking to tap into that enormous market and broaden its talent base. There were about 1,000 people working in the office before the layoffs, Bloomberg reported. Morningstar had 11,716 employees worldwide as of Sept. 30, ac-

GETTY IMAGES

BY STEVE DANIELS

The skyline of Shenzhen, China cording to a filing, up 26% from 9,272 just a year earlier. So it’s not as if Morningstar doesn’t need the workers. It plans to hire replacements in offices around the world including Chicago. Other affected

offices include Toronto, Mumbai and Madrid, the company told Bloomberg. Morningstar last year generated $250.5 million in pretax net income. This year it’s projected to earn considerably less

given the stock market decline and reduced revenues tied to products priced on investor assets. The $30 million cost of the partial exit from China, then, will reduce 2022 earnings by well over 10%.

NASCAR says downtown race worth $113.8 million An economic-impact study answers some questions about the event, but many others remain

Organizers of the proposed NASCAR race in Grant Park next summer are contending the event will generate $113.8 million in new spending here. And, lifting the veil a bit on an event that Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been slow to provide much detail on, a spokesman for the event says the park will reopen for public use by the time the July Fourth holiday arrives. But the racing combine still isn’t disclosing whether it’s paying the city a fee for use of DuSable Lake Shore Drive and other thoroughfares, or how long the drive is expected to be closed. The study was prepared by CSL, a Minneapolis-based sports consulting firm that NASCAR says has done similar economicimpact research for the Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Rams and other teams. According to CSL, the twoday “Chicago Street Race” event will generate $113.8 million in direct and indirect spending, creating the equivalent of 850 full-time jobs and producing $8.9 million in tax revenue to the city, state and county.

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The study does use a multiplier—a factor intended to measure the impact of direct spending as it gets spent again by recipients—of as much as 20 for some categories of spending. That’s “very high,” says University of Chicago economics professor Allen Sanderson, whose specialties include sports finance. Such studies almost always inflate the real value of an event, added Sanderson, who has not yet reviewed the CSL study. GETTY IMAGES

BY GREG HINZ

PROJECTIONS

On the other hand, the $113.8 million NASCAR economicimpact figure is in the same ballpark as the $305 million that a different consultant said the longer and well-established Lollapalooza festival is worth. But that study was done after the music festival, not before. A NASCAR spokesman said the CSL projections are based on attendance of 100,000, with an estimated blended ticket price of $420 per ticket per day. NASCAR itself will spend roughly $50 million setting up and running the event, will fill an estimated 24,000 roomnights in area hotels, and used

standard multipliers in coming up with the $113.8 million figure, the spokesman said. The race will “showcase so many of the amazing things Chicago has to offer,” NASCAR Chicago Street Course President Julie Giese said in a separate interview. “Then add NBC and (an) international broadcast—it’s a really good formula to continue to showcase NASCAR and what we’re doing, but also what the city of Chicago can do.” The spokesman said “the vast

majority” of Grant Park will remain open to the public until fullfledged race setup begins June 28. The races will occur July 1 and 2, and any areas that are closed will reopen “before” July 4. Neither the spokesman nor Lightfoot’s office is saying whether the city is receiving a payment for use of its roads, akin to the funds the Chicago Park District is getting for use of its land, or whether nearby museums will be compensated for the loss of patronage on a busy holiday weekend.

“At this point, many of these figures are not yet fully known and depend on yet-to-occur impacts of running the race itself,” the spokesman said. “We expect to have updates on this information following the event.” Some area aldermen have complained that they’ve been given too little information and that NASCAR may not be paying enough to the city to compensate residents for the disruption the race will cause. Danny Ecker contributed.

11/4/22 3:37 PM

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6 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

TECH TAKEAWAY

William Jackson Former Johnson Controls executive William Jackson, 59, is head of the University of Illinois’ much-anticipated Discovery Partners Institute, an ambitious research and development and teaching facility slated for the South Loop’s massive project, The 78. He and his wife, both Illini grads, have two daughters and live in Winnetka. I By Laura Bianchi

November 2022

Your most successful startup? I co-founded a company called DesignPac Gifts, which assembled gourmet gift baskets for warehouse clubs. We grew it to $65 million and sold it in 2008 for $36 million to 1-800-Flowers.

What is your superpower? Energy. I can’t sit still. I cannot imagine a life that’s not lived to the fullest.

300 N. LaSalle St. | Chicago, IL 60654 | 312.382.2200 www.gtcr.com

How so? The institute is expected to add $2.8 billion a year to Illinois’ economy. That’s a sizable 15% increase.

MANAGING DIRECTOR

After years of consulting, launching successful businesses and running a $12 billion business for Johnson Controls, why tackle DPI? It’s a triple lindy! I can help Illinois, my alma mater and improve lives.

KJ McConnell Stephen Master Luke Marker

GTCR is pleased to announce the promotions of:

Your current side gigs? I am part-owner in Genuine Scooters, a Chicago importer and Ony Biotech, a neonatology pharmacy company in New York state.

A hero? Teddy Roosevelt. He accomplished a stunning amount in his life, from the Panama Canal construction to strengthening the presidency and furthering our national parks.

> A key life lesson? Work is energizing. I have had jobs since I was 12.

> Such as? Snow shoveling. I grew up in Buffalo (N.Y.), which has an average of 85 inches of snow a year. If I cleared a neighbor’s driveway in the morning and it snowed again that day, my dad taught me that I had to go back and do it again at no charge. It was about caring for your neighbors.

> Funny work experience? While I was golfing in China to celebrate a plant opening, it started pouring rain. I couldn’t communicate with my Chinese partner, so we each assumed the other wanted to continue. By the ninth hole, we were drenched, but through a translator I asked him if he wanted to play another nine. Thank goodness, he didn’t.

> A favorite splurge? Cars. My first was a six-cylinder, Pontiac T-37 with three on the floor. I paid my buddy’s brother $125 for it after I accidentally broke the windshield while playing basketball at their house. In college, I drove a 1969 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors (hinged at the rear) and a V8 460 engine.

> And now? I have a sweet-looking Audi RS 5.

The one that got away? When I was a competitive bowler, I got within one shot of a 300 game.

> Your favorite U of I experience? My junior and senior years, nine of us guys lived in a house next door to a house of more than a dozen women. A number of us met our future wives there, including me.

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 7

Community Trust names new CEO, its first Latina leader Andrea Sáenz will become the eighth leader of the foundation after having served as its chief operating officer and interim president and CEO BY BRANDON DUPRÉ The Chicago Community Trust, one of the city’s largest and oldest foundations, announced last week that Andrea Sáenz will become its eighth president and CEO and the institution’s first Latina leader. Sáenz, 49, who has been serving as chief operating officer and interim president and CEO of the trust, took over Nov. 1. The previous CEO, Helene Gayle, who had run the trust since 2017, stepped down from her role in June to become the president of Spelman College, a private historically Black liberal arts school for women in Atlanta. Gayle was the first woman and the second person of color to hold the top spot at the trust. The foundation tapped Sáenz to lead the 107-year-old organization after a national search in partnership with Koya Partners, a search firm that specializes in placing CEOs in mission-driven roles. Before joining the trust in 2018, Sáenz served as chief of staff to the Chicago Public Schools CEO and then was first deputy commissioner and chief strategy officer at the Chicago Public Library, a position, Sáenz said, that helped prepare her for the role she’s now set to take over. “Listening to communities, engaging communities and designing what kind of libraries and learning centers they wanted for themselves inspires a lot of how I’ve been thinking about what we can do with the Chicago Community Trust,” Sáenz said. “In partnership with community leaders, donors and businesses, we can engage in the idea of ‘How do we design the city that we want for ourselves? And how do we design the economy that we want for our city?’”

will now lead into the future. The Chicago Community Trust came in at No. 2 on this year’s Crain’s list of Chicago’s Largest Foundations, with $4.78 billion in assets. The trust paid out over $1.4 billion in grants last year, a 137.5 percent increase over 2020. The increase was attributed to partnerships with financial institutions. “Through our partnership with financial institutions to offer charitable giving programs to their clients, we can expand our reach. This partnership is not

new, but it directly contributes to why we saw a large increase in our grantmaking,” Nina Alcacio, director of public relations at the Chicago Community Trust, said at the time of the ranking.

EXPERIENCE

In 2019, Sáenz was recognized by Crain’s as one of Chicago’s Most Powerful Latinos, highlighting her work over two decades in public-sector positions, experiences she will continue to draw upon as she leads the trust. Sáenz

holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from Scripps College. “This is a big honor and I feel a lot of gratitude for being able to continue to work with such incredible people,” Sáenz said. “One of the things that is unique about stepping into this role, having been at the trust for four years, is I know all my colleagues and have such joy to be able to continue working with them.”

Andrea Sáenz

...

‘A VISIONARY LEADER’

Sáenz’s knack for communication and her history of building trust in communities really set her apart from the other candidates, said Jim Reynolds, chair of the Chicago Community Trust Executive Committee. That and her familiarity with the inner workings of the trust made her the search committee’s unanimous nominee. “She has already proven to be a visionary leader and I’ve been very impressed with the way she’s embraced many of the key issues and how she can crystalize these issues and make our goals more achievable,” Reynolds said. “She really pulled the team together and sharpened the focus.” The Chicago Community Trust is a community foundation dedicated to strengthening the Chicago region by connecting philanthropists to community members and organizations. In 2019, the organization began work on a 10year plan to address closing the racial and ethnic wealth gap for the Chicago region, a project Sáenz

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8 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

ArentFox Schiff is setting up shop in the metaverse BY CORLI JAY Washington, D.C.-based ArentFox Schiff is the latest law firm to expand its operations into the metaverse. The firm opened its first location in the metaverse Monday. ArentFox Schiff, which has locations throughout the country, including Schiff Hardin’s old hometown of Chicago, says that it is the first major U.S. law firm to build and launch an office in the virtual world. The virtual office is in the luxury fashion district of Decentraland in the metaverse. The office can be found at coordinates -100, -21. New Jersey personal-injury firm Grungo Colarulo launched its metaverse office in December 2021, and Gleiss Lutz became the first major European law firm to open one this past summer. ArentFox purchased a stake in the metaverse back in February. Co-Managing Partner Joseph Krasovec said in a news release that the move made sense as the firm deals with clients in various ways, and the expanding metaverse is another way to interact with potential and current clients. ArentFox prides itself on advising organizations “at the forefront of technology trends,” providing “counsel on the opportunities and challenges presented by blockchain and digital assets,” according to the release. Darin Stewart, a research vice president at research and advisory company Gartners, explored the opportunities within the metaverse in an analysis titled

“Preparing the Enterprise for the Metaverse.” According to his research, the foreseen opportunities in the metaverse have “executives scrambling to secure their place, spending over $120 billion in metaverse-related ventures in the first half of 2022 alone.” Krasovec noted the financial opportunities within the metaverse and the financial gains that could potentially come with opening virtual spaces, comparing it to the start of the digital age and the wonders of the internet. “Twenty-five years ago . . . when the internet first started, nobody really knew where it was gonna go,” Krasovec said in the release. “We got a report from McKinsey, the consulting firm that said that they predicted that the annual global spending related to the virtual landscape could be as much as $5 trillion by 2030.”

‘EXTRAORDINARY CHALLENGES’

Stewart said in his analysis that the McKinsey projection is a bit on the high end, but that it could be possible in the next eight years, as more people dump money into the space, but he warns of all the challenges the sector faces that may prevent it from happening. “There are an extraordinary number of challenges, technical challenges, policy challenges, (and) fiscal challenges that have to be worked out and resolved before the metaverse proper, can fully be fully realized. And that is going to take an extraordinary amount of investment in R&D, in infrastructure and policy devel-

GETTY IMAGES

Executives, scrambling to secure their place, have spent over $120 billion in virtual ventures in the first half of 2022 alone, one analyst says

opment. A big chunk of that investment might be in just building the damn thing,” said Stewart. Stewart envisions the future of virtual reality to look more like augmented or mixed reality instead of fully immersed virtual reality, but he said that law firms making this transition have shown to be useful. Ernst & Young partnered with Synesthesia, a software company that creates “digital people” to interact with clients who speak different languages using auto translation. “What they found is that it really helps develop the relationship between people that you can’t really do through email, and so forth. Smart contracts built on the blockchain could be incredibly useful for a law firm,” said Stewart. In his report, Stewart alludes to the fear of missing out— ”FOMO”—and organizations doing what he called “homesteading in the metaverse.” He compared it

to the early days of settlers coming to the United States, placing a stake and hoping for the best. “There are lots of things you can do with metaverse technologies: immersive experiences, remote collaboration, digital twinning, all of this really cool stuff that will have an important role in the metaverse, but they aren’t the metaverse. It isn’t an immersive, interconnected open territory yet.”

FEAR OF MISSING OUT

FOMO for the metaverse is something that Stewart said can be compared to the dotcom bust of the ‘90s and 2000s. “You’ve already kind of seen it a little bit with cryptocurrencies and NFTs and things like that, where you are getting ridiculous valuations on bitcoin and Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs and things like that, where people were spending hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, and then

you had a bust where most of that value evaporated.” Instead of building “brick-andmortars” in the virtual world, Stewart said companies should instead focus on ways technologies can benefit them now in the established world. But it all depends on what the firm is trying to accomplish. “Pretty much if you put out a website, you’re pretty much guaranteed the vast majority of the population can access it and have the intended experience. That does not exist with metaversetype stuff. Very few people have access to an Oculus set or a HoloLens 2,” said Stewart. “(Companies) shouldn’t focus on trying to get a foothold in the metaverse. Figure out what you want to be able to do that you can’t currently do. And then the next question is, is there a cheaper, easier way to do that exact same thing? Without all these fancy metaverse technologies.”

Tock launches online wine shop BY ALLY MAROTTI Tock has launched a wine shop, expanding the Chicagobased company’s forte from restaurant reservations and deeper into e-commerce. Tock Wine Shop launched this morning with bottles from 30 wineries, with plans to add hundreds more, the company said. Tock is aiming to give wineries a more seamless way to ship their products directly to consumers instead of going through the three-tier system, which many in the industry consider to be clunky and archaic. “We are launching a directto-consumer marketplace to connect thousands of partner wineries with millions of Tock account holders,” Tock CEO and founder Nick Kokonas said in a

P008_CCB_20221107.indd 8

statement. “The three-tier system is antiquated, penalizes the winery, drives up costs and limits consumer choice.”

E-COMMERCE PUSH

The U.S.’s three-tier alcohol distribution system traces its roots to the repeal of Prohibition, and it requires alcohol makers to sell their products to distributors, who then sell to retailers. The retailers—from liquor stores to bars and restaurants—are the only ones that can sell to consumers. The internet has provided some ways around it. Additionally, many consumers and alcohol producers began pushing back on the system during the pandemic, when tasting rooms and breweries, for example, were closed and people were turning online to order everything.

Tock, which focused mainly on high-end restaurant reservations when it launched in 2014, started to offer reservations for tastings at wineries in 2016. Over the past two years, the platform saw a 175% increase in bookings for tastings, tours and events at wineries. Tock Wine Shop is an opportunity to meet that increasing demand, the company said in a news release. This is not Tock’s first foray into e-commerce. The company trialed a holiday wine shop last year with just a few wineries. The platform has also had restaurant customers sell cookbooks, holiday kits and other seasonal ingredients on Tock, Chief Marketing Officer Bryan Ferschinger said in an email. The company has had an eventful couple of years. Square-

TOCK

The Chicago-based restaurant reservation company is aiming to give wineries a more seamless way to ship their products directly to consumers

Tock Wine Shop space bought Tock for $400 million last year. Tock also moved into a new Fulton Market headquarters at 320 N. Sangamon St. in May and saw its employee count skyrocket: It grew 139% over the last two years to 268 employees. About 80% of them are in Chicago, Ferschinger said. Contributing to the growth was an online ordering platform called Tock To Go, which the company launched in March

2020 to help restaurants of all stripes switch to carryout amid the pandemic. Kokonas, who is also co-founder of upscale restaurant company Alinea Group, has said he watched COVID-19 hit restaurants in other countries before the pandemic took hold here and saw the writing on the wall. Thousands of restaurants still offer Tock To Go, Ferschinger said.

11/4/22 3:29 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 9

Chicago-based Emalex raises $250 million BY JON ASPLUND Emalex Biosciences has closed on $250 million in Series D funding for its next clinical trial and possible commercialization for a new kind of drug to treat Tourette syndrome. The funding will take Chicagobased Emalex through remaining clinical and nonclinical testing of the drug, ecopipam, building out manufacturing capabilities and, if the Phase 3 trial is successful, all the way through to filing a new drug application with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, said Emalex Chief Business Officer Eric Messner. Bain Capital Life Sciences led the funding round for Emalex, a Paragon Biosciences company created in 2018 to develop treatments for central nervous system disorders. Chicago-based Paragon Biosciences has founded seven biotech companies since 2017. Messner said he is pleased to have Bain, which is “very well known and very well respected” as a new investor. He said Paragon Biosciences first approached Bain about Emalex several months ago.

The company considered other funding options, including going public, but chose to keep the company private and focused on the single indication of Tourette’s, Messner said. Emalex said in a statement it expects to enroll more than 220 patients at some 90 sites in its Phase 3 clinical trial of ecopipam. The trial would be the largest ever in North America for Tourette’s, the statement said.

SUBSTANTIAL MARKET

The potential marketplace for a new class of treatment for Tourette syndrome is substantial, Messner said. In talking to physicians, Emalex found there is an unmet need for a different approach to treating Tourette’s, he said. In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention estimates Tourette’s affects one in 162 children and adolescents, so about 400,000 patients, Messner said, with about half of those currently diagnosed and getting treatment. “Emalex was founded specifically to tackle serious neurological conditions like Tourette syndrome, recognizing that drug

development for neurologic conditions is exceptionally difficult and few companies are willing to invest in bringing new options to these patients,” Jeff Aronin, Emalex founder and Paragon Biosciences CEO, said in the statement. “Our team has a strong track record of success developing neurology drugs and we are pleased to partner with our investors to advance ecopipam for patients.” Paragon also participated in the Series D funding along with Valor Equity Partners and Fidelity Management & Research, the statement said. The latest funding comes after positive Phase 2b clinical trial results that showed that ecopipam reduced motor and vocal tics compared with a placebo, the statement said. In the study, adverse events related to ecopipam included headache, fatigue, insomnia, restlessness and extreme drowsiness, the statement said. However, patients in the trial did not have observable evidence of the kinds of side effects commonly reported with antipsychotic agents used to treat Tourette’s that result in involuntary move-

GETTY IMAGES

The biotech company plans to use the money to launch the largest North American clinical trial for a Tourette syndrome drug and potentially bring it to market

ments or metabolic function like raised cholesterol or weight gain, the statement said. Ecopipam has been shown to be generally well tolerated in clinical trials conducted so far and has received Orphan Drug and Fast Track designation from the FDA, the statement said.

NEW MECHANISM

Ecopipam targets dopamine-1 receptors (D1) in the brain, a change from currently approved therapies that act on D2 receptors, the statement said. “Ecopipam represents a new mechanism of action for treat-

ing Tourette syndrome,” Messner said. “It’s not just a new drug of the same class. We’re hopeful that it will provide a different option for the Tourette community.” “Tic disorders can have severe social and psychological consequences for patients, and there currently aren’t many medications that effectively reduce tics without causing unhealthy side effects. Ecopipam has a novel mechanism that targets the D1 receptor, which is a new class of neurology drug,” Dr. Donald Gilbert, a movement disorders specialist at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, said in the statement.

WHERE MAGNIFICENCE BEGINS Fr o m t h e M o m e n t Yo u E n t e r, T h i s i s a P l a c e L i k e N o O t h e r.

1 - 4 + B e d r o o m s Av a i l a b le DISCOVER MORE AT TRIBUNETOWER .COM OR CALL 312.967.3700 All floor plans shown are for illustrative purposes only. Floor plans may not depict final design of units as constructed and may not be drawn to scale. All sketches, renderings, architectural models, materials, plans, specifications, terms, prices, conditions and statements, including estimated timeframes and dates, contained herein are proposed only and are not intended to constitute representations. Developer reserves the right to make modifications in its sole discretion and without prior notice. All photographs and renderings are merely intended as illustrations of the activities and concepts depicted therein as interpreted by the artists. Developer makes no representations regarding any view and/or exposure to light at any time including any existing or future construction by either owner or a third party. Square footage and ceiling heights are approximate and may be based on various measurement methodologies, subject to construction variances and tolerances, as well as redesign, and vary from unit to unit (and may vary from floor to floor). This brochure shall not constitute a valid offer in any jurisdiction where prior registration is required and not yet fulfilled. Where used, developer shall mean Tribune Tower West DL# 2556130 (Chicago) Owner, LLC and its affiliated entities and their respective managers, members, directors, shareholders, partners, agents, affiliates and employees.

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11/4/22 3:27 PM

10 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

‘ EDITORIAL

How many studies does our police chief need?

David Brown, superintendent of police ALAMY

t about the same time that children citywide were wrapping up their trick-or-treating and dipping into their stash of candy on Halloween night, a very different scene was playing out in East Garfield Park. At the intersection of Polk Street and California Avenue, holiday revelers were still making the rounds at around 9 p.m., and a group of neighbors and friends were also gathered to hold a balloon-release vigil for a woman who had died recently. Then, a car drove by. From within, a shooter or shooters sprayed the nearby crowd with bullets. Within about three seconds, 14 people were wounded, including three children age 3, 11 and 13, as the car sped away. Even in a police district known for being one of the most violent in the city, the Halloween night carnage was a jaw-dropping event. Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times, the local alderman, Jason Ervin, called the shooting “mind-boggling. . . .It’s just a reprehensible act.” Chicagoans still crave answers to the difficult questions surrounding crime in this city. As Crain’s recently reported in our monthly Forum series, some of the crime trends here are actually moving in a positive direction despite the steady stream of negative headlines, and in some ways Chicago overall gets a bad rap for violence—particularly homicides—compared to other major metropolitan areas. Even so, the headline on our report summed it up fairly well: “All big cities have a violence problem. Chicago’s is different.” Cities around the U.S. have seen a spike in killings over the last couple of years, but Chicago is unique among big cities in a couple of respects. For one, the increase in violence here started before the pandemic. Chicago's homicide rate followed the same ebbs and flows as those of New York and Los Angeles for most of the 20th century, including a steep decline that began

in the 1990s and continued into the 2000s, according to an analysis by the University of Chicago Crime Lab. But in the middle of that decade, Chicago's homicide rate leveled off while the others continued to drop—and in 2016, violence in Chicago surged ahead, cementing a statistical break with those coastal peer cities. But Chicago's rise in overall violence compared to peers such as New York City is all about concentration: a spike in violence within communities that were already Chicago's most dangerous. Neighborhoods like East Garfield Park, for instance, where residents feel an increasing sense of hopelessness—and where City Hall’s insistence that crime trends are moving in the right direction is hardly comforting. It’s no wonder, then, that leaders in these

crime-plagued communities want to know more—a lot more—about what Mayor Lori Lightfoot and David Brown, her superintendent of police, intend to do about it. Many were understandably discouraged when, late last month, they learned Brown was commissioning yet another white paper on officer deployment—in other words, how best to make critical decisions about patrol assignments, and where and when to dedicate precious police resources. This news came more than a year after his office had received a similar study conducted by the University of Chicago Crime Lab with Police Department input. As the Chicago Tribune reported, Brown essentially sat on that earlier police deployment study without publicly commenting on it—that is, until his first

appearance before the newly formed Community Commission for Police Safety and Accountability on Oct. 24. He told the commission that the Crime Lab study was lacking some elements—so lacking, in fact, that he now finds it necessary to seek yet another study. The commission continues to express concern about Brown’s lack of transparency about what, if any, plan exists to decide who does what—and where, and when— within the department. “We’ve learned very little that addresses the concerns that we began with,” as the Tribune quotes commission President Anthony Driver Jr. “We are deeply concerned that the communities that are suffering the most are still subject to slow response times and inadequate staffing at the times crime and violence occur the most. . . .And we’re concerned that communities are routinely being policed by officers who don’t know the community, which is bad for residents and police officers.” So, it’s beyond time for Lightfoot and Brown to make the Crime Lab study publicly available—and not in the redacted form supplied to the media following an open records request. And it’s also time for Brown to explain why he needs yet another study in order to make decisions about where to deploy the resources at his disposal. Every capable leader treasures data. But data is only valuable if a leader is willing to take the next step: making decisions and taking action based on that data. How many studies does Brown need before he and his boss are ready to make those decisions and take those actions? How much longer must the people of East Garfield Park—and Austin, and Humboldt Park, and Englewood, and Lawndale, and Chatham—have to wait before Brown and Lightfoot can give them the answers they seek?

YOUR VIEW

Why did so many businesses move to Illinois last year?

leased annual report notes rain’s recent editorial asthat from July 2021 to June sessing Illinois’ business 2022, Illinois saw 357 corcompetitiveness left room porate relocations or expanfor me to share more about the sions, bringing more than path we are on to bring econom16,000 jobs and $7.1 billion ic growth and jobs to the state. in investment to the state, all The story acknowledged many representing year-over-year of our state’s leading attributes: increases. elite universities churning out a Despite those great numwell-trained workforce; worldbers, much of the media covclass cultural amenities in an erage in recent months has affordable setting; and our locabeen around the loss of three tion at the center of infrastruc- Dan Seals is CEO of corporate headquarters ofture that efficiently moves peo- Intersect Illinois, a ple and products. Good things public-private partner- fices in Illinois. That’s an imare happening here, and as the ship focused on global portant story, but not more important than the hunhead of Intersect Illinois, part business development of my job is making sure people for the state of Illinois. dreds of corporate expansions and the thousands of are aware. For the past year, I’ve had a front-row jobs that they brought to Illinois last year. seat as major employers made invest- That’s a trend more Illinoisans should ments in Illinois. In fact, our recently re- know about.

And while we all appreciate quick wins, bold headlines and well-publicized groundbreakings, the reality is that company location decisions take an enormous amount of time and effort—the ones making news today typically were conceived months, or even years, ago. This is especially true with the electric vehicle industry. The Reimagining Electric Vehicles Act gives Illinois a new tool to attract EV companies, and Illinois is seeing increased interest because of it. Even so, Illinois is still early in the process. It will take time to see the fruit of that labor.

PROACTIVE INITIATIVE

For our part, last fiscal year Intersect Illinois embarked on a proactive business recruitment initiative, the results of which we are just starting to see. From July of 2021 to June of 2022 we saw an increase in project wins that drew $402 million and created

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

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1,884 new jobs, up more than 10% from the previous year. Our project close rate also more than doubled, from 8.4% in FY21 to 17.8%. I’m particularly pleased that a significant amount of this growth is happening downstate, with 387 jobs and $154.6 million in capital investment occurring south of I-80. To be sure, there is still work to be done and issues to solve. But Illinois also has tremendous assets to offer. The business leaders who are locating and expanding in Illinois often cite access to talent, markets and infrastructure—those same attributes Crain’s acknowledged—as their reasons for growing here. The 35 Fortune 500 companies and thousands of small businesses headquartered here would agree. In fact, it is a big reason why we have the fifth-largest economy in the country. We’re on the right path in Illinois. Let’s not lose sight of that.

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

11/4/22 3:13 PM

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 11

READERS RESPOND

‘Always wondered how that grand-looking home fell into such a state of disrepair’

rom a mansion teardown to a suburban mall on the block to the proposed Jewel-Mariano’s merger, Crain’s stories got readers talking on social media. Re: “Say goodbye to this dilapidated remnant of Sheridan Road’s heyday,” Oct. 31:

It’s good a small home is being replaced

by many homes.

— Steven DuBois

I drive by there occasionally and always

wondered how that grand-looking home fell into such a state of disrepair. Sad that

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

President/CEO KC Crain Group publisher/executive editor Jim Kirk Editor Ann Dwyer Creative director Thomas J. Linden Director of audience and engagement Elizabeth Couch Assistant managing editor/audience engagement Aly Brumback Assistant managing editor/columnist Joe Cahill Assistant managing editor/digital content creation Marcus Gilmer Assistant managing editor/digital Ann R. Weiler Assistant managing editor/news features Cassandra West Deputy digital editor Todd J. Behme Deputy digital editor/audience and social media Robert Garcia Digital design editor Jason McGregor Associate creative director Karen Freese Zane Art director Joanna Metzger Copy chief Scott Williams Copy editor Tanya Meyer Contributing editor Jan Parr Political columnist Greg Hinz Senior reporters Steve Daniels, Alby Gallun, John Pletz

it’ll probably be replaced by some hundred-unit condo building. — Ed Feeley

place. Restaurants were good. But it’s been many years of open, closed, etc. — Marsha Patellaro

It is not the fault of the new owners that

Well, let’s be honest, there’s nothing left

the building has been in a state of disrepair since I can remember. I know you all don’t like high-density housing, but blame the old owners, not the new ones. — Tom Leko

Re: “Foreclosed Lincolnwood mall goes up for sale,” Oct. 25: After Carson left, it’s not the same. Kohl’s,

not the same, either. Sad. I use to love the

in this mall, other than that train on the second floor. — Joseph Daniel Vasquez

Re: “Where Mariano’s and Jewel are neighbors,” Oct. 25: If the two stores merge, the new store

name will be Jeweliano’s, lol! — Olga Reyes Shore

More vacant big-box stores to come.

day! Deserves credit and will be missed. — Nancy Emma Cirje

Hope this doesn’t happen. I’m not really liking Mariano’s anymore since it was bought by Kroger, but I would hate to see the stores close. — Debbie Nawara

Make it housing and use the parking lot,

Just give us Dominick’s back. So much

RIP. That was a great mall back in the

too.

— Javier Rz

better than Mariano’s.

— Jeremy Sidabras

Our healthcare

practice

is here to support yours. Imagine if all you had to think about was providing excellent patient care. Instead, healthcare providers, practitioners, and related industry players face ongoing, ever-evolving economic and regulatory pressures. Challenging you to do more with less. Be more cost-effective. Join forces. And generally jump through hoops. All without sacrificing the quality or efficacy of the care you provide. We know the roadblocks you’re up against. We help you break through them, with solid, practical, cost-efficient legal and business advice. From developing value-based care models to executing transactions to handling myriad compliance and certification matters. Giving you the confidence of having committed, experienced, healthcare-focused counsel on your side. Our practice is well known, long established, still growing, and here to help yours thrive.

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11/4/22 3:13 PM

12 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Old Kendall College building on Goose Island for sale

The offering will test investor appetite for properties near the future Bally’s casino and entertainment complex and fast-changing River West neighborhood A New York investor has put the former Kendall College building on Goose Island on the market, hoping buyers will clamor to snap up the vacant property while a new Bally’s casino and entertainment complex and a mix of apartment high-rises are on track to be developed nearby. Real estate investment trust W.P. Carey has hired the capital markets team in the Chicago office of brokerage Cushman & Wakefield to sell the eight-story brick-and-timber building at 900 N. North Branch St., according to a marketing flyer. The 178,733-square-foot building was home to for-profit culinary arts and hospitality management school Kendall College from 2005 until 2018, when its degree programs were acquired by National Louis University and moved to Michigan Avenue. The Goose Island offering,

which does not come with an asking price, will test how investors feel about a pocket of downtown poised to look dramatically different in a few years than it does today. The building is across the street from a former Greyhound bus maintenance facility that developer Onni Group plans to redevelop with 2,700 apartments, and sits adjacent to a 3.5-acre boat yard where Chicago restaurateur Brendan Sodikoff plans to build a dining and entertainment complex.

ATTRACTIVE INVESTMENTS

One block south, Bally’s is forging ahead with its plan for a 1 million-square-foot casino and hotel project on the longtime Chicago Tribune Freedom Center site that could bring a deluge of new visitors to a River West neighborhood that is already transitioning from its industrial past into a hub of new commercial and residential buildings.

CUSHMAN & WAKEFIELD

BY DANNY ECKER

The building at 900 N. North Branch St. was built in 1912 as a warehouse for Griess & Pfledger Tanning, according to the Cushman flyer. The property was renovated in 1999 to become a research facility for Sara Lee, though the company moved out just two years later. That mix of investment around 900 N. North Branch could help

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P012_CCB_20221107.indd 12

draw in prospective buyers for the building, which touts 500 feet of riverfront access. Though Goose Island is far from established as a destination for major office users, the area has lured more companies in recent years, including Crate & Barrel’s CB2 division, Lakeshore Beverage, Elite Staffing and logistics firm Transportation One. But it’s also a difficult time to be marketing an office property with no in-place income as the rise of remote work fuels record-high downtown office vacancy. The broader economic slowdown could curb interest in an office building, and rising interest rates will make it more costly for buyers to finance both a purchase and interior renovation work.

‘BLANK SLATE’

Cushman is framing the property as a “blank slate” for workspace to be built out suiting tenants’ post-COVID needs, complete with highly visible signage. The flyer also plays up the opportunity to reposition all or part of the building with new uses. The offering also includes a 19,249-square-foot land parcel adjacent to the building and a 2-acre parking lot across the street that could be purchased separately as development sites. W.P. Carey bought the building for $28.7 million in a 2008 sale-leaseback deal with Kendall’s former parent company, Laureate Education. Laureate signed a 20-year lease at the time that was due to expire in July 2028. After initially hunting for a user to sublease the space after Kendall moved out, Laureate bought out the remainder of its lease, according to people familiar with the deal. W.P. Carey hired Chicago leasing brokerage Madison Rose last year to market the buildings to prospective new tenants, though the interior of the building re-

THOUGH GOOSE ISLAND IS FAR FROM ESTABLISHED AS A DESTINATION FOR MAJOR OFFICE USERS, THE AREA HAS LURED MORE COMPANIES IN RECENT YEARS, INCLUDING CRATE & BARREL’S CB2 DIVISION, LAKESHORE BEVERAGE, ELITE STAFFING AND LOGISTICS FIRM TRANSPORTATION ONE. mains largely the way it looked when Kendall vacated the space. Madison Rose is still marketing the building while W.P. Carey pursues a potential sale. A spokeswoman for W.P. Carey did not respond to a request for comment. The North Branch building was built in 1912 as a warehouse for Griess & Pfledger Tanning, according to the Cushman flyer. The property was renovated in 1999 to become a research facility for Sara Lee, though the company moved out just two years later. Kendall paid $37 million for the property in 2003, a combination of what a source said at the time was roughly $18 million from the school and a nearly $19 million lease buyout payment from Sara Lee. W.P. Carey specializes in sale-leasebacks and owning socalled net lease properties, those that are owned by an investor but with a tenant covering most building operating expenses. Cushman & Wakefield Executive Directors Tom Sitz and Cody Hundertmark are marketing the 900 N. North Branch property for W.P. Carey.

11/4/22 3:18 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 13

Subaru struggles to compete with McD’s on wages BY HANS GREIMEL AND NAOTO OKAMURA Subaru says U.S. inflation is so bad that the automaker has trouble competing on wages with the local McDonald’s outside its Indiana assembly plant. Those soaring American labor costs, CEO Tomomi Nakamura said, are one reason his company is not thinking of new investments to build electric vehicles in the U.S. anytime soon. Speaking at Subaru Corp.’s quarterly earnings announcement Nov. 2, Nakamura said Subaru will stick with its plans to assemble electric vehicles at a new dedicated plant to be built in Japan. Complying with new U.S. guidelines to win full federal EV tax credits of $7,500 under the Inflation Reduction Act is too difficult right now, Nakamura said. Then there are the high wages. “In Indiana, part-time workers at McDonald’s earn $20 to $25 per hour, which is in competition with what temporary workers make at our plant,” Nakamura said. “If we were to build

a new plant, it would be very difficult to hire new people for that. Labor costs are rising now. It is quite challenging for us to secure workers for our Indiana plant, including those of suppliers.” U.S. inflation stood at 8.2 percent through September, and rising prices worldwide have stoked the cost of everything from wages to raw materials and fanned concerns of recession. Nakamura acknowledged the risk of a downturn but said demand for Subaru vehicles remains robust. The company has around 48,000 backorders in the U.S. and is dealing with a 10-day supply of inventory, he said. Subaru sees U.S. sales climbing 25 percent to 631,000 units this fiscal year. “Basically, we think there will be strong demand for our cars,” Nakamura said. “But our U.S. retailers told me they feel there could be a recession, so we will be watching the situation closely.”

THE GREAT EV RACE

Electric vehicle laggard Subaru said in May it will step up its pace in the battery-car race by adding a dedicated in-house EV assem-

bly plant in Japan from about 2027. The EVs made there will be exported globally to markets including the U.S., Subaru said at the time. At the earnings briefing, Nakamura said Subaru is studying how it can qualify for EV tax credits in the U.S. But he said Subaru cannot consider building an EV plant there unless wages come down. “It is very difficult for us to respond to. There are a number of requirements,” Nakamura said of the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed in August. “We find it difficult to figure out how the IRA will help us bring benefits to our customers.” The act requires EVs and their battery packs to be made in North America. Nakamura’s assessment came as the parent company reported a tripling of operating profit in the latest quarter as the automaker recovered lost production, stabilized sales and rode a wave of favorable exchange rates. Higher sticker prices also helped offset higher material costs. “U.S. sales have kept very strong momentum,” Nakamura said. “This year, we raised sticker

THINKSTOCK

Soaring labor costs are one reason the company says it’s not thinking of new investments to build EVs in the U.S. anytime soon

prices twice, and we are going to raise prices on some models at the change of the model year.” Subaru now predicts operating profit will triple for the full fiscal year, as it raised its earnings outlook on favorable foreign exchange rates that bolster the bottom line. The new optimism comes despite cutbacks in the company’s production and sales forecasts, as pandemic and supply chain uncertainties linger. Subaru

trimmed its production plan by 30,000 vehicles to 970,000 and dialed down its wholesale target by 20,000 to 920,000. Nevertheless, Subaru expects a dramatic uptick in the next six months, with production returning to pre-pandemic levels of 540,000 units globally in the October-March fiscal second half. Hans Greimel and Naoto Okumura write for Crain’s sister publication Automotive News.

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14 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

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ty would come to between $20 million and $24.75 million. They could build a smaller house, of course, but it’s rare for a house in this neighborhood to be built for less than the cost of the land. At that bare minimum, they’d have an $18 million combined investment in buying and building. The rendering at the top of this article is a standard image BGD&C used in the listing and does not indicate anything about what might get built, Grode said.

The latest big-money residential sale in Lincoln Park is priced at $9 million, and that’s just the cost of the land. How much the house that gets built there will cost is a matter of speculation at this point. In the past three years, five Lincoln Park properties have sold for higher prices, from $9.5 million to $12.55 million, but all those purchases were for land and a house. BGD&C, a prominent developer SIZE of high-end homes in the neighWhatever they build, it will be borhood, sold a lot on Orchard smaller than what might have Street for $9 million on Oct. 20 but been on the site. In 2019, Grode’s didn’t record the deal in real estate firm was looking to add a fifth lot listings until Nov. 1. Charles Grode, a BGD&C principal, confirmed that the purchaser IN THE PAST THREE YEARS, FIVE will build a sizable house on LINCOLN PARK PROPERTIES HAVE the lot, but he said no details are set, as they are in the pro- SOLD FOR HIGHER PRICES, FROM cess of designing the house. Existing zoning would $9.5 MILLION TO $12.55 MILLION. allow a house of about 21,000 square feet, but Grode to the four it already owned on said, “I don’t think they’re going Orchard. That would have creto go that big. Most people want ated a site big enough to hold a a big side yard now” when they 37,000-square-foot mansion. build in the multilot mansion Grode said last week that zone south of Lincoln Park High BGD&C ultimately did not finalSchool. ize the purchase of the fifth lot, instead sticking with the four-lot bundle, 100 feet by 125 feet, that COSTS Grode declined to identify the it has now sold for $9 million. BGD&C assembled the four sellers, who are not yet named in public records, or to specify what lots in separate purchases betheir construction budget is. As- ginning in 2013, Grode said. He suming $700 to $1,000 a square declined to provide purchase foot for high-end construction, prices, and public records do not an estimate that Grode provid- make them clear. Existing buildings on three of ed earlier this year, if the buyers build a 15,750-square-foot the lots are now being demolhouse, three-quarters of what ished, Grode said. The fourth zoning would permit, they’d was already cleared. Grode said spend between $11 million and his firm saved some terra cotta details from one of the buildings $15.75 million on construction. That would mean their to- and may reuse them in the new tal investment in the proper- mansion.

11/4/22 3:13 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 15

Illinois’ bioscience sector grows on key metrics BY KATHERINE DAVIS Illinois’ bioscience industry has seen major growth in recent years as government grants and private investors have pumped money into the sector, according to a new report. But a shaky economy and venture-capital slowdown this year will likely hamstring continued growth, experts say. From 2018 to 2021, Illinois’ bioscience sector saw employment grow 4.5% to nearly 91,000 workers across 4,297 business establishments, which include corporate office, manufacturing sites and distribution centers. The growth stems from a steady flow of grants from the National Institutes of Health, which gave $1.13 billion to Illinois companies and organizations in 2021, up from $875 million in 2018. Expansion of the sector was also boosted by a massive amount of venture-capital investments in Illinois bioscience companies. VC dollars invested in local companies topped $1.9 billion in 2021, more than triple the amount invested in 2018, the report shows. “The pandemic really highlight-

ed the importance of the industry from the medical device and diagnostics all the way to therapeutics and vaccines,” says John Conrad, CEO of the Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization, or iBio, a life sciences industry booster. “This is an industry that Illinois needs to focus on.” Health care technology companies raised the largest share of those venture-capital dollars with $2.96 billion invested from 2018 to 2021, followed by drug discovery and delivery companies with $524 million, and other pharmaceutical and biotech companies with $412 million, over the same time period.

ENCOURAGING NUMBERS

The average annual wage for workers topped $141,000 in 2021, up 8% from 2018, and higher from the average U.S. wage of $125,000 for bioscience workers. Illinois is among the top U.S. states for bioscience activity on a number of different factors but doesn’t crack the top five metro areas. Illinois ranks No. 8 among states with the highest research and development expenditures at

LOUIS REED/UNSPLASH

A new report shows Illinois is among the top states where life sciences companies attract investment

$1.7 billion in 2021. That follows California at No. 1 with $7 billion in expenditures, followed by New York with $4.7 billion, Texas with $4.1 billion and Pennsylvania at $3 billion. Illinois was also behind North Carolina, Maryland and Massachusetts, but beat Michigan and Ohio. Chicago fared a little higher among states with the most venture-capital investment in bioscience companies, coming in at No. 7 with $4.2 billion raised from 2018 to 2021. Illinois follows California at No. 1 with a whop-

ping $79.3 billion, and Massachusetts with $41.4 billion and New York with $18.4 billion. The numbers are encouraging, especially as Chicago’s real estate developers, entrepreneurs and economic development professionals have doubled down on making Chicago a life sciences hub, which can encompass everything from the research and development of pharmaceuticals and biotechnology to medical devices and even food processing. A separate report published earlier this year by commercial real estate ser-

vices company CBRE showed that Chicago was among the top U.S. cities for job growth in life sciences. But a nationwide slowdown in venture capital and recession fears this year will likely dampen 2022 VC investment and research and development figures, and possibly job growth. “We will see a decrease in venture investment,” says Conrad, adding that it is a reason why iBio aims to foster local initiatives and local venture-capital funds that can help boost Illinois’ life sciences industry.

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16 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

Chicago bets on quantum tech as ‘next big thing’ for its future The city has been trying to lure investments from companies such as Google and Amazon as it shifts its focus to quantum, which promises to make internet communication unhackable BY ISIS ALMEIDA Chicago is betting on quantum—a technology that could ensure everything from emails to online shopping is 100% secure— to fuel future economic growth. But there’s still much work to do before the city realizes its dream of becoming the nation’s capital for the promising technology. Best known for traditional industries including food, agriculture and manufacturing, the Windy City has been trying to lure investments from companies such as Google Inc. and Amazon.com as it shifts its focus to quantum, which promises to make Internet communication unhackable. Illinois already gets 40% of all the federal dollars for the technology and has four of the nation’s 10 quantum centers, the most of any state. But being at the forefront of quantum developments requires the city to focus on translating science into companies and jobs, said Brad Henderson, chief executive officer at P33, a non-profit founded by former Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker. “We have a top-five science

setting and we’re not even in the top 10 at translating science into commerce,” he said. “We’re targeting tens of billions of dollars in annual GDP that we expect to have in 10 years. That’s our goal. And tens of billion dollars actually translates into thousands of jobs.” Scientists from the University of Chicago recently carried out the first test of the quantum network with the general public in the U.S., an event that came with a surprise visit from former President Barack Obama. “Quantum computing is the way of the future,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at an event hosted by the Executive Club of Chicago. “Forty cents of every federal dollar being spent on quantum computing is being spent in Chicago and the surrounding area. This is the next big thing in our economy.”

‘BIG CENTER FOR QUANTUM’

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fuel economic growth as manufacturing continues to decline. The idea that properties of quantum mechanics could be harnessed to make a new kind of computer was first touted by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman in the 1980s. Unlike conventional computers, which interpret data in “ones” and “zeros,” quantum machines can store information in multiple forms—ones, zeros, both, or something in between. That ability allows a quantum system to multitask in ways today’s binary equipment cannot, rapidly decreasing processing times. But while computers with those capabilities are still about a decade away from widespread commercial application, quantum communications could become available much earlier, according to consultants McKinsey & Co. That’s where Chicago excels. The third-biggest US city already has the country’s longest quantum network—124 miles connecting the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in the outskirts to the University of Chicago and the Chicago Quantum Exchange, a hub for advancing quantum technology. “There is this misconception that quantum is only on the West Coast or the East Coast,” said Marco Pistoia, head of global technology applied research at JPMorgan Chase & Co., which joined the Chicago Quantum Exchange as a partner in 2020. “In reality, Chicago is a big center for quantum.” The finance industry, another stalwart of Chicago, will be one of the biggest beneficiaries. Quantum computing will help algorithms sort large amounts of data and solve complex mathematical problems that would take traditional machines days, months and even years. Long before, quantum communications will solve a more basic problem: How do you ensure no one can clone your 16-digit credit card number when you buy something online? Or get hold of your email and social media passwords? Quantum communications guarantee that any message intercepted gets destroyed, said David Awschalom, vice dean for research at the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, and founding director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange. So not only will a hacker be unable to get the information, but the parties of the attempted hack will also know someone tried to intercept it. “That’s baked into the fundamental aspects of quantum sci-

Professor David Awschalom, founding director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, poses for a portrait in front of a whiteboard at a quantum computing lab at the University of Chicago’s Eckhardt Research Center. ence, so this is a great thing for communications,” Awschalom said in an interview. “Not a great thing if you’re hacker, but a great thing for communications because it is quantum secure.”

TALENT GAP

The technology could also be used to make elections more secure. Switzerland has used the so-called quantum-key distribution to protect its local elections. It’s this technology that students from Chicago’s Kenwood Academy High School tested last month in a vote on the question: Should social media companies be allowed to censor information/

misinformation? “Knowledge is power,” Obama told the students. “If you know how to sort out good information from bad information, you will have more power to make good decisions that take you where you want to go.” Chicago and other cities around the world face a huge talent gap. Demand for workers outpaces the number of graduates times three, according to McKinsey, which compared active job postings as of December 2021, with the number of graduates ready to fill such roles. Keomi Brame, 16, said she had heard a few things about quan-

11/3/22 3:26 PM

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 17

In a tough economy, patients are letting Botox slide With inflation soaring, Americans are holding off pricey treatments. And that’s hitting AbbVie, which cut its forecast for aesthetics sales.

BLOOMBERG

The deposition and etching bay of the Pritzker Nanofabrication Facility at the University of Chicago’s Eckhardt Research Center.

tum, but after the mock vote, she now would consider it as a potential career path. “After today, I understand why it’s so important,” she said. “It can make processes around the world much easier, especially when it comes to security because it makes it harder for people to hack.”

MORE FUNDING

Another challenge for Chicago is that the largest employers— IBM, Amazon and Google—are still on the coasts. Venture capital is also concentrated in computing, while Illinois’s biggest competitive advantage is in materials, sensors and the quantum network. Still, the city has attracted quantum hardware company EeroQ Corp.

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“Chicago is just a one of those places where people have gathered enough resources, recruited a lot of talent to push quantum science forward,” said Jun Ye, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. But there’s also Colorado, California and Cambridge, where Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are doing a “huge amount” of quantum work, he said. Quantum technology is also a source of geopolitical tension. The Biden administration is exploring the possibility of new export controls that would limit China’s access to some the most powerful emerging computer technologies, including quantum, Bloomberg reported last month. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who is seeking re-election Nov. 8, has already committed $200 million for quantum, but more will be needed. The city and the state will also need to avoid errors of the past and focus on attracting companies, startups and building a quantum industry, said Henderson of P33, whose non-profit was founded by the governor’s sister. To help achieve that, P33 created the Quantum Cohort to bring research and industry together. It also helped start Chicago-based Duality, the nation’s first accelerator program dedicated exclusively to supporting early-stage quantum firms, which counted Amazon.com as its first investor. “We believe Chicago can be the Quantum Valley of the United States; there’s no reason it can’t,” Awschalom said. “Every federal agency, everyone is funding programs here.”

Botox will have to wait. People are holding off on Botox and other pricey aesthetic treatments such as dermal fillers and body contouring amid rampant inflation and concerns about the state of the economy, AbbVie Inc. Chief Executive Officer Rick Gonzalez said Oct. 28. The slowdown is primarily in the U.S., where it correlates with economic factors like consumer confidence— which fell to a three-month low in October—and personal consumption spending, Gonzalez said. AbbVie cut its forecast for aesthetics sales, expecting the biggest declines in Juvederm dermal fillers and body contouring products, such as CoolSculpting. Patients generally pay cash rather than with insurance for procedures that can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, making them more sensitive to economic conditions than treat-

BLOOMBERG

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ments for life-threatening disease. Third-quarter sales of aesthetic products were $1.3 billion, missing the $1.38 billion Wall Street analysts foresaw. It’s a shift from recent quarters when pent-up demand for aesthetics following pandemic lockdowns helped drive AbbVie’s overall sales growth. The company obtained the products through its 2020 acquisition of Allergan.

“While it’s difficult to predict the duration of these economic dynamics, we expect these conditions to persist into 2023,” Gonzalez said on a conference call with analysts to review third-quarter earnings. Once the situation improves, AbbVie expects to see a “rapid and sustained recovery.” Bloomberg News

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Tenneco sale is a go. Now big banks must pony up. A group of banks led by Bank of America and Citigroup still may try to entice investors to buy a portion of $5.4 billion they must provide Tenneco buyer Apollo Group. Lake Forest-based Tenneco plans to move its headquarters to Michigan after the sale closes. Tenneco said it cleared the final regulatory hurdles to be acquired by a New York-based private-equity firm, putting a syndicate of big banks on the hook for $5.4 billion in debt financing they’ve struggled to sell to investors. The Lake Forest-based auto parts maker, which has a global presence, said Oct. 28 that it expects the $1.6 billion sale to close this month after obtaining approval from antitrust regulators in Europe and Japan. And on Oct. 31, a Tenneco spokesman confirmed that the company has renewed plans to move its headquarters to Northville Township, Mich., after the sale closes. Tenneco, which has around 200 employees in Lake Forest, has about 3,500 workers at several offices and plants in Michigan. A group of banks led by Bank of America and Citigroup now must provide $6 billion in debt per their commitments to Apollo. It’s unclear which other banks are in the syndicate, but they

may include the Toronto-based parent of Chicago’s BMO Harris Bank. BMO told shareholders recently that it wrote down $64 million in debt it agreed to provide to private-equity buyers in three deals struck before Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine. Tenneco’s falls into that category, but BMO has declined to say whether Tenneco is one of the three. The banks still intend to try to sell a portion of the $5.4 billion they’d originally wanted to offload to investors, Bloomberg Law reported Oct. 26. But there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to do so. Other bank consortiums selling debt financing leveraged buyouts in recent months have absorbed hundreds of millions in losses on the deals. For Tenneco shareholders, timing is everything. With banks’ appetite for LBO debt essentially gone because of spiking interest rates, there’s no way the company could find a buyer today willing to pay what Apollo is. BLOOMBERG

BY STEVE DANIELS

Crain’s Detroit Business contributed.

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LAUREN SMAGA Manager lsmaga@ citrincooperman.com

uccessful businesses know that the strength of their futures is determined, in part, by attracting and retaining talent. Preventing high turnover allows businesses to focus on their overall growth, and an effective way to curb this is by providing employees with opportunities for development and advancement. Citrin Cooperman, one of the nation’s largest professional services firms, knows the importance and value of nurturing early-career professionals as a way to help plan for a strong future. As three staff members who began our careers at the Chicago based firm of Shepard Schwartz & Harris LLP, which was recently acquired by Citrin Cooperman, we have experienced the growing pains that may come with an acquisition. However, we quickly found that Citrin Cooperman shares a similar ethos to that of Shepard Schwartz & Harris and were relieved to know that we would continue to be supported as we start our journey with a new firm.

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DANIEL PRIGGIE I am a tax senior with nearly three years in the accounting profession and am supported by the firm as I begin to study for the CPA exam. Having financial assistance with training materials, review courses, and reimbursement to sit for the exam provides extra incentive for employees to obtain this daunting and important licensure for the profession. Having this license benefits the firm and will provide me with more opportunities for advancement. LAUREN SMAGA As a tax manager with nearly six years of experience and my CPA license, I am continually looking for mentorship opportunities to hone my skills. Though a large firm, there is an ease of communication and boundless opportunities for casual mentorship from senior staff members and partners here. An open-door culture creates an environment where staff feel comfortable to ask questions and

continually learn from their peers and seniors. JUSTIN DORNER I have been in the profession for almost a decade and am now a director, focusing on real estate and professional services business. The resources available at Citrin Cooperman, such as marketing professionals and recruiters, allows me more time to focus on my tax work and building key relationships with my clients. The dedicated divisions and resources the firm offers provides structure and clear roles that lift added responsibilities off CPAs’ plates. Many firms put a heavy focus on their partners, but staff of all levels at Citrin Cooperman are well-informed, provided with ample resources to carry out their roles more efficiently, and have a strong voice. Encouraging positive work relationships and fostering an atmosphere that promotes curiosity and open communication

creates an environment where staff can envision themselves staying for many years, if not their whole career. For us, being accountants is not just a job, but a career we want to continue to grow in. Having a path to job advancement that is paved with clearly communicated opportunities, promotions, and incentives to continue our professional development provides security and fulfillment in our roles. If you are interested in the career opportunities available at a growing firm, please visit https://www. citrincooperman.com/Join-Us.

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11/3/22 3:21 PM

20 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Advertising Section To place your listing, visit www.chicagobusiness.com/peoplemoves or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com

ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN

ACCOUNTING

BANKING

INFORMATION / DATA TECH

LAW

Canopy, Chicago

ORBA, Chicago

First Bank Chicago, Northbrook

Wavicle Data Solutions, Chicago

Freeborn & Peters LLP, Chicago

Jaime Torres Carmona, AIA, LEED AP BD+C has been appointed to serve on the National Advisory Jury for the 2023 AIA Gold Medal and Firm of the Year Awards in San Francisco. This appointment highlights Jaime’s reputation as a national thought leader on design and practice management. As Founding Principal and Design Director at Canopy, Jaime leads the firm’s design and marketing initiatives.

ORBA, one of Chicago’s largest public accounting firms, is pleased to announce that Brandon Carter and Ragad Nakira have joined the firm. Brandon Carter joins ORBA’s Accounting Carter Services Group. He specializes in providing bookkeeping and strategic tax services to small businesses and individuals. Brandon is proficient in preparing multi-state tax returns in compliance with U.S Nakira federal and state law and overseeing companies’ financial activities by recording and facilitating incoming and outgoing payments. Ragad Nakira joins ORBA’s Tax Group. She is knowledgeable in preparing income tax returns, assisting with the preparation of financial statements and performing tax research.

First Bank Chicago proudly announces the promotion of David Smith to Chief Lending Officer, Commercial Real Estate. David will oversee the CRE lending strategy and relationship-based culture focused on exceptional 5-star service. He leads a diverse team of professionals responsible for underwriting and structuring of loans as well as managing existing relationships and further developing the loan portfolio. David has an extensive banking career in the Chicago market and joined our team in 2008.

Wavicle Data Solutions welcomes Peter Berger as Vice President of Revenue. Berger is responsible for driving top line revenue growth, enhancing sales processes, and growing and strengthening partner alliances. He brings extensive expertise in leading strategic sales and go-to-market teams for high-growth organizations. Berger has more than 20 years of experience in the technology, data, and analytics services industry, including leadership roles at Accenture AI, Clarity Insights, and Capgemini.

Freeborn & Peters LLP is pleased to announce that it has named Tina M. Bird as leader of the real estate and construction litigation team, and Elitsa Dimitrova as leader of the emerging industries Bird team. Led by Bird, the firm’s real estate and construction litigation team has the necessary industry experience to serve the needs of any party throughout the lifecycle of construction projects of all sizes. Dimitrova Led by Dimitrova, the emerging industries team remains abreast of developments in such areas as blockchain, cryptocurrency, crowdfunding, big data, artificial intelligence, fintech, and more. It combines legal insights from several practices, including litigation, intellectual property, corporate, securities, and employment.

ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN Canopy, Chicago Andreea Micu, AIA, CDT has been promoted from Project Manager to Senior Associate, Design Lead. In her five years at Canopy, Andreea has been a key to the firm’s success and growth. She has led some of Canopy’s most notable projects, including Oso Apartments, Encuentro Square, 1630 Cullerton, and others. As Design Leader, she will continue to manage projects day-to-day and continue shaping and refining Canopy’s overall design processes internally and externally. ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN Canopy, Chicago Josh Mings, AIA has been promoted from Project Manager to Senior Associate, Practice Lead. Josh is passionate and dedicated to the Canopy team, while also being a voice of leadership in promoting the practice externally. He is involved in bettering the design community at large through multiple AIA positions. In this enhanced role, Josh will continue refining our mentorship, practice, and marketing efforts.

BANKING Byline Bank, Chicago Byline Bank welcomes Anthony Brylewski as Vice President, Business Banking. Anthony has over 20 years of banking experience, specializing in business lending, commercial analysis, and treasury management. As part of the recently expanded Business Banking team, his primary focus is on local businesses, municipalities, and non-profit organizations. He aims to help them grow and meet their financial goals while supporting the local communities.

Armando Tobias, AIA has been promoted from Associate Principal to Principal, Studio Director at Canopy. In his almost two years with the firm, Armando has graciously stepped into the call of leadership. As Studio Director, he will lead overall staffing efforts, while continuing to lead projects and support Project Managers and Project Architects. Armando will also continue to help lead Canopy’s business development and marketing efforts. ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN Canopy, Chicago Catherine Varnas, RA, LEED GA has been promoted from Senior Project Architect to Senior Associate, Design Lead. In her three years at Canopy, Catherine has grown from a Project Architect to a design and technical leader. She has been pivotal on a wide range of projects and is one of the firm’s recognized Revit leaders and design champions. Catherine will continue to lead teams in design phases, cross-pollinating between projects. She will also continue to help shape Canopy’s QA/QC processes.

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BANKING

AECOM, Chicago

First Bank Chicago, Northbrook

Enza Parrella, IIDA, RID is appointed Principal, Interiors Practice Leader at AECOM. In her role, she is focused on providing leadership to the interiors practice within the AECOM Buildings + Places Group in Chicago. Enza joined in June 2022 to lead the growing interiors practice, focusing on continued expansion for the firm, as she employs a collaborative process between clients and staff in pursuit of design and service excellence. She brings over 30 years of experience in the A&D profession.

First Bank Chicago, one of the top five privately held banks in Chicagoland, proudly announces the recent promotion of John Berghorst to EVP, Commercial Real Estate. John and his seasoned team are responsible for developing and expanding client relationships within the Bank’s commercial real estate loan portfolio. The portfolio has a diverse but loyal client base across many asset classes. A career banker, John has over 30 years of real estate expertise and joined the First Bank team in 2020.

LAW BANKING First Bank Chicago, Northbrook

ARCHITECTURE / DESIGN Canopy, Chicago

INTERIOR DESIGN

CONSTRUCTION The Walsh Group, Chicago Philip Spittler has been promoted to Vice President of Major Healthcare Projects at The Walsh Group, overseeing large-scale projects and new business pursuits. Philip has more than 43 years of experience in construction and nine years with The Walsh Group. Philip’s master planning expertise, attentionto-detail and inclusive leadership style has helped his teams deliver successful projects for prominent public, private and federal healthcare customers across the United States.

To order frames or plaques of profiles contact Lauren Melesio at lmelesio@crain.com or 212-210-0707

First Bank Chicago is pleased to announce the appointment of Alan Lev to our Directors Loan Committee. He currently serves as the Chairman of Belgravia Group, Ltd. Alan holds board positions at distinguished organizations throughout Chicagoland and he is a highly respected member of the Homebuilders Association of Greater Chicago.

Latham & Watkins, Chicago Kevin L. Miller has joined the Chicago office of Latham & Watkins as a partner in the Private Equity and Mergers & Acquisitions Practices of the firm’s Corporate Department. He focuses his practice on advising private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies on complex transactions in the healthcare services and life sciences industries, including counseling clients on healthcare industry trends and investment opportunities, along with the structuring and negotiation of strategic transactions.

LAW Freeborn & Peters LLP, Chicago Freeborn & Peters LLP is pleased to announce that it has named Matthew J. O’Hara as co-leader of the firm’s litigation practice group and Jeffrey A. Rossman as co-leader of the complex O’Hara commercial litigation practice group. Co-led by O’Hara and Terrence J. Sheahan, Freeborn’s litigation practice group consists of more than 90 lawyers over seven specialty subgroups, bringing both bench Rossman strength and deep experience to each client matter. Co-led by Rossman and Anthony J. Carballo, the complex commercial litigation practice represents clients who range from emerging growth companies to Fortune 500 corporations in a variety of complex and often high-profile disputes.

REAL ESTATE HEALTH CARE Avaneer Health, Chicago Avaneer Health, a secure digital network for healthcare, is pleased to announce that John Tytko has been named Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Tytko will lead financial management activities while supporting corporate development initiatives and guiding strategic growth initiatives. The addition of Tytko completes the appointment of the executive leadership team at Avaneer Health.

LAW Levin Schreder & Carey, Chicago Levin Schreder & Carey Ltd. welcomes associate Stephanie M. Berardi to the firm. Stephanie focuses her practice on Trust and Probate Litigation, Estate Administration, Will Contests, and Fiduciary Defense Litigation. Stephanie received her J.D. from DePaul University College of Law (2020) and her B.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2017).

Government Investment Partners, Deer Park Ralph Gilbertsen has joined locally based Government Investment Partners as Senior Vice President of Operations following a distinguished 35-year career at brokerage giant CBRE. Gilbertsen will oversee the firm’s property management division as well as overall corporate operations and strategic initiatives. GIP is a vertically integrated real estate investment, development and management firm specializing in commercial properties leased to federal, state and local government agencies.

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CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 21

That sound you hear? A round of applause for 40 incredible individuals who are both wildly accomplished and poised to do even bigger things. Photography by John R. Boehm Know someone under 40 who should be on our 2023 list? Nominations open soon: ChicagoBusiness.com/Nominations

“FOR THEM TO BE DOING WHAT THEY’RE DOING—

I’M AMAZED.”

GENIE KWON AND TIM FLORES Age: Kwon, 37, and Flores, 32 | Owners, Kasama

lmost every morning, a line of people stretches down the block on Augusta Boulevard. They are waiting to buy a pastry from Kasama. Owners Genie Kwon and Tim Flores don’t always know how long the line is, but their regulars time it. Typically, it’s an hour. It stretched to three hours the weekend after the James Beard Awards. Kasama was nominated but didn’t win. Still, the people came.

The husband-and-wife duo operate the only restaurant in Chicago with a Filipino tasting menu, and the first Michelinstarred Filipino restaurant in the world. The buzz around the place is palpable and reaches far: Flores, who grew up in Cicero, says his parents hear from family in the Philippines who learn about Kasama’s successes. The restaurant offered only togo bakery foods when it opened in 2020—Kwon is a pastry chef— then started its tasting menu

in late 2021. When Kwon and Flores were deciding which format would work best, the tasting menu made the most sense. It keeps the number of customers down in a financially viable way. “It’s awesome that we’re getting recognized for it, but it was really just a decision we made in response to COVID,” Kwon says. Kwon and Flores have poured their own experiences into Kasama’s menu. Kwon went to pastry school in Boston, worked in New York restaurants, in-

terned abroad, and moved to Chicago 10 years ago. She and Flores met at GT Fish & Oyster, where Flores had gotten his start in the business. Flores grew up eating his mom’s Filipino food but did not have restaurant-related aspirations until he was home from college one summer and a friend roped him into polishing silverware at GT Fish. That was his entree. The two helped open Noah Sandoval’s West Loop fine-

dining restaurant Oriole. They got married after that. (“If we can open a place together, we can get married,” Kwon says.) They left Oriole in 2018 to start their own project. Kasama was 2½ years in the making. “Going from a chef to an operator is a completely different ballgame,” says Spencer Ng, whose family owns Triple Crown Restaurant in Chinatown. “For them to be doing what they’re doing, I’m amazed.” —Ally Marotti

Note: Subjects’ ages are as of press time on Nov. 4.

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22 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

“I’M KIND OF A

ZEROTO-100 MPH TYPE OF GAL.”

STEPHANIE WILLDING Age: 38 | CEO, CommunityHealth

tephanie Willding ran the Chicago Marathon this October for the first time. She says running helped her through another marathon: taking the reins of Chicago’s largest free clinic, CommunityHealth, as CEO right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “I’m kind of a zero-to-100 mph type of gal,” Willding says. “I thrive on a messy start, sorting through the chaos, then finding solutions as problems present themselves. But the marathon training is letting me lean in and see the middle.” At the onset of COVID, she sprinted, leading a team of both staff, visiting primary care and specialty doctors, and hundreds of volunteers at the Ukrainian Village clinic, which does not charge for its services. During lockdown, low-income, often uninsured patients still had to go to work, and COVID testing was crucial. At first tests were hard to come by, “so, we just ‘did us.’ We got scrappy, found donated tests, donated PPE, and Quest lab services volunteered to handle our tests,” she says. “Testing was important because patients’ livelihoods were based on those results.” CommunityHealth was among those providers during the pandemic that saw a needed change in health care delivery and did something about it, Willding says. CommunityHealth’s primarily immigrant base is starting to move out of its gentrifying neighborhood northwest of downtown, but it has a way to follow them, virtually. After setting up a vaccination clinic at Onward Neighborhood House in Belmont Cragin, Willding led the effort to create CommunityHealth’s first telehealth microsite, providing health intake workers at the Onward community center who could connect patients with doctors at Community Health. In June, it opened a second telehealth microsite at Enlace Chicago in Little Village. The microsite move was genius, according to one of Willding’s first bosses in the community health sphere, Dr. Lee Francis, longtime leader of Erie Family Health. Francis said that in setting up the telehealth microsites, Willding and CommunityHealth figured out early on that what lower-income patients needed during the pre-vaccine days of the pandemic wasn’t just “health literacy, but digital literacy.” When CommunityHealth started its telehealth site, Francis said, he thought: “Dang, why didn’t I think of that? (Willding) has always been very smart, and very hungry to do more.” —Jon Asplund

SAMEER VOHRA Age: 39 | Director, Illinois Department of Public Health

n Dr. Sameer Vohra’s first day leading the Illinois Department of Public Health, the monkeypox virus was declared a public health disaster in Illinois, adding to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that’s still killing dozens of Illinoisans each week. It’s perhaps one of the most challenging times in recent memory to run the state’s health department, but Vohra says it was an opportunity he “couldn’t say no to” because he’s long been dedicated to improving public health. Becoming a physician was, in part, fulfilling a dream his parents never could. Vohra’s father, a pharmacist, and his mother, a dentist, both immigrated to Chicago from India with hopes of becoming doctors. The U.S.’s strict immigrant requirements kept them from pursuing medical licenses, but Vohra and his two siblings were able to carry their parents’ dream across the finish line. “All three kids graduated from medical school and became doctors,” says Vohra, who holds four degrees. He earned a bachelor’s in political science and science in human culture from Northwestern University and then went on to earn dual degrees in law and medicine from Southern Illinois University.

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While completing his residency in pediatrics at the University of Chicago Medicine, Vohra also earned a master’s in public policy at UChicago. The combination of medicine, policy and public health training makes him uniquely qualified to run IDPH. “There’s lots of places where training in medicine is important, but he has the double benefit of also having policy training,” says Bryan Samuels, a mentor to Vohra and the executive director of Chapin Hall, a UChicago-affiliated research center. “He’s well-prepared to make a lot of hard decisions and make sure that in the end, those decisions lead to the right public health response.” After residency, Vohra was a practicing pediatrician at SIU Medicine and founding chair of the college’s department of population science and policy, roles he held when he received the call about IDPH. “It was hard to always grasp what a job looked like, so I’ve moved more to what kind of impact I want to make,” says Vohra, who lives in Springfield with his wife and two daughters. “Now I’m in a position where I can be in the room when big decisions from a state or federal perspective are being made.” —Katherine Davis

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Propel.

23 24

Leadership Greater Chicago (LGC) 50

delivers the knowledge and network to drive

bold, transformative change. Developing civic

leaders has never been more critical, and their responsibilities have never been more complex. Through our Signature Fellows Program, we build and strengthen the pipeline of civic leaders who are ready and willing to powerfully lead the future of our region. We proudly congratulate the Class of 2022 LGC Fellows.

35 43 37 41

40 36

Accepting applications now thru March 1. Apply or sponsor at lgcchicago.org

1 Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain Live Free Illinois

10 Regina S. Cross Goldman Sachs

2 Emily Briskman Jewish United Fund

11 Angela Dowell Chicago Community Loan Fund

3 Stephen Brokaw Salesforce

12 Anna Edwards United Way of Metro Chicago

4 Liz Buchanan NielsenIQ

13 Fellicia Foster BMO Harris Bank

5 Prentice C. Butler City of Chicago

14 Jessica Ashley Garmon, Esq. The Will Group

6 Charles C. Calloway, Jr. Chapman and Cutler LLP

15 Garien Gatewood Illinois Justice Project

7 Clarence A. Carson, CCA, CCP North Lawndale Employment Network

16 Damla Gerhart Avison Young

8 Reginald Champagne Beam Suntory

17 Virxhini Gjonzeneli Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago

9 Louis S. Chiappetta Mayer Brown LLP

18 Ryan C. Green DL3 Realty

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19 Pastor Chris Harris, Sr. Bright Star Church Chicago & St. James Ministries COGIC; Bright Star Community Outreach 20 Bridget Hayman Access Living 21 Kelly N. Hutchinson Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP 22 Ali Khan, MD, MPP Oak Street Health 23 Timmy Knudsen Chicago City Council 24 Tejus Kothari Boston Consulting Group 25 Julio Leon Paz Chicago Commons 26 David Lewis Circumspect Capital

RunDate 11/7/22

38 39

27 Elizabeth V. Lopez United Airlines

35 Anne Nash Google

44 Shoeb J. Sitafalwalla, MD Advocate Aurora Health

28 Mary McClelland Environmental Law & Policy Center

36 Heidi Ortolaza-Alvear, AM, MPP Esperanza Health Centers

45 John M. Skakun III Sidley Austin LLP

29 Kenya K. Merritt Pritzker Traubert Foundation

37 Nichole Owens ComEd

46 Kim H. Tran Chicago State University

30 Iris Millán City Colleges of Chicago

38 Nate Pietrini, Ed.D. High Jump

47 Sarah Weiss Jenner & Block

31 Ronald Milsap Providence Bank & Trust

39 Mandee R. Polonsky Northwestern Medicine

48 Dana O. Williams Northern Trust

32 John D. Mitchell U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Illinois

40 Ryan K. Priester John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

49 Lizette Williams Meta

33 Kafi Moragne-Patterson, Ph.D., MSW UChicago Inclusive Economy Lab

41 Elle Ramel GET Cities

34 Cory Muldoon Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership

50 Khai Yang Allstate

42 Ian Sharping, J.D. Instituto del Progreso Latino 43 Kenneth Shogren CIBC

FULL PAGE

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24 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

HARISH PATEL Age: 37 | Director, Economic Security for Illinois

hen he came to America from India, Harish Patel said he was overwhelmed by the amount of free access there was for services, but also taken aback at the process of applying for welfare programs after experiencing waiting in long lines with his mother. Those experiences, coupled with the massive amounts of information his sister had to provide to receive food assistance from the Women, Infants & Children program, ignited Patel’s passion to make such processes more efficient. While running (unsuccessfully) in 2016 for the Illinois House of Representatives, Patel became aware that distributing cash with no strings might be an answer. Then he worked at a D.C.-based think tank, where he connected with others to convert such ideas into real-life policies and programs. Tackling poverty has become a mission for Patel, who founded Economic Security for Illinois in 2019. The organization is behind the guaranteedincome pilot programs of Cook County, Chicago and Evanston. Patel’s group was also integral in the expansion and modernization of the earned-income tax credit in Illinois. “Harish’s advocacy for an enhanced safety net has helped make Chicago and Cook County a national beacon in providing flexible, monthly cash assistance to support individuals and families to thrive,” said Skyler Larrimore, the city of Chicago’s chief of policy. Larrimore worked closely with Patel when he was part of the advisory group that helped to shape the Chicago Resilient Communities Pilot, which administered the cash assistance. Patel, who previously helped found Chicago Votes, a nonprofit that aims to increase young people’s and incarcerated individuals’ access to civic knowledge, hopes to reshape the narrative around assistance and those who live in poverty. “People have a lot of uninformed ideas and biases towards poor people in general,” Patel says. “And the welfare system is a sexist, racist system. That’s what many of us are trying to change, not just internally at a government level or administrative level, but also the minds of people.” —Corli Jay

BRIAN BARNES Age: 32 | Founder and CEO, M1 Finance

hen most 11-year-old boys were getting into video games, Brian Barnes was getting into trading stocks. So it’s no surprise that after graduating from Stanford University with a degree in economics, he quickly tired of his consulting gig and launched M1 Finance, an online brokerage. Today the automated-investment platform has more than 500,000 users with nearly $7 billion in assets. The seven-year-old company has 300 employees and is valued at more than $1 billion. While RobinHood introduced the masses to trading and became the poster child for meme investing, Barnes was looking upmarket to people building portfolios over the long haul who wanted a “set it and forget it” option. “We want to be a digital private bank and bring it down to people with $100,000 rather than $100 million,” he says. “Where most of the money is held now is the affluent 65-year-olds. We’re getting the affluent 30- or 40-year-old who will become the affluent 65-year-old.”

Barnes has shown both vision and courage, says former Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly, an early investor. M1 was a pioneer in eliminating retail commissions on investments. It makes money on lending, credit cards and other services. “M1 went free before anyone else. That was a courageous move that ended up being right,” Spaly says. “He’s prescient about two things: retail investing and mobile technology.” Barnes learned how to trade from his father, Randy, a former PepsiCo treasurer, but he learned how to run a company from his late mother, Brenda Barnes, former CEO of Sara Lee. She famously left PepsiCo as a senior executive to raise her kids. During that time, she served on several corporate boards. “We’d have in-depth corporate strategy discussions,” her son says. He’s not all business, though. Barnes may be a cautious investor, but he’s a thrill-seeker with a motorcycle and a pilot’s license who also has tried skydiving and bungee jumping. “Anything that gets the blood pumping: I’m all for it.” —John Pletz

“MY MOM SAID

I ALWAYS LIKED TO THROW THE PARTY.”

“HE’S PRESCIENT ABOUT TWO THINGS: RETAIL INVESTING AND MOBILE TECHNOLOGY.” P021-P046_CCB_20221107.indd 24

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“SHE’S GOOD ON HER FEET, GOOD AT KEEPING HER COOL AND TAKING

BULLETS.”

ANGELA SPADONI Age: 38 Principal, bKL Architecture

rchitect Tom Kerwin used to perform the hard task of presenting his firm’s projects at community meetings, fielding questions from often hostile audiences packed with amateur architecture critics, planners and NIMBYs. But after seeing his colleague Angela Spadoni in action, she presents now. “She’s good on her feet, good at keeping her cool and taking bullets,” says Kerwin, founding principal at bKL Architecture. That’s one reason Spadoni was recently named one of four principals at bKL, which Kerwin started in 2010. She’s also a skilled designer, especially when it comes to assembling “the complicated puzzle” that is an apartment building, bKL’s specialty, he says. Spadoni has played a key role in the design of 10,000 multifamily units in Chicago; Miami; Phoenix; Austin, Texas; Washington; and Toronto. “People gravitate towards her,” Kerwin says. “Clients love her.” Growing up in Crown Point, Ind., Spadoni knew at a young age that she wanted to be an architect like her dad, who specialized in single-family homes. “He said architects were overworked and underpaid and didn’t want me to do it,” she says. Spadoni studied architecture at Arizona State University and the University of Pennsylvania, where she obtained a master’s degree. She has spent most of her career at bKL, soaking up knowledge from her superiors and happily putting in long hours at the office and industry functions. But the birth of her son about five years ago forced her to cut back on her schedule. Returning to work was the biggest challenge of her career, Spadoni says. Spadoni, who now has a 2-year-old daughter as well, says she has received plenty of support at bKL, where women account for about half of the workforce. But finding balance isn’t easy in an industry where women account for only about 17% of all registered architects, according to one study. “I hope to be a role model for other younger women in the profession and (show) that it’s not impossible” for mothers to take leadership roles, Spadoni says. “That’s a big part of my story.” —Alby Gallun

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26 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

BRAD PARKER Age: 39 Founder, Parker Hospitality

“MY MOM SAID

I ALWAYS

hen Brad Parker started dreaming up the idea for The Hampton Social’s first location, he had never even been to the Hamptons. And that was exactly the allure. Parker, then in his early 30s and fresh off the sale of his first restaurant, saw the River North restaurant space go up for lease, and the way the light came in sent his mind toward the bougie East Coast vacation spot. “I was thinking real preppy. I was like, ‘the Hamptons, Martha Stewart, the Kardashians, rosé,’ ” he says. “If it can be in my head and I’ve never been there, that means it has a powerful presence in American society.” Fast-forward seven years, and The Hampton Social is on track to have 12 locations by the end of the year. Add Nisos, Parker Hospitality’s Greek restaurant that opened on Randolph Street in July, and the group expects to surpass $87 million in 2022 revenue. Parker Hospitality plans to grow sales by more than $30 million annually and predicts $117 million in revenue by 2023. Parker wants 60 or 70 Hampton Socials across the U.S. “My goal and dream is, by the time I’m 70 or 80, that it is the next major worldwide brand,” Parker says. A lofty goal. Ned Grace, founder of The Capital Grille steakhouse chain, says Parker is up for the challenge. Grace has mentored Parker recently, and says the Hampton Social founder has a willingness to learn that is rare among restaurant operators. In restaurants, “you get guys that have big egos that won’t really listen very hard to other people. I’d say Brad is the opposite,” Grace says. “That’s a really good attribute.” The Deerfield native did not grow up in restaurants. He had a few such jobs as a teenager—at a Starbucks, at an Asian restaurant—but was headed for law school after college. He changed course and ended up in real estate in 2006. That went well for a couple of years before the market tanked. Then he bought a Ferrari and launched a luxury car rental company. His intro to restaurants came later, at the urging of a friend. An unorthodox journey, but Parker says it has been a perfect fit. After all, “My mom said I always liked to throw the party,” he says. —Ally Marotti

LIKED TO THROW THE PARTY.”

AMY KELLER Age: 39 | Chair of the privacy, technology and cybersecurity practice group, DiCello Levitt

he eclectic world of Amy Keller started in suburban Detroit with dreams of being a Rockette, continued as a poli sci major taking a college elective in welding and moved on to a successful landmarking campaign for an art deco block in Old Town. Upon arriving in Chicago to attend law school and then landing a summer internship in the city’s Buildings Department, she considered historic preservation a likely practice area. But a clerkship and then a job with a class-action firm changed her mind. She came to like civil procedure, namely consumer protection cases. At 34, Keller was named a co-lead counsel—the youngest woman ever—in a federal court proceeding known as multi-district litigation, or MDL, which combines a vast number of dispersed lawsuits into one huge case before a single judge. Hers involved a 2017 data breach affecting 147 million customers of credit-rating firm Equifax that resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement two years later. Since then, Keller has been appointed to co-lead half a dozen more MDLs, with Google and Marriott among defendants.

“She’s really carved out a niche for herself in these data-breach cases,” says Harper Segui, a Milberg partner and a co-lead counsel in one with Keller. “You either have a knack for MDL cases or you don’t. Amy has that.” David Balser, head of King & Spalding’s class-action (defense) practice, allows, “She was a formidable adversary in Equifax.” Keller credits DiCello Levitt’s Adam Levitt with steering her toward her booming specialty after inviting Keller to join the firm as a founding partner in 2017. “They let me start my own department”— now encompassing 11 of the firm’s 56 attorneys— she says. A great advantage of being an MDL leader is the opportunity to dole out work, like a precinct captain, to other attorneys. “These firms tend to be male-dominated,” says Wayne Andersen, a retired federal judge who mediated one of Keller’s cases. “They were willing to let her take a front seat. (Levitt) understands it’s good for the case for her to be out there.” Keller says, “I like putting together teams and lifting up women. It’s important to me that I don’t slam the door behind me.” Her welding course paid off. —Steven R. Strahler

“I LIKE LIFTING UP WOMEN. IT’S IMPORTANT TO ME THAT I DON’T SLAM THE DOOR BEHIND ME.” P021-P046_CCB_20221107.indd 26

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28 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

ERIN AMICO Age: 39 | CEO, Chicago Academy of Sciences/ Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum

or Erin Amico, intellectual curiosity, especially of the natural world, has always been part of her life. When she was a young person at the Latin School, it wasn’t unusual for her neurologist father to start discussions about a Scientific American article or a National Geographic special at the dinner table. She went on to get a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge and marveled that she was walking the same streets as Newton and Darwin. Since starting her new job at the helm of the Notebaert museum in July, Amico has been on a listening tour where, in one of her chats, she was pleasantly surprised to learn about Chicago’s vast biodiversity. “As someone who loves learning, that’s been really rewarding,” says the born-and-raised Chicagoan of meeting a host of museum stakeholders, from funders to volunteers. Susan Whiting, a nature museum board trustee and co-chair on the CEO search committee, was immediately struck by Amico’s positive energy.

Whiting says that while interviewing Amico, “It became clear that we had a match. Between the passion for the mission, a deep love of Chicago and the area, and also the skills and the leadership ability to take the institution into its next chapter.” Whiting says that she and the committee were impressed by Amico’s years of marketing, strategic branding and digital experience. One of Amico’s goals is to expand the museum’s audience through its growing digital platforms, including its Curious by Nature series. As chief marketing officer of P33, a local tech organization that aims to increase diversity in the sector, Amico reached over 1 million tech professionals in the U.S. through digital initiatives. Reflecting on the milestone of being the first Black woman to be CEO of the 165-year-old museum, Amico says she feels a “sense of duty to—as much as possible— try to be a role model to future generations of leaders, especially in institutions across Chicago.” —Trina Mannino

Chad Strader, left, and Nicholas Antoine

NICHOLAS ANTOINE AND CHAD STRADER Age: Antoine, 33, and Strader, 34 | Co-founders and co-CEOs, Red Arts Capital

had Strader and Nick Antoine met in the hallway of Ariel Investments, one of Chicago’s most prominent Black-owned financial services firms. Antoine was an analyst at asset manager Ariel, and Strader was at Chicago private-equity firm Woodlawn Partners. Strader wanted to meet Ariel founder and CEO John Rogers. Rogers wasn’t there that day, but Strader was introduced to Antoine, and the two became fast friends. Soon they were partners, launching Red Arts Capital seven years ago, a rarity as a 100% Black-owned privateequity firm. They acquire firms in the supply-chain and logistics industries, pursuing niche corners of that vast business like trucking outfits that deliver less-than-full loads on behalf of multiple business customers. Red Arts is raising its first full-fledged fund, aiming for $225 million, after selling its specialty trucking platform late last year for $150 million, making a gross return of

P021-P046_CCB_20221107.indd 28

740% over five years. Original investors as Antoine and Strader strove to prove their investment ideas would work included Rogers, famed asset manager Mario Gabelli and John Canning, perhaps Chicago’s best-known private-equity player as co-founder and chairman of Madison Dearborn Partners. Canning marvels at how the two young entrepreneurs convinced older owners of family-owned businesses in places like Arkansas to partner with them. “They seek mentors, and they use them,” Canning says. “They’re humble; they’re really honest. And they’ve thought of most questions (ahead of time).” Antoine is a self-described investment geek who took to the discipline as a teen growing up in New York City and New Jersey, devouring value investing guru Ben Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor” in high school and counting Warren Buffett as a hero.

Strader grew up in Georgia, the son of an entrepreneur who owned a car repair shop. He moved to New York out of college to take a job with PepsiCo and then obtained an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Antoine focuses on raising money and investment research, while Strader is more operations-oriented, working with portfolio companies on improving their businesses. “We really complement each other,” Antoine says. A Division I soccer player at Georgia Southern University, Strader grew enamored with financial services after reading “Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?” by Reginald Lewis, the first African American to close a billion-dollar leveraged deal abroad. “That was the light that went off for me,” he says. “He did exactly what my father did but on a much, much bigger scale.” —Steve Daniels

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RUBEN FLORESMARTINEZ Age: 31 | Founder and CEO, CashDrop

“HE EMBODIES SOMEONE WHO HAS INCREDIBLE RESILIENCE AND WHO HAS

BEATEN THE ODDS.”

P021-P046_CCB_20221107.indd 29

uben Flores-Martinez has been a scrappy entrepreneur since he was a kid in Guadalajara, Mexico, selling homemade freeze pops to people who came to the flea market near his house. These days, his business is helping other entrepreneurs, providing a smartphone app they can use to take payments. CashDrop, launched in 2020, has about 15,000 customers. Its appeal to small merchants is that the customer pays the processing fee: CashDrop gets a 5% cut of each transaction. “The vast majority of our growth has come from word of mouth and social media,” Flores-Martinez says. Replicas of bills of all denominations cover walls and tables throughout the company’s offices in a South Loop loft building. Neon signs adorn the walls, and there’s a barber’s chair and pole where the staff gets haircuts, which started out as a COVID-19 necessity. Flores-Martinez is as irrepressible as he is authentic, which has helped him raise $2.7 million in seed funding from a noteworthy list of investors, including Chicago tech CEO Mike Gamson, Bay Area investor Doug Pepper of Iconiq Capital and Miami restaurant and nightclub mogul Dave Grutman. “He’s compelling,” says Gamson, CEO of legal-software company Relativity and an active angel investor. “He embodies someone who has incredible resilience and who has beaten the odds.” Flores credits his parents, who were trained as chemical engineers but couldn’t put their skills to full use in Mexico. They moved to Milwaukee when he was in middle school. He thrived, graduating at the top of his high school class. He gave a commencement speech about the American dream, even though as an undocumented immigrant he couldn’t accept the college scholarships he was offered. While his girlfriend went to college, Flores-Martinez went to the library, teaching himself to code with YouTube videos. They soon married, and he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to study computer engineering. He left six credits shy of a diploma to launch his first startup. “After being denied an opportunity because of a piece of paper, I didn’t want to let another piece of paper dictate my future,” he says. —John Pletz

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30 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

“I GUESS I HAD AN INSECURITY ABOUT BEING

THE CEO’S KID. IT MADE ME WANT TO START MY OWN COMPANY.”

ANDREW SILVER Age: 32 | Co-founder and CEO, MoLo Solutions ndrew Silver is a little competitive. When he walks, Silver paces himself against strangers across the street, trying to beat them to the end of the block, even though they’re blissfully unaware of the imaginary race. When he had shoulder surgery over the summer, he started throwing darts with his other arm. Silver grew up in the trucking industry, working for his father, Jeff, at freight broker Coyote Logistics when he was 16 years old, signing up individual truck drivers to haul loads. After Coyote was acquired a decade later, the younger Silver launched his own firm, MoLo Solutions, with Matthew Vogrich. “My dad told me I shouldn’t do this because there’s going to be more consolidation and there wasn’t room for another new broker to really scale,” says Silver, the second-oldest of seven children, who recalls wrangling drivers while he was a student at the University of Michigan, ducking out of class to take their calls from the road. “I guess I had an insecurity about being the CEO’s kid. It made me want to start my own company.” In 2017, MoLo launched in a tiny space above a bar in River North with 20 desks jammed together. Eventually his father became an investor. Today, the company has grown to 650 employees and occupies two floors of space in a new office tower in Fulton Market. Revenue soared from $40 million in 2018 to $625 million in 2021, when MoLo was acquired for $235 million by ArcBest. If Silver can keep growing the company and hit certain financial targets, the price could nearly double. Despite multiple rounds of consolidation over the past three decades, the freight brokerage business remains fragmented, with more than 20,000 competitors. “Most companies tout their technology. Andrew led with people,” says Robby Nathan, who founded Load Delivered, a Chicago freight brokerage that sold for $100 million in 2018. “It was a different approach. Part of it was not listening to the noise. He built his own brand and company. You don’t grow a broker to $600 million unless you’re eating, drinking and sleeping logistics, which is what he did. He knows the business as well as anyone.” —John Pletz

Michael, left, and Thomas Elnick

THOMAS AND MICHAEL ELNICK Ages: 32 | Founders and co-CEOs, Tegus

homas and Michael Elnick are the identical twin brothers behind Tegus, one of Chicago’s fastest-growing companies, valued at over $3 billion. The next step, they say: taking the company public “in the not-so-distant future.” In seven years, the Elnicks have built an investment research company that goes beyond what investors can find on traditional investment terminals by combining publicly available information with user-generated insights from industry analysts, as well as customers and former company employees. The behind-the-scenes insights help investors and businesses make smarter, faster decisions. Tegus has more than 2,500 paying customers looking to glean insights from its database. The Elnicks credit Tegus’ success thus far to their strong working relationship, which has been strengthened by the fact that they’re brothers. “Any relationship, when you boil it down, truly—it comes down to trust,” Thomas says. The Elnicks and their two other siblings grew up in Long Island, N.Y., with a mother who worked as a teacher and a father who had “a million different jobs,” ranging from firefighter to IT professional. Michael and Thomas were competitive runners growing up, a hobby they’ve held onto. Michael and Thomas attended Brown University

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together, where they both studied economics. After graduation, Thomas worked on Wall Street at investment firm Overbrook Management, while Michael worked for AlphaSights, a London-based market research provider. But those jobs were short-lived. “What we realized after years in those roles was the research process for investors is broken,” Michael says. “It’s riddled with inefficiencies.” Thus, the idea for Tegus was born. “We quit our jobs on the same exact day,” Michael adds. Launched in 2016, Tegus has about $120 million from investors, and revenue is growing 190% year over year. “The headline success that they’ve had at an incredibly young age is amazing,” says Alex Wolf, managing partner at Partners Fund Capital, one of Tegus’ first investors. “What I admire most about Tom and Mike is they operate as executives with a level of maturity that’s so far beyond their years.” The Elnicks launched Tegus in New York and later made their way to the Bay Area before finding a permanent home for the company in Chicago in 2018 after realizing how affordable the city is while still offering deep talent pools. Now Tegus employs about 650 people. Do they ever mix up Michael and Thomas? “All the time,” they say. —Katherine Davis

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CONGRATULATIONS TO HONOREE

STEVE GROETSEMA, Ņƚų ĘĜåü kŞåų±ƋĜĹč kþÏåų

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EMMA TAI Age: 38 | Executive director, United Working Families

mma Tai began her career in politics in 2004, taking a semester away from Brown University to join Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, an experience that initially turned her off electoral politics but now animates her work as executive director of the socialist United Working Families party. It’s not that Kerry came up short, Tai says, but a feeling that she was tasked with selling voters on a candidate she believed wouldn’t follow through on his bold promises to improve their lives. Following a brief stint in California after college, Tai returned to her Midwest roots to lead a nonprofit focused on youth organizing before the “lifechanging” 2012 Chicago Teachers Union strike refocused her interest in politics. She helped then-CTU President Karen Lewis plan a mayoral run in 2015 before a cancer diagnosis prompted Lewis to step aside. Later gigs on progressive campaigns led her to United Working Families in 2016. Over the last six years, Tai has spearheaded a grassroots organizing effort that’s slowly become a force in Chicago politics, including helping nine United Working Families-endorsed candidates into the City Council in 2019 and culminating in a near-sweep for Northwest Side progressive candidates in the June primary, including State Sen. Delia Ramirez’s thrashing of Ald. Gilbert Villegas in the new, heavily Democratic 3rd Congressional District. Tai’s ability to organize a roughly $1.5 million national outside expenditure fundraising effort to match Villegas’ campaign cash was crucial to cementing Ramirez’s victory. Current CTU President Stacy Davis Gates describes Tai as “what’s now” in progressive politics. “If Emma’s at the table, there’s a greater chance that we win the election, but there’s a guarantee that we’re going to build more movement power, we’re going to build our party and we’re going to expand our umbrella,” she said. Tai is taking a senior role on Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson’s mayoral campaign, which will anchor a slate looking for more City Council seats for progressives. “Winning elections isn’t something that happens in a three-month electoral cycle; it’s something that happens through sustained organizing, the idea that if we do work together, things could be different,” she says. —Justin Laurence

ALI KHAN Age: 38 | Chief medical officer, Oak Street Health r. Ali Khan has his feet in two worlds, but he’s determined to make them walk in lockstep. Khan provides primary care for some of the sickest, most vulnerable people in the U.S., mostly lower-to-middle-income adults on Medicare, and often also on Medicaid. He’s also an executive at Oak Street Health, one of the highest-profile for-profit disruptors in the business, which in 2020 went public to much fanfare and big profits for him and his fellow executives. So he’s got to find a way to make money taking care of the target population. “I’m really driven by the challenges of the needs of the urban underserved,” he says. “They’re hit hard by economics, health status and access to health care, food insecurity, crime and how all those factors impact their health.” The way to attack the problem, he says, is to get smart, not to keep doing what hasn’t been working for decades. “For example, if I have an older female patient with a foot wound, not only should I have a podiatrist to care for her, and wound-care resources. I need to make sure we have a car seat available for her grand-

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child, who she’s also caring for, when we go out and pick her up for an appointment. Sometimes it’s as simple as a car seat.” For a diabetic patient, “You have to find ways for them to keep the electricity on, because then their insulin stays refrigerated and they manage their diabetes,” he says. This approach has helped lead to a 51% decrease in both ER visits and hospitalizations among patients who’ve been with Oak Street longer than a year. The work, he says, pays for itself. “We don’t limit people like health plans do,” Khan says. “We do things thoroughly. And when we do that consistently, by the end of the second year “we do very well, not just physically but financially.” Keeping patients out of the hospital leads to savings. His boss, Oak Street co-founder and CEO Mike Pykosz, says Khan talks to his fellow C-suiters, public health officials, doctors, staff and patients in the same respectful, caring way. “He’s incredibly good at moving between worlds,” Pykosz says. “This guy has deep clinical experience, understands the bigger health care picture and understands how this business works.” —Jon Asplund

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KIMBERLY SMITH Age: 30 | Director of programs, Crime & Education Lab, University of Chicago

SWEAT EQUITY AND PERSISTENCE “IT WAS KIM’S

THAT WORE DOWN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT TO GET TO THE POINT WHERE WE COULD BUILD (THE DASHBOARD).”

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hen the University of Chicago’s Crime & Education Lab was developing its Violence Reduction dashboard to provide near real-time data on violence trends in the city, police were worried about how the media would use the information and how access to that information may be perceived. But Kimberly Smith, director of programs at Crime Lab, worked with police, the mayor’s office and community organizers to brainstorm ideas for the dashboard. “It was Kim’s sweat equity and persistence that wore down the Police Department to get to the point where we could build (the dashboard),” said Roseanna Ander, executive director at the Crime & Education Lab, who works closely with Smith. Ander said that Smith’s dedication resulted in design sessions with community organizers who were instrumental in the dashboard’s interface when police didn’t have the technical capacity to produce what was needed. Today, the dashboard is widely heralded as an essential tool for all sorts of organizations. Community organizations use it to figure out which neighborhoods need the most resources and to hold policymakers accountable when they make statements about violence trends in the city. “It helps us to see if we missed anything; we get notified for every shooting in our districts that we work in,” says Teny Gross, executive director of the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago. Originally from Kingston, Jamaica, Smith was inspired by her family, who have worked in civil service and international organizations. She especially credits spirited conversations with her father, “a policy wonk and voracious reader.” A graduate of McGill University in Montreal, Smith worked in international development at Innovations for Poverty Action in New Haven, Conn. She came to UChicago in 2016 after being won over by the Crime & Education Lab’s focus on results in reducing violence. “The way that they talked about the work felt very different than how a lot of academics talk about the work,” she says. “Something that’s definitely kept me here is the kind of work we do in partnership with the people who are implementing these programs.” Smith’s new project—Choose to Change: Your Mind, Your Game—connects youth affected by violence and trauma with intensive advocate and wraparound services. —Corli Jay

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CRISTINA ROHR “I REALLY WANTED

A MISSION COMPONENT IN A SPACE I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT.”

AGE: 38 | Managing director of investments, S2G Ventures

orn of accomplished parents, a physician and an engineer, Cristina Rohr is drawing career inspiration from an older generation: Her grandparents were farmers in her native Romania, where she spent summers among corn and wheat fields on one side of the family and vegetable patches and vineyards on the other. “It’s full circle,” says the managing director at S2G Ventures in charge of an agriculture-oriented portfolio at the investment arm of Lukas Walton’s Builders Vision. Though not as well known as S2G’s consumer holdings like Beyond Meat and Sweetgreen, her seven companies are addressing climate-change, soil-preservation and food-security threats. She’s also working directly with Walton, a Walmart heir, on improving satellite-based ground sensing technology. Rohr migrated to the U.S. to attend Stanford University, majoring in mathematical and computational sciences and economics before becoming an analyst at Citigroup in London. After working for a private-equity firm, she returned here to get an MBA at the University of Chicago and then joined another PE firm before moving in 2018 to S2G. “I really wanted a mission component in a space I’m passionate about,” she says. One of Rohr’s missions is applying tech to reduce fertilizer and pesticide use. “A lot of the solutions that farmers have don’t work anymore, and they’re toxic,” she says. S2G’s food and agriculture group comprises about half of its $2 billion portfolio. Chuck Templeton, founder of OpenTable and an S2G managing director, says Rohr’s hiring wasn’t a cinch. “We were a little nervous because she had more of a PE background,” he says, contrasting it with S2G’s earlier-stage investing, where hits and misses are less predictable. Rohr, though, proved adept at gaining the trust of portfolio company CEOs, according to Walter Robb, an S2G senior executive partner and former Whole Foods co-CEO. One of Rohr’s steady relationships is with Trace Genomics. S2G has a 15% stake in the Californiabased biotech firm developing ways to combat soil depletion, says Trace CEO Dan Vradenburg. “Her interpersonal style is very good. You’re not going to get a hundred texts from her or a bunch of lengthy emails. She’s going to pick up the phone and call you,” he says. “We’ve had our tough discussions, too—(around) more revenue, more margin, less expense. The most important thing: She’s looking for solutions, rather than pointing out the problem.” —Steven R. Strahler

DANIEL KAY HERTZ Age: 35 | Director of policy, Chicago Department of Housing

aniel Kay Hertz recognizes the policy he’s crafting at the Chicago Department of Housing will one day be evaluated in the academic urban histories he’s spent much of his life immersed in. Hertz transitioned from researcher and author to the newly created role of director of policy at the revived Housing Department in 2019. At the time, he knew it would be a tough job. “We do not exist in a national policy environment that says housing is a human right or that every person deserves safe and stable housing,” he says now. “Everything we do is in that context, and that’s a pretty heavy current to be rowing against.” Now ensconced in his “dream job,” he can stamp his own imprint on a “housing market that has the government’s fingerprints all over it in a million different ways.” When Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara sought advice from Hertz—who had recently published “The Battle of Lincoln Park: Urban Renewal and Gentrification in Chicago” and worked as director of the Center for Tax & Budget Accountability— on who should fill the position, she was surprised he

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was interested in it himself. “I knew Daniel to be a skilled researcher and writer, and often people that have those skills may want to stay in an arena like a think tank and not get into the nitty-gritty of government,” she says. But Hertz has since embraced the “fundamental pragmatism” in government work, Novara says. “You can only go as far as 26 votes will get you,” and Hertz has excelled in getting a reluctant City Council on board with the department’s policy goals. The department has churned out a series of high-profile measures aimed at increasing affordability, decreasing segregation and slowing the pace of gentrification in Chicago neighborhoods, including an overhaul of the Affordable Requirements Ordinance and the Connected Communities Ordinance, approved in July, whose aim is to spark new developments with affordable units near hightransit corridors across the city. Hertz says he’s learned to appreciate the often-slow pace of government work while maintaining a “healthy level of frustration” to “push things as fast as can reasonably go.” —Justin Laurence

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JOHN OXTOBY Age: 38 | Senior vice president, Ariel Investments

“HE HAS THE ABILITY TO CONNECT WITH PEOPLE OF ALL SORTS.

THAT’S A SKILL.”

ohn Oxtoby has caught two waves in his relatively short career: the remarkable ascendancy of Barack Obama and the exponential growth of ESG investing. The born-and-bred Hyde Parker leads a team overseeing the risks and opportunities tied to environmental, social and governance concerns in Ariel Investments’ portfolios. Before joining the Chicago asset manager eight years ago, Oxtoby was a White House aide to Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s most trusted advisers. Son of David Oxtoby, former dean of physical sciences at the University of Chicago, former president of Pomona College and now president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, John Oxtoby has forged a reputation as something of an ESG guru. The Harvard Business School graduate teaches a popular course at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and lectures at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in its executive education program. ESG is meant to identify risks and opportunities at companies—how they navigate environmental challenges, how they treat employees and suppliers and the public, and their commitment to diversity at the board and executive levels as well as shareholder democracy. It’s not about screening out companies that are in the “wrong” industries. “It gets conflated with a more values-based approach to investing that is a different discipline,” Oxtoby says, and has become a political lightning rod as Republican governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas depict ESG as ideological and a way of punishing industries important to the economies of their states. Oxtoby points out that ESG is a young phenomenon and will change. He plans to remain a devotee and a practitioner. With no signs of the controversy over ESG waning, Oxtoby can rely on his people skills and smarts to remain a leading defender, Jarrett says. She recalls how, as a field organizer for the Obama campaign, Oxtoby became fast friends with actor Forest Whitaker, whom Oxtoby was driving to campaign events. Whitaker asked about Oxtoby recently, she says. “He has the ability to connect with people of all sorts,” she says. “That’s a skill.” —Steve Daniels

MAGGIE SCHMERIN Age: 38 | Head of global advertising and social media, United Airlines

hortly after Maggie Schmerin took over social media at United Airlines in 2019, her team pitched the idea of having a little fun with an announcement about a climate-sustainability initiative by removing the C’s, O’s and 2’s from the tweet. Not everyone got the joke immediately. The tweet looked like gibberish. Someone in Washington worried the airline’s Twitter account had been hacked. Schmerin didn’t flinch. After about 60 minutes, someone figured out the play on eliminating CO2 and tweeted in approval. “It drove a ton of conversation on Twitter that an announcement like that wouldn’t have otherwise gotten,” says her boss, Josh Earnest, United’s chief communications officer. “Maggie has a combination of a willingness to trust her instincts and take some risks combined with extraordinarily sound judgment.” United also trusts Schmerin with its money. She took over responsibility for United’s advertising in May 2020, with a budget estimated at $100 million a year, as the airline changed agencies and launched its first ma-

jor campaign, “Good Leads the Way” in May. It was an unconventional approach for a consumer company, focusing largely on its employees and culture. “Travel was selling itself,” she says. “We needed to sell United Airlines.” Schmerin grew up in Pittsburgh and studied public relations at Penn State, landing internships with NFL Films and the Manchester City soccer club. She got her start at a boutique PR firm in Washington, D.C., where she convinced a law firm to embrace social media by creating a blog that reviewed episodes of the “The Office” with an eye toward all the ways its characters violated labor laws. She came to United from Chicago PR firm Edelman, where she had done social media work for energy company Shell. “You have to wake up every day, looking at what other brands are doing and be like, ‘I want to do that.’ I want to get headlines. I want to have the moment of the day on social media or have the ad that gets picked up by Ad Age or Adweek.” Mission accomplished. —John Pletz

“MAGGIE HAS A COMBINATION OF A WILLINGNESS TO TRUST HER INSTINCTS AND TAKE SOME RISKS, COMBINED WITH EXTRAORDINARILY SOUND JUDGMENT.” P021-P046_CCB_20221107.indd 36

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JONG YOON LEE “THE FACT THAT I WOULD BE ABLE TO

Age: 27 | Co-founder and chief technology officer, Sibel Health

DIRECTLY IMPACT LIVES

fter graduating from the University of Illinois, Jong Yoon Lee was deciding between software jobs at companies like technology conglomerate IBM or signing on as a co-founder at a biotech startup spun out of the lab of prolific Northwestern inventor John Rogers. Lee chose the latter. “The fact that I would be able to directly impact lives really got me to the health care world,” says Lee, who was born in South Korea and immigrated to St. Louis in the first grade. Lee has been instrumental in developing Sibel Health’s wearable sensors, which allow physicians to remotely monitor vulnerable patients’ vitals— heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature and more. The tech can be deployed to adult patients at home, as well as to infants in neonatal intensive care units. Sibel’s sticker-like sensors are soft and flexible enough to prevent damaging premature babies’ delicate skin and wireless so parents can hold babies for crucial skin-to-skin contact. The wireless feature also allows the sensors to be used at home and in low-resource medical settings. Dr. Guilherme Sant’Anna, a physician and professor of pediatrics in the neonatal division at McGill University Health Center in Montreal, which has been piloting Sibel’s sensors on infants, described them as “game-changing.” “Care will be much easier for the nurses, and bonding will be much easier for parents,” he says. Lee is the key architect of the tech that powers Sibel’s sensors, which are approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for use on adults. Sibel’s neonatal sensors are undergoing the FDA approval process now; Northwestern Memorial and Lurie Children’s hospitals are also piloting them. “Jong Yoon was responsible for really all the software,” says Dr. Steve Xu, co-founder and CEO of Sibel. “He’s has been absolutely instrumental.” Lee joined Sibel as the firm’s principal software engineer and was promoted to vice president of software engineering; in June he was named chief technology officer. A trip to Zambia in 2019 to deploy Sibel’s tech to pregnant mothers was a validating experience for Lee, signaling he chose the right path. “Being in that environment and seeing how our technology is being deployed and impacting lives is very meaningful,” he says. —Katherine Davis

GOT ME TO THE HEALTH CARE WORLD.”

ALAINA HAMPTON Age: 33 | Political consultant

our years after Alaina Hampton faced career-threatening political backlash for filing a harassment lawsuit against an aide to indicted former House Speaker Michael Madigan, she led the campaign of a reformer seen as a threat by those who benefited most from the old machine. Even as friends and the elected officials she would normally work for as a campaign consultant “iced her out” of Illinois politics until she eventually settled a 2018 federal lawsuit against political spending committees controlled by Madigan, Hampton says now that she never thought about decamping for another industry. “I really wanted to persevere and get through it,” she says. “I think a lot of people accepted that I would never be able to work in Illinois politics again, and that’s what I wanted to prove wrong.” She did. Hampton led the re-election campaign of Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi, securing a Democratic primary win in June over Kari Steele, which all but assures Kaegi a second term in the deep blue county.

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“She proved her mettle in this campaign and came out brilliantly,” Kaegi says. “I felt like she was on top of the big issues and that I’m going to let her manage the campaign and I’m going to go around where I’m told.” Hampton says it’s “ironic and kind of funny” that a kid who grew up listening to her downstate Republican family rail against “how corrupt Illinois politics was” eventually found herself “working in the heart of the Chicago machine.” Now in Egypt attending a graduate program at the American University in Cairo, Hampton anticipates she’ll eventually return to local politics, where she plans to take the skills she learned at the school of Madigan to “help people rather than using them to hurt people in this corrupt system that has been created,” she says. Kaegi jokes that Hampton’s time in Egypt is “sort of like Bruce Wayne going to Tibet and coming back as Batman.” “I think she will be back in the world of campaigns,” he says. “She will make her mark again here.” —Justin Laurence

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38 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

KAILI EMMRICH Age: 36 | Head of North America, Google for Startups

WHEN EMMRICH SAW THE PANDEMIC WAS MAKING THE

LONELINESS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP EVEN WORSE, GOOGLE HIRED THERAPISTS.

hen startup founders need help, from money to mental health services, they can count on Kaili Emmrich. She leads Google for Startups in North America, which is the tech giant’s program to help underrepresented entrepreneurs build companies. The support originally focused on training and partnerships, but when the pandemic hit, startup founders needed cash to stay alive. “So many of the founders we were supporting at the time saw their revenues go to zero overnight,” Emmrich says. The result was the Black Founders fund, which provides $5 million annually. This year, Google added a fund for Latino entrepreneurs. Founders receive $100,000 grants without giving up ownership in their companies. The company says 176 founders in North America have used Google’s $20 million to raise an additional $140 million. When Emmrich saw that the pandemic was making the loneliness of entrepreneurship even worse, Google hired therapists. Nearly half the founders started going to weekly therapy. “She understands our issues and our day-to-day struggles,” says Luis Suarez, founder of Sanarai, a Chicagobased startup that provides remote mental health services for Spanish speakers. Emmrich, who joined Google’s search-advertising business in Silicon Valley in 2008, helped launch the company’s project to support minority founders a decade ago. “It was basically a startup inside of Google,” she says. The program launched overseas before coming to the U.S. in 2020. She joined Google straight out of college, seeing an opportunity to get into the tech industry. Emmrich grew up in Annapolis, Md., the oldest of four girls, and earned a scholarship to Vanderbilt University. Her father was an entrepreneur, running an assortment of small businesses. In college, Emmrich discovered how important small businesses are to emerging economies when she traveled to Uganda and helped entrepreneurs export their products. “That was the spark for me,” she says over tacos at a favorite restaurant in Pilsen, where she moved from San Francisco five years ago. “I realized that small businesses and startups were the companies getting things done.” Emmrich—whose husband, Ben, is a startup founder— says she might one day take the entrepreneurship plunge herself. —John Pletz

ERIK JENSEN Age: 33 | CEO, Home Chef

n between earning an engineering degree and working at the prestigious Boston Consulting Group, Erik Jensen went to culinary

school. He didn’t know it then, but that cooking knowhow would end up being key to Jensen’s ascent to CEO of Home Chef, a Chicago-based food and meal kit company that last year, under his leadership, passed $1 billion in revenue and trails only Hello Fresh in the industry hierarchy. That wasn’t the case when Jensen joined in late 2015. He was roughly the 30th employee. Home Chef was sending out 2,000 meal kits a week and duking it out among an onslaught of similar companies that have since failed. Jensen led the culinary team—the one that built the menus—and was instrumental in making sure everything was approachable to the average consumer. He’d bring in customers to prepare the meals in front of Home Chef’s chefs, to show them how long it really took to dice an onion. (Jensen also squeezed in a three-month stint as a prep chef at Michelin-starred Madera in Menlo Park, Calif., after undergrad, so he knew how fast a pro could dice.)

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Jensen’s culinary credibility helped bridge the gap between Home Chef’s business and food needs, says Nathan Baldwin, the former Home Chef COO who hired Jensen. “A lot of the chefs were Michelin trained,” he says. “Erik understood that world, but also got that we were serving Americans groceries.” Home Chef’s revenue was $250 million in 2016, the year after Jensen joined. Kroger bought the company in 2018, paying $200 million up front with the potential for an additional $500 million over five years. Jensen took over new product development and retail, which has catapulted Home Chef’s growth. Retail now has over 500 products across 2,400 Kroger stores—and differentiates Home Chef in the fast-expanding meal kit market. Beyond meal kits, Kroger’s stores—including Mariano’s—are stocked with Home Chef’s precooked proteins, fresh meal kits, oven-ready meals and more. Retail sales comprise just less than half of the company’s revenue. Jensen, who’s been CEO for about a year, is not done. “We have got to continue to innovate,” he says. “That’s the future of Home Chef.” —Ally Marotti

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PEOPLE SAY THAT BERES’ NETWORKING SKILLS AND PUBLIC-POLICY INTERESTS WILL STEER HIM TOWARD

PUBLIC OFFICE.

UNDER

FORTY

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS 2022

DREW BERES Age: 39 | Founding partner, Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres

rew Beres’ advertising exec father would dress him in a coat and tie and take the 5-year-old to lunch in the Wrigley Building’s 410 Club. Beres now does summertime business meetings sockless, but corporate and possibly political ambition lives on in the lawyer who grew up in the John Hancock Center and is building out boutique legal firm Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres. An admirer of Lyndon Johnson for “his will, his drive,” Beres did stints at City Hall before and after law school, working for Daley chief of staff Ron Huberman and as general counsel to city Treasurer Kurt Summers. When Huberman was anointed CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Beres went with him as “chief of stuff,” concentrating on violence reduction in a system where 200 students were being shot each year. A Boston Consulting Group regression analysis helped identify the 180 most-vulnerable CPS students, who were hooked up with mentors. Huberman says shootings declined 30% the second year, praising Beres’ ability to navigate the bureaucracy and

Q & A with Drew Beres

figure out the right relationships across the city and build on them. “He was always listening,” concurs former Fenger Academy High School principal Liz Dozier. “He was like a grinder.” Beres was 23 when his father, Louis, died of a brain tumor, and after he eulogized banker Peter Fasseas earlier this year as a role-model substitute, “people have said, ‘Does he go for hire?’ ” according to Fasseas’ widow, Paula Fasseas. Another beacon was the “Man to See” lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, whom Beres never met but saw as a larger-than-life counselor who weaved political, business and public relations strategy into legal advice. “I think it’s hard to pull that off at a big firm,” says the Kirkland & Ellis alum who started Croke Fairchild, now at 60some mainly transactional lawyers, with other Big Law ex-pats in 2019. People say that Beres’ networking skills and public-policy interests will steer him toward public office. “Honest to God, I’m not thinking about it,” he says. He’s already been student body president at St. Ignatius College Prep. —Steven R. Strahler

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Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres

Drew Beres co-founded Croke Fairchild Duarte & Beres to create a law firm focused on what matters most — the client. Nearly three years and many successful clients later, CFDB has grown into a 57-lawyer firm performing at the top of its game and serving innovative clients across a variety of industries. And with commitment to diversity and inclusion front and center in its recent certification as a Women-Owned Business Enterprise, CFDB is packed with talent and poised to thrive in the future of law.

CRAIN’S: Why start your own firm? BERES: My dad dropped out of law school at Northwestern University and eventually started his own ad agency. When I was young, he would take me to the office. So, I always had that drive to build something with others that we could call our own and that would enable us to practice law in a very specific way that was driven by forging strong partnerships with clients. Our firm is relationship driven, not transactional. We forge exceptionally close relationships with our clients. They view us as part of their internal team and consult with us on a wide variety of issues and opportunities. CRAIN’S: What’s your greatest accomplishment? BERES: My dad died in 2006 and had regretted not finishing law school. This was a huge motivating factor for me. So, when I graduated from Northwestern’s law school, I had both of our names put on my diploma. It means a lot to me and it would have meant a lot to him. I’m also really proud that our firm has been able to attract a very high caliber of talented people. CRAIN’S: What’s you biggest challenge? BERES: Finding balance. We strive to build in the processes and administrative support so everyone can do their jobs while maintaining our culture of entrepreneurship and creativity.

back and know you did everything you could to succeed. You have to be solely focused on the task at hand. CRAIN’S: What’s next? BERES: We will continue to build this firm to realize its potential. We have lofty goals. lt takes total dedication and every ounce of energy to create what we’re building here and to perform at the highest levels. We will continue to be relentless. CRAIN’S: How would you describe your leadership style? BERES: I am very fortunate to be leading our firm along with three other partners who are each very close personal friends of mine. There is a level of trust that is truly remarkable and it allows us to take risks that we otherwise may not be able to. Our style is exceptionally collaborative – we make major decisions as a group and are supportive of one another. That approach certainly leads to lively debates – we welcome that – but we strive to get to the right result. Our style is also fully transparent in seeking feedback from the entire firm. Our review process allows anyone at Croke Fairchild to provide an evaluation for anyone else, totally devoid of hierarchy. I don’t think many law firms take that approach.

CRAIN’S: Any advice for young professionals? BERES: Lyndon Johnson is a big hero of mine. He had a saying about campaigning, “If you do everything, you’ll win.” You want to be able to look

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STEVE GROETSEMA Age: 37 | Chief operating officer and partner, Bridge Industrial

“HIS RAPPORT WITH HIS TEAMMATES WAS OUTSTANDING. HE WAS A VERY MATURE

teve Groetsema’s success in business comes as no surprise to Norm Eash, his former football coach at Illinois Wesleyan University, where Groetsema was a linebacker and team captain. “His rapport with his teammates was outstanding. He was a very mature, cerebral type of captain,” Eash says. “I could always count on him.” Groetsema assumed another leadership role in March 2019, when he took over as chief operating officer at Bridge Industrial, a Chicago-based real estate developer. It’s the only company Groetsema has worked for since college, starting there as an analyst less than two weeks after his 2007 graduation. He remembers his first day well, mainly because of what happened after work: He and his future wife, Suzi, went out on their first official date. Since then, Bridge has distinguished itself as one of the fastest-growing industrial developers in the Chicago area, capitalizing on a booming market for warehouse space. Once just a meat-and-potatoes business lacking the glamour of office buildings, shopping malls and hotels, industrial property has become the “it” sector in the real estate market, lifted in recent years by the rise of e-commerce. Groetsema has spent most of his career working on transactions, but now that he’s COO, he’s busy managing people. “People ask me, ‘Do I miss (doing deals?)’ And I do. I’m a deal junkie just like everybody else,” he says. “But this role has taught me a side of the business that I would not have had otherwise, and I think I’m good at it because I’m energized by people, and it’s been an awesome opportunity to continue growing at the only company I have ever worked for.” Bridge has grown a lot in three years, with a workforce of about 130, up from 25 when Groetsema became COO. The firm has properties from California to Great Britain, but the Chicago area, where it has developed or acquired more than 21 million square feet of space, is its biggest market. Groetsema, who grew up in La Grange Park, attributes his success to hard work, good luck and the support of his mentor Steve Poulos, Bridge’s co-founder and CEO. Poulos has been like a father to Groetsema, who was a junior in college when he lost his dad to a heart attack. “The lessons I have learned from him I have applied in every aspect of my life,” he says. —Alby Gallun

CEREBRAL TYPE OF CAPTAIN.”

PRANAV GOKHALE Age: 29 | Vice president of software, ColdQuanta

hen Pranav Gokhale finished his doctorate in just three years, it was the fastest anyone had earned a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Chicago. He followed it up by launching a startup, Super. tech, which was acquired after just two years. Gokhale is a star in quantum computing, the idea of harnessing the properties of quantum physics to unlock the next massive leap in performance as traditional computing hardware approaches the physical limitations of microelectronics. “He’s by far the most productive grad student I’ve had in 25 years,” says U of C professor Fred Chong, Gokhale’s Ph.D. adviser and co-founder of Super. tech, now a unit of Boulder, Colo.-based ColdQuanta. “He won three best-paper awards. Most students don’t win one.” Super.tech built software that can be used to write quantum programs in any type of source language, which could speed up the development of quantum applications. It also makes software used to benchmark various quantum computing systems, as well as algorithms for quantum computing. Among its customers are Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories.

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Gokhale got interested in quantum computing in middle school, before many scientists knew what it was, when he talked his way into the National Institute of Standards & Technology in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Bethesda, Md. It had one of the first quantum systems, which he wanted to use for his science fair project. He interned at NIST in high school. Gokhale answered questions about quantum computing on Quora, where he later interned and worked as a software engineer after he graduated from Princeton University. He might have become an academic or policy wonk (he also interned at the Federal Trade Commission) if not for a college field trip to Silicon Valley, where he met PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and legendary Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr. When he’s not working on quantum computing problems at Super.tech offices in Hyde Park, Gokhale sometimes indulges his appetite for Neapolitan-style pizza at nearby Nella Pizza e Pasta. He’s a pizza aficionado who several years ago traveled to Italy, where he and some friends hired an interpreter and went to pizza school. “I’m a person who likes to do things on vacation,” he says. —John Pletz

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BLAKEANTHONY JOHNSON Age: 32 | CEO, Chicago Sinfonietta

“HE’S KIND OF A

MAGICAL UNICORN IN A LOT OF DIFFERENT WAYS.”

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ou cannot miss the diversity at a Chicago Sinfonietta concert. The orchestra, run by Blake-Anthony Johnson, was founded on principles of inclusivity 35 years ago and has successfully brought diversity to every aspect of the symphonic world where it is possible to express it: among the instrumentalists, the composers on the program and, most strikingly, in the audience, where other classical-music organizations have struggled. Only a year ago, however, did Johnson institute a program to increase economic diversity, a less obvious narrowness in the classical-music sphere. The Pay What You Can program offers tickets for as little as $5. Johnson came into arts administration from the performance side—he calls himself a “cellist by training, CEO by circumstance.” He credits renowned musician Michael Tilson Thomas, his mentor at Miami-based young-players ensemble New World Symphony, for conducting him in this direction. “People like to get linear descriptions of their career, and mine has not been like that. It’s been far more geometric,” he says. Tasks leading projects as a player led to administrative roles within his orchestra, then to consulting, and then to full-time administration. Even now, he keeps his bow hand active teaching at Roosevelt University. He took over as CEO of the Sinfonietta in early 2020, when he was still 29. He added the title of president this year. The budget has doubled since Johnson started, the staff has significantly expanded, and the Chicago Sinfonietta will be the resident orchestra of the Auditorium Theatre next season. Johnson serves on numerous boards and councils, including the Cultural Advisory Council at the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, providing perspectives as a member of the classical-music industry, an arts practitioner and a person of color, a rare combination. “He’s kind of a magical unicorn in a lot of different ways,” says Erin Harkey, commissioner of DCASE. “Men of color leading arts organizations in the city—there are not a lot of them.” Johnson says when he introduced himself as the CEO of the Chicago Sinfonietta in Portland, Ore., a music lover was moved to tears by what the orchestra’s history of inclusion has meant. “I want everyone in the city to feel that,” he says. “(The Sinfonietta) is not just a place to celebrate, but also a refuge for access to the world through the arts.” —Graham Meyer

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DIVEY GULATI AND DHRUV SAXENA Age: Gulati, 34 | Co-founder and president, ShipBob | Age: Saxena, 35 | Co-founder and CEO, ShipBob

ight years ago, tech engineers Dhruv Saxena and Divey Gulati had a lucrative side hustle framing and shipping photos for college students, but they had to endure long lines at the post office to mail their packages. Waiting in line during their lunch hours at various North Side locations, they chatted with other e-commerce entrepreneurs similarly frustrated by the long waits. “That’s how the idea of ShipBob came about,” Gulati says. “Why do we need to stand in line?” The partners figured they could help small and midsize e-commerce businesses by developing an automated fulfillment platform, establishing warehouses to hold their inventory, and then packaging and shipping

orders as they are booked online. The partners are now running one of the area’s fastest-growing businesses, with sales of $215.3 million last year. The partners are lifelong friends from New Delhi. After high school, they arrived for college in the Midwest—Saxena at Purdue University and Gulati at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The friends say they complement each other’s skills, with Saxena focusing on the more “creative” disciplines of sales, products and engineering, and Gulati homing in on operations, finance and data. ShipBob enjoyed a big lift during the pandemic, as small businesses moved their brick-and-mortar offer-

Dhruv Saxena, left, and Divey Gulati

DEBORAH WITZBURG Age: 39 | Inspector general, city of Chicago

s a young assistant Cook County state’s attorney, Deborah Witzburg says she learned a lot of things about the law and how it can play a crucial role in civil life. The most important: not only can one person make a difference, but “you can make a difference from within the system.” The trick is to get insiders to talk. If they don’t, “the system remains broken.” Witzburg’s job is to get them to talk and to use what she learns to enable systemic change. Chicago badly needs that, she says. “The city of Chicago operates within deficit of legitimacy. It’s a decades-old problem.” As inspector general—the city’s top internal cop—Witzburg is in a unique position to do something about that. Though she worked for former IG Joe Ferguson, heading his police reform unit, Witzburg is clear that her priorities will be a little different. She won’t emphasize the forensic reviews of the city’s financing and catching the pocket-stuffers that were Ferguson’s stock in trade, she says, but, “this is an opportunity to do something differently to capitalize on the enormous strengths of the office and modernize

some of the things we’re doing.” Job one is improving relations between police and ordinary citizens. That’s a complex, highly emotional snake pit of conflicting special interests, but Witzburg believes the office can offer a middle ground of responsible steps to make progress. Another priority is campaign finance reform, the lack thereof that has contributed to the conviction of numerous city officials in the past half-century for improperly mixing politics, government and greed. Witzburg doesn’t get specific, commenting only that, for Chicago really to turn a corner, it must end “the perception that City Hall is for sale.” Ferguson says Witzburg’s the right woman for the job. “She’ll bring aboard new modalities to get us out of the hard place we’re in,” he says. Witzburg, a mother of two, insists she’s optimistic. Maybe it’s that, in a town in which the White Sox have again flamed out, she’s a lifelong Red Sox fan. If she’s half as successful as the Boston team traditionally is, Chicago will be pleased. —Greg Hinz

ings online. “That accelerated the adoption of e-commerce,” Saxena says. With market pressures for faster delivery times, ShipBob is an attractive option for merchants “who don’t want to be fully beholden to Amazon,” says Andrew Straub, investment director at SoftBank Investment Advisors, which led a $68 million Series D funding in 2020. SoftBank also participated in last year’s $200 million Series E fundraising led by Bain Capital Ventures, which boosted the young company’s capital to more than $300 million. With ShipBob’s 10th anniversary coming up in 2024, is an acquisition or IPO on the horizon? “They’re in a great spot where both of those will be options,” Straub says. —Judith Crown

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A.J. PATTON Age: 37 | CEO, 548 Capital

“I HAVE

LIVED EXPERIENCE THAT I’M APPLYING TO MY WORK.”

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rowing up in public housing in Terre Haute, Ind., A.J. Patton learned the painful reality of how a few bills could torpedo a family’s finances. When he was about 14, Patton’s mother, who was making $10 an hour as a cafeteria worker, got a $400 gas bill. “Our gas got shut off, and I had to boil water (on the electric stove) to take a bath.” There’s a straight line between that experience and Patton’s first development project in Chicago, the rehab of three mixed apartment/commercial buildings on 79th Street, where solar power other energy-efficiency adaptations should yield at least a one-third reduction in energy bills for the 54 tenants. “I have lived experience that I’m applying to my work,” says Patton, who named his privately funded firm, 548 Capital, after the unit number of the Terre Haute apartment where his mom raised him and his two sisters. Patton has several other projects in various stages, all of them with an energy-efficiency component. They include South Side six-flats rehabbed for energy efficiency; 60 units of housing and a grocery store built to energy-sipping passive-house standards on a West Humboldt Park site; conversion of an old commercial building in Bronzeville to 50 partially solar-powered lofts; and, in partnership with megadeveloper Related Midwest, a solarpowered 302,000-square-foot industrial and training center on Roosevelt Road in North Lawndale. David Carlins, CEO of Magellan, a major downtown development firm, befriended Patton after they both spoke on a panel, and they hatched a joint venture. Although it didn’t move forward, Carlins said Patton’s embrace of energy efficiency is infectious. “There’s obviously a big green movement, and capital wants to invest in green projects,” Carlins said. “A.J. knows how these projects pencil out better than we do, and if it’s close around the edges, people are always going to do something that’s for the greater good. He’ll bring in meaningful projects.” Patton also wants to be a conduit for contractors of color, hiring skilled workers who live in the communities where 548’s projects are. “Don’t get stuck on what A.J. is doing,” Patton says. “Look at the 12 other businesses that get their break because of it. That’s where I get chesty. I’m proud we get to create opportunities for others.” —Dennis Rodkin

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BRADLEY AKUBUIRO Age: 33 | Partner and Chicago office head, Bully Pulpit Interactive

radley Akubuiro was five months into a new job as media spokesman for Pratt & Whitney’s military engines business when a malfunction during a test run caused a fire that destroyed the jet. The pilot was safe, but Akubuiro had the job of reassuring skittish customers. “People are looking for stability,” Akubuiro says. “You don’t have all the answers. But people need to have confidence in you to get them the right solution.” Today Akubuiro is partner and Chicago office head of communications agency Bully Pulpit Interactive, or BPI, a 250-person agency founded by onetime leaders of former President Barack Obama’s campaigns. Akubuiro counsels CEOs and corporate leaders on diversity and inclusion, and how to engage on contentious social issues such as abortion. Clients include McDonald’s, Goldman Sachs and Aon. While studying journalism at Northwestern University, he attended a press conference led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and saw an opportunity to make a connection. He approached Jackson and grabbed him by the shoulder, which mobilized the reverend’s security detail. But Jackson allowed the student to make his pitch, and Akubuiro went on to conduct policy research for the Rainbow Push Coalition on education, violence prevention and immigration reform. That launched a career in advocacy and communications. Akubuiro was recruited to BPI from Boeing, where as chief spokesman and head of global media relations he handled the 2020 return to service of the 737 Max after two fatal crashes. That job also came to include counseling the public on the safety of flying during COVID-19 and addressing the reckoning on race following George Floyd’s murder. Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary during the Obama administration and senior counsel at BPI, says Akubuiro exudes the calm that is essential in counseling top management. “You can pick up the phone and hear anything from something quite good to quite bad on the other end, and I don’t feel like it impedes his ability to go to work,” Gibbs says. “That steadiness is remarkable, and it’s not something you can teach.” —Judith Crown

TONY IANNESSA Age: 37 | CEO, BIG Construction

Vivid Seats headquarters in the redeony Iannessa’s path to runveloped Marshall Field Building. ning his own construction firm When office business dried up early building out offices for some of in the COVID-19 pandemic, Iannesthe city’s most recognizable companies sa pivoted to building out interiors for started when he lost his job. health care, life sciences and cannabis After rising over six years from projcultivation companies and put 31-emect manager to become the youngest ployee BIG on track for $100 million in vice president in the history of Chicasales this year—up from $70 million in go-based builder Leopardo, Iannessa SPONSORED 2019, he says. was let go in 2016 as he sought a higher VIDEO The Indiana University graduate, role—“I was not meant to be an emDiscover how who credits scale models displayed by ployee,” as the River Forest native puts Tony Iannessa TV architect Mike Brady of “The Brady it—and soon after got suburban generbecame the leader Bunch” with sparking his interest in al contractor Builtech Services to back he is today. real estate development, says BIG has him in a new office build-out venture, thrived by finding ways to work around Builtech Interiors Group. historic supply chain delays and skyIannessa spent the next few years riding the wave of tech companies expanding and rocketing materials costs in an industry dominated sprucing up their downtown workspace, building by established players that can be inflexible. “It’s a client roster for his rebranded BIG Construction about saying yes, we’ll figure it out,” Iannessa says. Iannessa expects corporate offices to rethat includes Grubhub, Motorola, Vivid Seats, Camain BIG’s core business, but the firm is poised reerBuilder and Grant Thornton, among others. Iannessa is a “distinguished industry veteran to play a key role in the build-out of life sciand one who we trusted to oversee the important ences lab space around the city through Heinvestment we were making in our talent,” said Viv- lix Construction, a joint venture he formed last id Seats CEO Stan Chia, who worked with Iannessa year with San Francisco-based lab space conon a 2015 office expansion as then-CEO of Grub- struction specialist GCI General Contractors. hub and recently hired BIG to build out the new —Danny Ecker

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 45

MIKE LAVITOLA Age: 35 Co-founder and CEO, Foxtrot

“HE REALLY IDENTIFIED A VOID IN THE MARKET AND

ADDRESSED IT.”

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ike LaVitola can’t decide which Foxtrot item is his favorite. There’s cookie butter gelato that’s so great he describes it with an expletive, giardiniera he puts on his homemade pizza. He’s mulling this over while sipping one of the upscale convenience store’s Green Goddess smoothies. LaVitola’s indecision proves a point. He’s Foxtrot’s CEO and co-founder, sure, but he’s also a Chicago resident and new dad of twins who wants good, local products at his fingertips. “I was and still am squarely the target market,” he says, sitting on the patio of Foxtrot’s newer Fulton Market location. “I just thought it was crazy something like this didn’t exist, especially in a city like Chicago where there’s just amazing food and drink everywhere.” LaVitola was on the path to a career in private equity. He drew up Foxtrot’s business plan while attending the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, and his career trajectory started to turn. He launched Foxtrot as deliveryonly in 2014. The first shop opened in 2015 on Lake Street in Fulton Market. LaVitola said that was mainly to get around laws that prohibited delivering alcohol from a warehouse. That “cheap, under-the-traintrack lease” ended up being a game changer, LaVitola says. The former meatpacking district was undergoing major change, and Foxtrot rode the wave. “People were coming in the morning and grabbing espresso and working there during the day, and asking to crack open bottles of wine after work,” he says. “That was the big aha moment.” By using brick-and-mortar locations as fulfillment centers for online orders, Foxtrot has exploded. It expects to have 30 locations by the end of the year, add 20 more next year, then double store count and revenue annually, LaVitola says. He declined to disclose revenue. The plan is to add one new market a year and expand in existing markets. LaVitola was early in understanding people’s desire for convenience, says Matt Menna, an early Foxtrot investor and developer Sterling Bay’s managing principal and chief design officer. “People don’t have time when they are preparing for a party and they’re short two bottles of wine and some cheese and crackers and they can’t leave,” he says. “He really identified a void in the market and addressed it.” —Ally Marotti

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GERARDO GARCIA Age: 39 | Deputy commissioner, Chicago Department of Planning & Development

rowing up in Little Village, the son of a small-business owner and a school aide, Gerardo Garcia developed an acute sense of inequity in the built environment. “In this awesome community I lived in, the great commercial corridor was 26th Street,” Garcia says, harking back to the theme he chose for his college entrance essay. Measured by retail sales, “it was second only to Michigan Avenue, but it didn’t look like Michigan Avenue.” As deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Planning & Development, Garcia has a big role in correcting the inequity. He’s leading the department’s work on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Invest South/ West initiative, a dedicated effort to direct new funding, programs and architecture to the most divested parts of Chicago. Garcia heads a team of 20 planners in the effort. “As a child of Little Village, all Gerardo ever wanted to do was use his talents to lift it up,” said Maurice Cox, commissioner of planning and development, “and in walks Mayor Lightfoot’s Invest South/West to give him the way to do that.” Garcia has been at City Hall for 11 years, long before Invest South/West rolled out in 2019. He was also instrumental in developing the West Loop Design Guidelines that were meant to keep the booming neighborhood from looking like suburban sprawl gone vertical. “Open space, access to daylight, widened sidewalks,” Garcia says, “they’re amenities for the community that can be lost with rapid development. We saw an opportunity to use design to contribute to a healthy and positive public realm.” Garcia was also instrumental in the city’s effort to landmark a 1.5-square-mile swath of Pilsen as a bulwark against gentrification, a proposal the city later dropped when it met with widespread backlash. In 2021, Garcia recruited many of the 24 members of the city’s new Committee on Design, where architects (such as Jeanne Gang) and other industry figures (such as Theaster Gates) provide peer review of development proposals. “Every major city we researched had some sort of peer review process,” Garcia says. “Chicago didn’t, and I can’t explain why. If we want to have world-class designs in the city, we need to have peer review.” —Dennis Rodkin

TRACY BRITT COOL Age: 38 | Co-founder, Kanbrick

racy Britt Cool’s story is the stuff of business legend. Raised on a Kansas farm, she convinced Warren Buffett to hire her straight out of Harvard Business School and was quickly pegged at Berkshire Hathaway as a protege of the Oracle from Omaha. Along with fellow Berkshire alum Brian Humphrey, in 2020 Britt Cool launched a private-equity firm, Kanbrick, based in Bucktown. The firm invests in midsize, often family-owned businesses where the family or founders frequently want to continue to be involved. The strategy carries echoes of Buffett’s past as a favored acquirer of large businesses owned by uber-wealthy families like the Pritzkers. But Britt Cool is quick to distinguish Kanbrick from Berkshire and not just in the size of its acquisition targets. She and Humphrey will be directly involved in the companies they acquire, she told the New York Times, unlike Buffett, who prefers a more hands-off approach to Berkshire’s holdings. Kanbrick has acquired two companies so far. It plans to buy one or two per year, Britt Cool says. But she’s aligned in a different way with Buffett, whose belief in the conglomerate holds, even as

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much of corporate America has ditched that structure so prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s. In a similarly contrarian vein, her private-equity approach differs from most in the business, which seek to sell their investments in five years or so at a substantial gain. “When we talked to founders and owners and families, there wasn’t really a great home for many of them,” she says. “They wanted a longer-term home. They wanted an alternative to traditional private equity or a strategic buyer. They wanted a partner who had actually run a business and understood what it meant to operate a company versus a pure investor who’d only been in boardrooms.” Britt Cool’s pedigree as an operator comes from her five years as CEO of Addison-based Pampered Chef, a Berkshire-owned company that had created a modernized Tupperware party experience for kitchen products. After taking over in 2014, she revitalized a company that had stumbled as social media made in-person gatherings less popular. During the pandemic, Britt Cool moved with her husband and three sons to Nashville, Tenn.; she keeps a home here as well. —Steve Daniels

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New hospital CEOs face cost, labor issues HOSPITAL CEOs from Page 3 influential hospital systems in this region face as much turnover as they face right now, specifically at the top of the house,” says Josh Crist, a co-managing partner at Chicago-based Crist Kolder Associates, an executive search firm that has recruited for local hospitals. “It’s extremely unusual.” Turnover at local chains reflects a nationwide resurgence in hospital CEO exits, which plunged 18% to a recent low of 99 in 2020 as leaders stayed put during the first year of COVID-19, according to executive outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. So far this year, 77 hospital CEOs have left, up 13% from 68 during the same period of 2021. Crist blames the turnover on the same factor that has driven many front-line workers out of the profession: exhaustion after the long COVID-19 siege. “There are a lot of people that are stretched thin within the executive ranks of the health care profession these days,” he explains. “We have heard the word ‘burnout’ too often.”

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Dr. Mark Anderson

raising pay and offering bonuses, expanding telehealth services and extolling their values and culture to mission-driven workers. Some institutions have also eased hiring standards to CAREER OPPORTUNITIES prop up shrinking staffs. Rush declines to disclose CAREER OPPORTUNITIES 2022 revenue projections, but Lateef predicts “Rush will do well this year,” while acknowledging that inflation is pushing up costs. The three-hospital chain and medical school also has about 1,200 open positions to fill, from medical assistants to nurses and respiratory therCAREER OPPORTUNITIES apists. To fill the openings, Rush is advertising opportunities available boosting pay, but wouldn’t disclose by exactly how much, and To advertise contact urging workers to “buy into” Suzanne Janik at Rush’s mission of offering equitable care to Chicagoans. sjanik@crain.com “In the short term, we’re all (313) 446-0455 going to grapple for labor and have to make do,” Lateef says. UNCERTAINTY Over the long term, Rush will Hospital CEOs are handing Chicagoland’s latest over the reins at a time of great lean on its university to train business news and events. stress and uncertainty for these health care workers and bolessential institutions. Inflation ster its pipeline. Lateef says the ChicagoBusiness.com is driving up hospitals’ costs health system will also streamline patient visits and boost efas federal Ad Age is seeking a reporter to cover the advertising agency COVID business.relief money ficiency with more telehealth thatand helped them The focus will be on breaking news, uncovering trends working with get through CAREER OPPORTUNITIES services. the issues. worst You’ll of COVID a team to dig out and write feature stories on industry also runs out. At UChicago Medicine, Dr. Meanwhile, an industrywide work on honorary programs and Ad Age conferences. labor shortage leaves them with Mark Anderson faces similar thousands of unfilled staff posi- changes since taking over on tions, making it harder to pro- Oct. 1. The four-hospital chain, Visit crain.com/careers/ for more information vide care. Plus, the possibility which also has a medical school, and available positions. of another severe COVID surge needs to fill 1,150 open jobs. Strategies to fill staffing gaps this winter looms as new POLYMER variGLOBAL GROUP ants crop up and hospitals deal include hiring nurses with aswith a wave of respiratory virus- sociate degrees and providing them with tuition reimbursees among children. More than half of U.S. hos- ment to complete their bachpitals are expected to lose elor’s, and working with comOUR READERS ARE 125% MORE LIKELY TO money this year, according to munity workforce development INFLUENCE OFFICE SPACE DECISIONS a report from Kaufman Hall & organizations and City Colleges Associates and the American of Chicago to build talent pipeFind your next lines, Anderson said in a stateHospital Association. corporate tenant or leaser. “The increase in expenses has ment to Crain’s. far outweighed what we’ve seen on the revenue side,” says Aaron INFLATION Wesolowski, a vice president at Though UChicago Medicine the American Hospital Associa- expects operating revenue to tion. “This year looks like it will grow year over year, expensbe the most financially chal- es climbed nearly 9% this year, lenging that we’ve had since the outpacing revenue growth. start of the pandemic.” “Like virtually all other health He expects those challeng- systems, our increased expenses to last into 2023, especially es are largely being driven by if inflation continues to rise. climbing demand and associ“There’s reason for concern in ated cost of clinical labor, sigthe long term,” he warns. nificant drug cost inflation, and Now it’s up to Chicago’s new to an extent, persistently highcrop of hospital CEOs to chart er supply costs (due to supply a path through the immediate chain interruptions),” Anderson difficulties while also crafting says. “Unfortunately, we expect Connect with Suzanne Janik at long-term strategies for the this trend to continue as inflasjanik@crain.com for more information. post-COVID era. tion adds even more financial Hospital CEOs say they plan and operational headwinds for to address staffing challenges by hospitals.”

AUCTIONS

Senior Reporter

P048_CCB_20221107.indd 48

Dr. Ngozi Ezike

“IN THE SHORT TERM, WE’RE ALL GOING TO GRAPPLE FOR LABOR AND HAVE TO MAKE DO.” Dr. Omar Lateef, CEO of Rush University System for Health

Anderson’s future plans include expanding primary and specialty care services and investing in health equity programs to reduce reliance on expensive hospital care in its service area.

SAFETY NET

Sinai Chicago, the city’s largest safety-net health system, is likely to perform worse than its nearby peers, mainly because its safety-net status means it primarily cares for patients on Medicaid. New CEO Dr. Ngozi Ezike predicts Sinai will lose money this year as costs of supplies, medical devices and labor continue to rise. “It’s not possible for us to stay out of the red in these circumstances,” she says. The four-hospital system is also missing 30% of its nursing staff and relies on expensive nursing travel agencies to fill gaps. To attract and retain permanent workers, Sinai offers an additional $50 an hour to nurses working overtime in intensive care units. “We have had to raise salaries and give retention bonuses and do a lot for our nurses and caregivers so that everyone didn’t walk out,” Ezike says. “It’s really a challenge to compete with other systems for the workforce.” Sinai’s challenges are compounded by the fact that Ezike, who began in June, is now under an ethics investigation for taking the role after leaving the Illinois Department of Public Health. Ezike’s attorney has defended her choice, saying her legal advisers told her joining Sinai was acceptable under the law. Northwestern Memorial Healthcare’s incoming CEO, Dr. Howard Chrisman, who begins Jan. 1, declined a request to discuss his plans for the 11-hospital chain and medical school. Ascension Health Illinois’s CEO left this year, Crain’s reported in September, and the health system has yet to name a new leader.

11/4/22 4:30 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 49

Plan to convert LaSalle Street office buildings into apartments faces challenge LASALLE STREET from Page 1

FRANKLIN

11 13

ADAMS

6 8 10 12 14 15 17

STATE

MONROE

MADISON

DEARBORN

JACKSON

CONVERSION TARGETS City officials are seeking proposals for office-to-residential conversions within the LaSalle Street corridor (outlined in black), and are prioritizing landmarks (in red) and those that have historical significance (in orange) as they evaluate public subsidies for such projects. 1. 176 and 180 W. Washington

8. 37 S. LaSalle

15. 209 S. LaSalle

2. 175 W. Washington

9. 120 S. LaSalle

16. 230 S. LaSalle

3. 33 N. LaSalle

10. 111 W. Monroe

17. 231 S. LaSalle

4. 1 N. LaSalle

11. 172 W. Adams

18. 175 W. Jackson

5. 10 S. LaSalle

12. 135 S. LaSalle

19. 141 W. Jackson

6. 19 S. LaSalle

13. 208 S. LaSalle

7. 50 S. LaSalle

14. 105 W. Adams

Source: Crain’s reporting

million-square-foot building at 231 S. LaSalle St. and the 37-story office building at 10 S. LaSalle St. The tower at 135 S. LaSalle and the majority of a 41-story building at 105 W. Adams St., whose owners have defaulted on their loans, are also considered prime candidates. But those properties are among several along the corridor with large floors spanning more than 20,000 square feet, which quickly complicates the numbers. Apartments would either have to be long, narrow units to ensure they have windows, or a developer would end up with massive hallways and unrentable space closer to the building’s core. Designs in such CITY PLANNING OFFICIALS ARE ALSO LOOKING buildings may be less attractive—reducing the FOR A NEW TOOL TO LURE MORE RETAILERS TO rents they would comLASALLE STREET AND ITS SURROUNDING BLOCKS. mand—and the more space in a building that doesn’t generate revewhere, the conversion project may be nue, the smaller the return when a developer ultimately sells the property. worth pursuing. “In most cases, small floor plates are Costs include purchasing the building and retrofitting it with the infrastructure better than large ones,” says Truman and amenities needed for daily living. Ex- Tolefree, whose Rochester, N.Y.-based perts estimate the total cost of a downtown development firm recently bought a conversion could be in the range of $250 to vintage 24-story office building with $300 per square foot of the building’s of- 10,000-square-foot floor plates at 65 E. fice space, but the actual figure for any giv- Wacker Place and plans to convert most en building could be far higher, depending of the property into apartments. on the number of units and a project’s particular challenges. ‘FINDING THE RIGHT CONDITIONS’ The corridor is rife with redevelopment Many downtown office buildings that candidates because of its rampant vacan- became apartments over the past couple cies, meaning investors may be able to buy of decades had small footprints, says Chibuildings at steep discounts and could cago Architecture Center CEO Eleanor redo big portions of them without having Gorski, citing examples like the landmark to relocate smaller office users that are Old Colony and Fisher buildings in the still there. Potential targets include office South Loop that are now popular for stuproperties that are now or will soon be left dent housing. with large blocks of empty space, like the 1 Some would-be conversions in larger

P049_CCB_20221107.indd 49

WASHINGTON

LASALLE

CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS

Whether or not developers jump at opportunities to reposition LaSalle Street comes down to math. Prospective buyers would start by estimating how much they’ll be able to charge for rent in converted apartments. Average net rents at high-end downtown apartments— which would likely be higher quality and offer more amenities than most apartments on LaSalle—were $3.64 per square foot midway through the year, according to consulting and appraisal firm Integra Realty Resources. Then a developer would calculate the cost of buying and overhauling a building. If the return on cost is better than they would get from a ground-up development else-

WACKER

the former Bank of America offices at 135 S. LaSalle St. have lots of interior space without natural light, and lack complex mechanical, electrical, plumbing and technological infrastructure needed to make them livable. The risks of overhauling vintage buildings—a process typically rife with unexpected costs—may scare off some developers. And lenders may balk at financing conversions as interest rates rise and inflation drives up construction costs. Lightfoot is dangling public subsidies such as tax-increment financing money, but only if takers set aside nearly onethird of their units as affordable housing. That’s higher than the 20% set-aside required by the city for most new apartment buildings. But there’s a bigger challenge: turning a downtown that largely empties out after 5 p.m. into an attractive place to live. That shift would be the most significant change in the history of the city’s urban core, but it’s critical to sparking enough demand to yield the rents that developers need to justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars overhauling old buildings. Converting large vintage office properties “is not for the faint of heart,” says Chicago developer John Murphy, who transformed several downtown office buildings into hotels and is now evaluating office-to-residential projects downtown. “You’re not thinking today about what you’ll likely end up dealing with as you go through the project.”

buildings, meanwhile, never materialized: After developers kicked the tires on converting the former Chicago Public Schools headquarters at 125 S. Clark St. into apartments, the historic building was ultimately revamped as offices “because of the difficulty in the floor plate (size) and the cost” of a residential overhaul, Gorski says. One office property that was turned into rental units at 29 S. LaSalle St.—a 216-unit luxury apartment building now dubbed Millennium on LaSalle— opened last year and is close to 80% leased, providing a potential validation point for other projects. Yet it also highlighted the risk of repurposing old buildings: The developer sought to add a swimming pool and sport court on the roof, but was well into its planning work when it discovered the 1902-built structure lacked a wind bracing system needed to support the addition, according to FitzGerald Associates Architects Vice President Rick Whitney, the principalin-charge of the project’s design. “We had to reinforce the building to do that, and it was a significant effort and cost,” says Whitney, acknowledging that unforeseen conditions typically complicate redevelopment of old buildings. Still, he says he has received “some calls of interest” from developers considering LaSalle Street conversions and expects more. “It’s just finding the right conditions to make them happen.” A spokesman for Millennium on LaSalle’s developer, Florida-based DLC Residential, did not respond to a request for comment. Chicago developer Mike Reschke says there are reasonable ways around design challenges for office-to-apartment conversions, especially if a building is pur-

chased on the cheap. A Reschke venture paid $120 million earlier this year for the largely vacant BMO Harris Bank office buildings along Monroe Street between LaSalle and Clark streets, far less than the $191 million loan the previous owner borrowed against the properties. After selling the largest tower to the State of Illinois for its new offices, Reschke is now eyeing a $180 million project to turn the top 12 floors of the 23-story and 21-story adjacent buildings into more than 300 apartments. Helping make the financials work: He plans to solve the buildings’ large floor plate problem by cutting a 3,600-squarefoot hole in the middle of each of the top 11 stories to create a courtyard, allowing him to build out interior-facing apartments. Reschke and other developers say public subsidies and incentives like TIF money and federal historic tax credits are critical to making conversions financially feasible, especially if projects are to include affordable units as Lightfoot hopes. Offering severely discounted rents on 30% of the units reduces the property’s future income, which in turn lowers the amount of money a developer would be willing to spend on the conversion in the first place. A spokesman for the city’s Department of Planning & Development said in a statement that developers “are already looking at luxury residential conversion projects that are viable with conventional funding sources” and that the city’s push to help shoulder the financial burden is meant to ensure there are any affordable units. “Without the City resources, the street’s shift from a monoculture of office uses would likely lead to luxury-oriented housing investments that would be less resilient and sustainable than a mixed-income neighborhood environment,” the statement says.

STIMULATING DEMAND

Tax sweeteners can work, as New York demonstrated in the 1990s. City officials offered dramatic property tax reductions to developers willing to acquire and repurpose older, highly vacant buildings in lower Manhattan, spurring a wave of conversions. “Now it’s one of the more dynamic areas with the highest density in the city,” says Nathan Berman, managing principal of New York-based Metro Loft Developers, which is working on its 18th office-toresidential conversion in New York. Lightfoot’s push to turn LaSalle Street from a corridor where 85% of commercial space is offices into a mixed-use neighborhood has one big tailwind in Google, which recently announced a plan to renovate, bring thousands of jobs to and buy the James R. Thompson Center. That move could attract more companies downtown, potentially stimulating demand for nearby housing. City planning officials are also looking for a new tool to lure more retailers to LaSalle Street and its surrounding blocks, where many have shuttered or been unable to pay rent because of remote work sapping daily foot traffic downtown. The Lightfoot administration plans to seek City Council approval to offer downtown retailers grants from its Small Business Improvement Fund. Help may be coming from Washington, too. Congress is considering a bill dubbed the Revitalizing Downtowns Act to create a new tax credit for office-to-residential conversions in major urban centers, provided developers commit to making at least 20% of the units affordable.

11/4/22 3:42 PM

50 NOVEMBER 7, 2022 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

‘Game of Thrones’ author gives Northwestern millions

New-home sales plummet

George R.R. Martin has given $5 million to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism to establish a writer workshop and a professorship “Game of Thrones” creator and Northwestern University alumnus George R.R. Martin has donated $5 million to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. A $3 million gift will establish the George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop, which will launch in 2024 and provide six to eight authors each summer the “time, space and guidance to develop their projects,” the university said. Another $2 million gift will establish an endowed professorship, the George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling, who will lead the summer workshop. “George R.R. Martin is a prolific and iconic author with an international audience,” Northwestern President Michael Schill said in the statement. “We are so grateful for his generosity to his alma mater, which will inspire and equip the next generation of storytellers at Northwestern.” Martin is the author of “A Song of Ice and Fire,” a series of bestselling

WTTW NEWS

BY BRANDON DUPRÉ

George R.R. Martin fantasy novels that HBO adapted into the Emmy award-winning series “Game of Thrones,” for which he served as co-executive producer. Martin also is author of “Fire & Blood,” the basis for HBO’s “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon,” which finished its first season on Oct. 23. “The George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling and the Summer

Intensive Writing Workshop will enable us to recruit, retain and host recognized authors and storytellers for the benefit of Northwestern students and writers from around the country,” Medill Dean Charles Whitaker said in the statement. “These initiatives will help aspiring writers across myriad literary genres to make their mark on the world, as George has done.”

opening new developments, Doersching said. The reasons include a fallow decade of sales following the housing bust of 2007; flat population growth keeping demand for homes down; and the shift of job centers back toward the city from the outlying areas where big new developments can go. D.R. Horton declined to provide an executive to comment for this story. D.R. Horton is typical of another aspect of the local homebuilding industry: It’s one of five big national firms that dominate new home sales here. Year to date at the end of the third quarter, other top-selling homebuilders in the area include Florida-based Lennar, with 593 sales, and Virginiabased Ryan, with 230. Of 2,682 new Chicago-area homes sold in the first three quarters of 2022, those five companies sold just less than 75%.

TOP-SELLER

The top-selling Illinois-based builder this year is Silverthorne, based in Hampshire, about 56 miles northwest of downtown Chicago. Silverthorne sold 37 homes in the first three quarters of 2022. That’s about 1.4% of the

D.R. HORTON

HOME SALES from Page 3

These townhouses, priced in the $250,000 range, are in D.R. Horton’s Stonewater development in Wonder Lake. total homes sold. The gap between local companies selling a maximum of 37 homes and nationals selling 230 or more, Doersching said, will make it difficult for locally owned firms to regain the dominance they had in the early 2000s. “It’s not easy to mount a resurgence against these companies when you can’t do things competitively like mass purchasing of appliances to keep prices down,” Doersching said.

TUESDAY, DEC. 6 | 7:30-9:45 AM MARRIOT T MARQUIS CHICAGO

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HOSPITAL CEO BREAKFAST

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11/4/22 3:45 PM

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS • NOVEMBER 7, 2022 51

An architectural jewel made of glass and concrete At this house in Olympia Fields, outside is inside and vice versa. It’s for sale at $699,000. I

BY DENNIS RODKIN

PHOTOS BY VHT STUDIOS

glass and concrete pavilion, one of the Chicago area’s most significant modernist houses, stands amidst the trees on a low bluff overlooking Butterfield Creek in Olympia Fields. Designed to nestle into its verdant natural setting by architect Harry “Deever” Rockwell for himself and his family in 1964, the house was described by a latter-day owner as “an aquarium for people.” Rockwell’s design of what he called House on a Bluff strategically combines the completely transparent glass-walled pavilion that architects like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson pioneered with a second level below with one full side of glass but more conventional enclosed rooms. Because of the topography, all that’s visible on arrival is the main level, enclosed by glass and tapering concrete columns. Glen Johnson, who bought the house on Oak Lane Drive in February 2019, died in August. His estate put the house on the market Nov. 1, priced at $699,000. It’s represented by Sophia Worden of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago. The glass walls frame views into the wooded surroundings, including 35-acre Spirit Trail Park, across Butterfield Creek from the home’s 2.5 acres. “You don’t see anybody,” Worden said, “and nobody sees you, despite the 11-foot walls of glass.”

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11/4/22 3:00 PM

Arbor co-founders Joe Campolo (left) and Greg Purcell (right)

Joseph P. Campolo 1968 - 2022

Nothing brings people together like the power of food. Arbor Investments is saddened to announce the passing of co-founder and retired Vice Chairman Joseph P. Campolo. Joe’s legacy will forever be woven into the fabric of Arbor. He left his imprint not just on those who had the privilege to work alongside him, but also on the entrepreneurs and leaders of so many food companies.

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