Kulsum Ameji
Staff Attorney, Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago
Kulsum Ameji is a staff attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago. Since graduating with honors from Smith College, Kulsum has dedicated her career to nonprofit and social justice work. Kulsum is passionate about empowering communities and families, with a particular focus on immigrant women and children. She has interned with, volunteered for, and served in a board capacity for numerous organizations, including Karamah: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights, the Coalition for African, Asian, European, and Latino Immigrants of Illinois (CAAELII), the Schiller, DuCanto, & Fleck Family Law Center of the DePaul Law School, Apna Ghar, and others. In 2009, she received the Community Renewal Society's 35 Under 35 Nonprofit Leaders Award. She is also a recipient of the Women of Color Policy Institute's Lead The Way fellowship.
Khadine Bennett
Staff Attorney and Legislative Counsel, ACLU of Illinois
Khadine Bennett began her ACLU of Illinois career as a Legal Fellow with the Reproductive Rights Project where she was involved in the Project's litigation and advocacy efforts, including the federal and state court challenges to the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act and the Campaign for Reproductive Health and Access. Khadine began her social justice career in the California Bay Area where she worked as an organizer, program director, consultant and director of various human rights, juvenile justice, youth development and reproductive justice organizations including the Women's Institute for Leadership Development (WILD) for Human Rights, Girls Inc., Youth Force Coalition, and the California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Khadine has advocated for the rights of women, young women, and girls at the local, state, national, and international level, including at the UN Commission on the Status of Women and the first UN World Conference Against Racism. She has served on the boards of the Third Wave Foundation, WILD for Human Rights, Exhale, the Chicago Girls Coalition and the Chicago Abortion Fund and sits on the Mujeres Latinas en Accion Youth Advisory Council. Prior to joining the ACLU of Illinois in 2008, Khadine attended American University, Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. and was a part of the International Human Rights Clinic.
Commissioner Bridget Gainer
10th District Cook County Commissioner
Bridget Gainer is the Cook County Board Commissioner for the 10th District, representing the North Lakefront and Northwest side. Bridget began her career as a community organizer in New York City; she continued that work in Chicago where she founded a community center at Senn High School. In 1997 Bridget went to work for the City of Chicago's Budget Office and then the Chicago Park District. As the Director of the Lakefront Parks Bridget generated $50 million dollar in revenue and managed a staff of 200. In 2001, Bridget began working at Aon, a Chicago-based insurance broker, in a variety of financial and strategic roles with a focus on pension and healthcare policy as well as risk management in the public and private sectors. Since taking office Commissioner Gainer has been committed to cutting the number of non-violent female offenders in the County jail by half. Nearly 80% of the women currently detained in the Cook County Jail are non-violent offenders for which the vast majority of these women have been arrested for minor drug possession, theft or prostitution. Many of these women have been arrested multiple times for the same crimes, and often their criminal behavior is related to trauma/mental illness or substance abuse. Rather than continuing to incarcerate these women, Commissioner Gainer advocates for the diversion of these women to specialty courts to receive closely monitored treatment. Commissioner Gainer most recently passed the Cook County Vacant Building Ordinance, the County's most comprehensive policy to address vacant and abandoned buildings. Finally, as Chair of the Pension Subcommittee Bridget is working towards finding fair and equitable solution to increase the solvency of the pension fund. A native of Chicago, Bridget lives on the North side with her husband and their three children. Her top priorities are the preservation of the safety nets for the residents of Cook County, shining light on the critical and overlooked overlaps between public health and public safety, and strong fiscal oversight of the County's $3 billion budget..
Kaethe Morris Hoffer
Deputy Executive Director and Legal Director of the Sexual Assault Justice Project, Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation
Kaethe Morris Hoffer is the Deputy Executive and Legal Director of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE), a legal services, prevention, and policy reform organization serving survivors and working to eradicate sexual assault and prostitution. Kaethe’s prior work includes feminist advocacy and litigation in many venues: Internationally, Kaethe represented Equality Now in United Nations proceedings which created the international standard definition of and law against sex trafficking (the “Palermo Protocol”); she also served as project manager for the Rape Genocide Law Project—a lawsuit by survivors of Bosnian-Serb rape death camps which resulted in a record-breaking multi-million dollar verdict against Radovan Karadzic. At the state level, Kaethe served on the Governor’s Commission on the Status of Women in Illinois from 1999 to 2003, where she chaired the Working Group on Violence Against Women, co-authored the Gender Violence Act (a cutting edge civil rights remedy for survivors of sex-based violence), and assisted in the development and passage of the Civil No Contact Order Act and the Victims’ Employment Safety and Security Act. Locally, Kaethe served as a policy advisor to the Mayor of the City of Chicago, and represented low-income women from Chicago at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago. Since 2005 Kaethe has focused exclusively on litigation and political advocacy for individual survivors of rape and prostitution, including by founding of a non-profit organization which became part of CAASE in 2009. Kaethe is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Michigan Law School.
Jerry Newton
Attorney, Philanthropist and Past Chair of Personal PAC
Jerry is the former chair of the Personal PAC board, an attorney, wife, mother, grandmother, and advocate for human and civil rights, especially those of women. As an attorney, she has her own practice and specializes in employment-related issues, including discrimination. Previously, she worked for Hartmarx Corporation and the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. She has also worked as a Housing Director with the Section 8 Program and was a french teacher. As a wife, she avoids the kitchen whenever possible. As a mother, ask her children (well, maybe not!), and as a grandmother...what can you say when your grandchildren are perfect! As an advocate, she is active in politics, working to elect pro-choice candidates. She is committed to the work of Chicago Foundation for Women, Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Watch, and the Shriver Center. She also serves on the Illinois Medical Disciplinary Board and the Chicago Bar Association Judicial Evaluation Committee. She loves her family, her friends, her tennis, and her bridge.
Katherine M. Rahill
Partner, Jenner & Block LLP
Katherine Rahill is a partner with the law firm of Jenner & Block LLP, being recognized for her leadership of Jenner & Block’s participation in the Circuit Court of Cook County Domestic Violence Division's Order of Protection Pro Bono Representation Program. In 2011 Jenner & Block was contacted by the Court to participate in this new pilot program and the Firm turned to Katie to spearhead its efforts. Through this important program law firms in the city provide pro bono representation to victims of domestic violence seeking civil orders of protection under the Illinois Domestic Violence Act. The volunteer attorneys assist domestic violence victims in obtaining time-critical emergency orders of protection and longer term plenary orders of protection. Through Katie's efforts, more than 35 Jenner & Block attorneys volunteered in the program last year, representing 22 individual clients and contributing approximately 1,000 pro bono attorney hours. Katie is a member of Jenner & Block's Environmental and Workplace Health and Safety Law Practice and of its Climate and Clean Technology Law Practice. Katie's environmental work focuses on advising clients in complex corporate and real estate transactions, defending toxic tort claims, representing clients in CERCLA liability matters, and advising clients on regulatory compliance issues. She received her B.A.
summa cum laude from Northwestern University in Environmental Science and her J.D.
cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School. Katie is lucky enough to have a wonderful husband and two sweet and funny children. Her most cherished time is with her family, and she is thankful for their support in everything she does.
Katherine M. Schon
Associate, McDermott Will & Emery
Katherine Schon is an Intellectual Property Litigation associate in the Chicago office of McDermott Will & Emery LLP. Katherine and a team of her McDermott colleagues secured asylum for a sex trafficking survivor from the Democratic Republic of Congo in a groundbreaking decision by the immigration court. The asylum applicant was a former prostitute who was coerced by a European man to travel from the DRC to Belgium where she was confined, branded, and repeatedly physically and sexually abused. Although the majority of the atrocities suffered by the applicant occurred outside the DRC and at the hands of a European man instead of a Congolese citizen, Katherine was able to effectively argue that the collection of harms she suffered amounted to persecution within the DRC for purposes of asylum law, as they were the direct and inevitable consequence of being trafficked from the country by an individual that the Congolese government was unable to control. Katherine also successfully established that the Congolese woman was specifically targeted due to her profession and, as a result, Congolese women who had participated in prostitution qualified as a protected social group under asylum law. That Katherine's arguments persuaded the immigration court to grant asylum was pivotal. Neither the Board of Immigration Appeals nor the Seventh Circuit has ruled on these issues, and other immigration courts had found both that sex trafficking did not qualify as persecution and that prostitutes were not a protected group for purposes of asylum in other cases.
The Protect Pregnant Prisoners Campaign
Led by Attorneys Kenneth N. Flaxman and Thomas G. Morrissey and Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers’ Gail T. Smith
Kenneth N. Flaxman has been concentrating on civil rights cases since he graduated from the IIT-Chicago Kent College of Law in 1972. Flaxman began his practice by representing prisoners and took his first prisoner case to the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of Flaxman’s client. This was the first of five cases Flaxman has (so far) argued before the high court, including
Jaffee v. Redmond, the case that established the psychotherapist privilege in federal court. His involvement with reproductive rights cases began more than 30 years ago, when he represented two women who had been sterilized by order of the North Carolina "Eugenics Commission." Later, Flaxman successfully represented women who had been rejected for jobs as police officers and firefighters by the City of Evanston, as well as African American Chicago police officers (both women and men) who had been passed over for promotion. Flaxman has focused his practice on the mistreatment of arrestees and persons detained awaiting trial. In addition to several cases at the Cook County Jail, including one involving the now abandoned practice of shackling pregnant women during labor and delivery, Flaxman is challenging for female arrestees the "white underwear" policy of the Rock Island County jail--anyone entering that jail, even for a short time before a seeing a judge, is required to change into a jumpsuit after removing any underwear that is not all white. Flaxman lives with his wife Judith in Evanston. They have three children: Abraham, Joel and Seth.
A lifelong south side resident,
Tom Morrissey comes from a family of lawyers. As one of six children to follow his father into the legal profession, Mr. Morrissey initially joined the City of Chicago's Civil Rights Division following his graduation from the Georgetown University Law Center. After his father died suddenly in 1987, Tom took over his father’s store front legal practice on Western Avenue in the Beverly community. In addition to continuing to serve his father's clients, Tom broadened the practice to include representing individuals whose constitutional rights were violated by government policies and practices. In 1996, Tom, along with childhood friend Bob Farley, began a sixteen year legal battle to halt the inhumane and degrading practice of strip searching men and women at the Cook County Jail. Recently Tom and Ken Flaxman have served as class counsel in a number of cases challenging unconstitutional conditions at the Jail including: (a) the involuntary genital swabbing of male detainees; (b) the failure of the Jail to provide accessible toilets and showers for physically impaired inmates; (c) the denial of dental care to inmates; (d) the shackling of pregnant women during child birth; and (e) the failure to continue medication for inmates entering the Jail with serious medical and/or mental health conditions. Tom and his wife Carole have two sons, Patrick and Emmett.
Gail T. Smith was the founding executive director of
Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers and now serves as its Senior Policy Director. She earned her JD at New York University. She represents incarcerated mothers and their children's guardians in family law cases. She draftedIllinois legislation to ban the use of shackles on women during labor and childbirth, making Illinois the first state in the nation to end this practice in 1999, and was instrumental in the passage of a law extending the protection to women in Cook County throughout pregnancy. Ms. Smith has testified on issues affecting incarcerated mothers and their children before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the Illinois General Assembly and the Cook County Board of Commissioners. In 2005 she received the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago's Racial Justice Award. In 2011 the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women honored her with their "Women Who Dared" award.
The Reproductive Rights Project of the ACLU of Illinois
Led by Project Director Lorie A. Chaiten and past directors Colleen Connell and Lois J. Lipton
The ACLU of Illinois has been at the forefront of the fight for reproductive freedom since 1967 when our attorneys first began to advocate, lobby and litigate to secure reproductive justice for all in Illinois and throughout the country. Formally established in 1979, the ACLU's Reproductive Rights Project seeks, through litigation, public education and legislative advocacy, to make certain that all in our society have access to safe and effective contraception, sexuality education, reproductive technologies, prenatal care, childbearing assistance and safe, legal, and accessible abortion. In 1971, two years before the United States Supreme Court recognized federal constitutional protection for the right to abortion in
Roe v. Wade, the ACLU secured a significant court victory in federal court in Chicago which paved the way for the first legal abortion in Illinois. After
Roe, the ACLU was called on to respond to attacks on women’s reproductive health care in the Illinois General Assembly, which under concerted pressure from anti-abortion forces, began to pass broad-ranging restrictions on access to reproductive health care, information and decision making. Year after year, as the General Assembly enacted such laws, the ACLU went to court and mounted successful legal challenges at every level of the federal and state court systems, including cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. These court victories, obtained after long and costly battles, have kept at bay a wide array of restrictions, including harmful waiting periods, state mandated lectures, abortion procedure bans, mandatory parental involvement laws, restrictions on prenatal genetic testing, burdensome physical plant and administrative requirements and state efforts to force pregnant women to have cesarean sections against their will. Because of the unrelenting efforts of the ACLU's Reproductive Rights Project, Illinois remains a critical point of access to essential health care for women. The Project is the only legal advocate of reproductive freedom in the state. It provides free legal services to pregnant women and teens, doctors, legislators, attorneys, clinic operators and infertile couples, and serves as the legal advisor to reproductive justice organizations throughout Illinois. The Project is grounded in the belief that access to the full range of reproductive health care and autonomous decision making is a basic human right at the foundation of our democratic society.
Lois Lipton became the Project's first Director in 1979, followed by
Colleen Connell in 1984. Connell served as the Director for 16 years, until 2000, when she became the ACLU of Illinois’ Executive Director. The Project's current Director,
Lorie Chaiten, served as a long-standing cooperating pro bono lawyer with the Project before taking over as Director in 2001.
Memorial Award: Christina Santiago
Puerto Rican lesbian and feminist activist
Christina Santiago, a self-identified Puerto Rican lesbian and feminist activist, grew up in the Bronx in New York City and received a degree in Women's Studies and Sociology from the University of New York at Albany. Santiago was inspired to enter the healthcare field after the passing of her mother due to breast cancer. She came to Chicago in 2006 to work at Howard Brown Health Center as part of the Lesbian Community Cancer Project. In addition to her work at HB, Santiago served as the Programming Chair for Amigas Latinas where she coordinated countless educational events and fundraisers for Amigas Latinas, including a Health and Wellness series and community pláticas. Santiago brought multiple communities together and was instrumental in helping create the Chicago LGBT Citywide Coalition as well as working to create a community center for Amigas Latinas and Affinity Community Service--a dream that will be realized in the fall of 2012. In 2007, just a year after starting her work at Howard Brown, Santiago was honored with a Windy City Times "30 under 30" award for her work as women's healthcare advocate in 2007. Most recently, Santiago received Howard Brown Health Center’s 2010 Spirit Award, the highest staff honor for being an instrumental figure in the expansion of HBHC's women's health services division as the manager of LCCP and a strong advocate for the LGBTQ women's community. In 2011, Santiago, was honored with the Margaret Wiley Carr Bright Horizons Award. The award honors the next generation of influential activists in the reproductive rights movement. Christina Santiago passed away in 2011 due to a fatal disaster at the Indiana State Fair.
ABOUT PAST IMPACT AWARDSMeet the honorees of the
2011 Impact Awards and the
2010 Impact Awards -- women and men who were recognized because their leadership and achievements improve women's and girls' lives in Chicago and worldwide.
ABOUT CHICAGO FOUNDATION FOR WOMEN Chicago Foundation for Women raises money to fund and support organizations that help women and girls--it's all about making smarter connections between need, money and solutions. We believe that when women and girls are secure, whole communities are made better. We improve the lives of women and girls through grants, advocacy, leadership development, and public and grantee education. Since 1985, we have given over 2,900 grants totaling nearly $20 million and helped thousands of women and girls become philanthropists. We envision a world in which all women and girls have the opportunity to achieve their potential and live in safe, just and healthy communities.