Thank you for joining us for The Arc of Recovery: COVID Response from Crisis Management to Long-Term Investment on April 28, 2022. We hope you enjoyed these reflections about how partnerships and new ways of thinking about investments can ultimately strengthen our communities. We look forward to continuing the conversation and working together to create a Chicagoland region where everyone can thrive.
You can watch the video recording of The Arc of Recovery: COVID Response from Crisis Management to Long-Term Investment here. Please plan to join us this summer for the next installment of the Neighborhood Exchange Series, which will focus on storytelling.
Please plan to join us this summer for the next installment of the Neighborhood Exchange Series, which will focus on storytelling.
Featured Panelists
Gloria Castillo is the director of We Rise Together: For an Equitable and Just Recovery, a multi-faceted initiative of The Chicago Community Trust to ensure the Chicago region’s equitable recovery from the impacts of COVID-19. Castillo is the former president and CEO of Chicago United, a corporate membership organization that advances multiracial leadership in business to achieve parity in economic opportunity for people of color. She is a pioneering advocate for diversity, inclusion, and justice through the lens of business strategy.
Numerous organizations have recognized Castillo’s work, including an honorary doctorate in social justice from Roosevelt University in 2017 and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award in 2018. Highly regarded as an active and outspoken inclusion advocate in Chicago’s business community, Castillo has served on numerous boards and commissions. Currently, she serves as chairman of the Field Foundation Board of Trustees and director of Mather.
Anna Lee is senior director of community impact at The Chicago Community Trust. In this role, Lee leads the Trust’s Addressing Critical Needs strategy, which includes change-making efforts in building pathways to stability, promoting well-being and strengthening social cohesion. Under Lee’s direction, this strategy responds to the region’s most urgent needs and also advances policy and system innovations in human services. Most recently, Lee co-managed the Chicago Community COVID-19 Response Fund, a partnership with United Way of Metro Chicago, which supported non-profit organizations on the frontlines of COVID-19 with $35M in rapid relief grants.
Prior to joining the Trust, Lee was the director of operations for Year Up Chicago, leading strategic planning efforts and overseeing day-to-day operations for the organization. Before her work at Year Up Chicago, Lee was the director of research, reporting & communications, and later the director of strategic partnerships and management, at the Chicago Housing Authority.
Lee’s public sector experience includes directing the contracting process at the City of Chicago’s Department of Family and Support Services, and overseeing community development grants at the City’s Office of Budget and Management’s Empowerment Zone. Lee earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Boston College and master’s degrees in divinity and public policy, both from the University of Chicago. Lee is a Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow, active in Chicago’s Continuum of Care, and serves on the boards of Forefront and Disability Lead.
Kimberlee Guenther, Ph.D.
Kimberlee Guenther, Ph.D. serves as Chief Impact Officer at United Way of Metro Chicago. She joined United Way as the Manager of Research and Evaluation in 2013, and now leads the organization’s community impact program funding and Neighborhood Network initiative. As a steward of United Way’s grantmaking and community engagement, Kimberlee wholly embodies our mission to build strong neighborhoods.
Prior to joining United Way, Kimberlee was a community-based researcher, combining arts programming and ethnography at The Field Museum and the Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola University. Raised in the northwest suburbs with a deep appreciation of Chicago’s architecture and culture, this experience opened her eyes to the incredible power of community knowledge and creativity.
Kimberlee earned her undergraduate degree in sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a master’s degree from the University of Connecticut, and a Ph.D. in sociology from Loyola University Chicago. Her doctoral research focused on public housing redevelopment and community resident leadership in Chicago and Sydney, Australia.
After years of formal education, Kimberlee’s favorite pastime is still learning – through books, travel, and museums – though the art and science of baking is a close second. She lives in the University Village neighborhood.
Rachel Reichlin, MPH, MSN, RN
Rachel Reichlin, MPH, MSN, RN, is a Senior Program Office at Michael Reese Health Trust. Prior to joining the Michael Reese team, Rachel worked for Cook County Health’s Medicaid Managed Care Organization, CountyCare. Her career as a nurse ranges from providing acute bedside care on an adult medicine/infectious disease unit to community nursing as a perinatal nurse care manager and community based participatory researcher in Latinx and immigrant communities in Chicago, the Dominican Republic and Israel. Rachel’s drive to address health inequities and promote social justice led her to jointly launch our Incubation program in early 2020 to take risks on new and experimental ideas. In addition to leading Incubation efforts, Rachel works with our grantee partners in our homelessness, healthcare workforce, oral health and hospital-based violence prevention priorities.
In 2016, Rachel was named as one of 40 under 40 Nurse Leaders by the Illinois Nursing Foundation and in 2020 was named a Terrance Keenan Institute Fellow.
“There are ways that Michael Reese works, always in partnership with community, that can truly impact the health of our region in significant ways. I want to leverage my experiences on the front line and relationships as a Chicago trained clinician to be a part of positive change.”
Gloria Castillo
Director
We Rise Together
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Anna Lee
Senior Director of Community Impact
Chicago Community Trust
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Dr. Kimberlee Guenther
Chief Impact Officer
United Way of Metro Chicago
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Rachel Reichlin, MPH, MSN, RN
Senior Program Officer
Michael Reese Health Trust
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MODERATED BY
Beth Thompson
Baumhart Scholar
Marketing Manager, ESG, Retail/Wealth Segment
Morningstar, (Sustainalytics)
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