2011: Deborah L. DeHaas, Vice Chairman and Regional Managing Partner at Deloitte

Deb is the Vice Chairman and Midwest Regional Managing Partner for Deloitte LLP, which includes offices in Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Omaha, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Des Moines. With 5,000 professionals, Deloitte is the largest Big Four firm in the region. In this role, Deb leads the quality, client satisfaction, growth, marketplace, and human resource initiatives in the region. Deb also serves as lead client service partner or advisory partner on a number of the firm's most significant clients in the Midwest Region. During her career, Deb has served a variety of clients, with an emphasis on those in the manufacturing, consumer products, and communications industries. Deb is also a member of the Deloitte LLP U.S. Board of Directors.

Prior to assuming her current role, Deb was the Regional Managing Partner of Strategic Clients for the Midwest Region. In this role, Deb led the management and development of the firm's national global strategic clients program for the seven offices throughout the region.

Deb's community involvement and philanthropic efforts have led to her recognition by numerous local and national organizations. Most recently, she received the 2010 City Year Chicago Ripples of Hope Award, Gerald J. Roper Business Professional of the Year Award, the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago 2008 Heritage Award, the YWCA's 2006 Outstanding Women's Leaders Award for Community Leadership and Boardroom Bound 2005 Business-to-Business Ambassador Award. She was the first Chicago recipient of the 2005 Athena Award. She was the recipient of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce 2004 Daniel H. Burnham Award, the Anti-Defamation League 2004 Women of Achievement Award, the 2003 United Way Campaign Chair Award and the 2001 Girl Scouts Luminary Award. Deb was named "2001 Person of the Year" by the Corporate Responsibility Group of Chicago, and also received the 2001 Executive Leader Award by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. In addition, she was recognized for outstanding board leadership with the Northlight Theatre in 2000.

Deb was recognized by the Chicago Sun-Times as one of seven influentials in Chicago and one of the ten most powerful women in business. She was included in Crain's Chicago Business "Who's Who in Chicago," "100 Most Influential Women" and "25 Women to Watch" lists.

Deb graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Management Science and Accounting. She is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of several state and national professional societies, including the AICPA and the Illinois CPA Society.

2010: Maryn McKenna, Independent Journalist

Maryn McKenna is an independent journalist and author who specializes in public health, medicine and health policy. She writes features for national magazines and news stories for an infectious-disease website. In addition to her new book, Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA, about the rise of drug-resistant staph around the world, she is working on projects on polio eradication and on emergency room overcrowding.

From 1995-2006, she was a national desk writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she was the only U.S. journalist assigned to full-time coverage of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and embedded with a CDC investigative team during the 2001 anthrax-letter attacks. She has reported from the Indian Ocean tsunami and from Hurricane Katrina, as well as from Southeast Asia, India, Africa and the Arctic. She has covered pandemic influenza since 1997, when she wrote the first story in the American media on the potential threat posed by avian flu H5N1.

Previously, she worked for the Boston Herald, where stories she co-wrote on illnesses among veterans of the first Persian Gulf War led to the first Congressional hearings on Gulf War Syndrome, and at the Cincinnati Enquirer, where her stories on the association between local cancer clusters and contamination escaping a federal nuclear weapons plant contributed to a successful nuclear-harm lawsuit by residents.

Ms. McKenna is a cum laude graduate of Georgetown University and has a master’s degree with highest honors from Northwestern University. She has held fellowships with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Knight-Wallace Fellows program of the University of Michigan, as well as serving short fellowships at Harvard Medical School and the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families at the University of Maryland. In 2006, she was an inaugural Health Journalism Fellow of the East-West Center in Honolulu and is now an Associate of the Center and teaches other journalists in its programs.

Ms. McKenna has won numerous journalism awards and is the author of Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, which was named one of the Top Science Books of 2004 by Amazon.com and an "Outstanding Academic Title" by the American Library Association.

She lives in Minneapolis with her husband.

2009: Carol Coletta, President and CEO of CEOs for Cities; Host and Producer Public Radio Show Smart City

Ms. Coletta is the President and CEO of CEOs for Cities in Chicago and host and producer of the nationally syndicated public radio show "Smart City." She has served as President of Coletta & Company in Memphis and as Executive Director of the Mayors' Institute on City Design, a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Conference of Mayors and American Architectural Foundation.

Ms. Coletta was a 2003 Knight Fellow in Community Building at the University of Miami School of Architecture and is currently a candidate for a Master of Design Methods at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

She is interviewed often as an expert on urban issues by national media and is a frequent speaker on the success formula for cities and creative communities. This year, a leading European think tank named Ms. Coletta one of the world's 50 most important urban issues experts.

CEOs for Cities works with a cross-sector network of urban leaders to create next generation cities that excel in talent, connections, innovation and distinctiveness and are therefore better able to address the challenges of the day.

2008: Dr. Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago

Dr. Martha Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, appointed in the Philosophy Department, Law School and Divinity School at the University of Chicago.

Martha Nussbaum received her B.A. from NYU and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard. She has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Oxford Universities. She has received honorary degrees from thirty-two colleges and universities in the U. S., Canada, Asia, and Europe. And, she is the recipient of many, many awards throughout her career.

She has written 14 publications including Sex and Social Justice, which won the book award of the North American Society for Social Philosophy in 2000, and The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future. Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America's Tradition of Religious Equality will be published in February 2008 and available for sale at the event! She has also edited thirteen books. Her current work in progress includes The Cosmopolitan Tradition (the Castle Lectures delivered at Yale University in 2000 and under contract to Yale University Press) and Compassion and Capabilities (under contract to Cambridge University Press). She is writing the Supreme Court Foreword for the Harvard Law Review in 2007.

2007: Dr. Mardge Cohen, Director of Women's HIV Research, CORE

Dr. Mardge Cohen has worked at Stroger (formerly Cook County) Hospital since 1976 when she began her internal medical residency. In 1987 she founded the Chicago Women’s AIDS Project, a community based initiative to provide support, prevention services and advocacy for Chicago women with HIV. In 1988 she started the Women and Children HIV Program at Cook County Hospital to

provide comprehensive medical and psychosocial services to women, their partners, and children. She is the Chicago Principal Investigator for the National Institute of Health supported Women’s Interassociation HIV Study (WIHS) which began in 1994 to better understand HIV disease progression in women, and has worked on HIV research projects funded by the CDC and NICHD. Currently, she is the Director of Women's HIV Research at the CORE Center. She is leading a public health initiative to implement rapid HIV testing in labor and delivery areas of all birthing hospitals in the state of Illinois.

Since 2004 she has traveled to and worked in Rwanda with Women's Equity in Access to Care and Treatment (WE-ACTx) to facilitate HIV primary care for women who were infected after being raped during the 1994 genocide period. Working with many grass roots women's associations and the Rwandan public health HIV infrastructure, WE-ACTx has set up health clinics as well as a food program and income generation program for women and children with HIV. The project also includes a research cohort similar to the WIHS to determine the response of Rwandan women to antiretroviral therapy, and the effects of post-traumatic stress on HIV disease progression. WE-ACTx’s work in Rwanda includes HIV care, family planning, and prevention of cervical cancer.

2006: Connie K. Duckworth, President and Chairman of the Board of Arzu, Inc.

Ms. Duckworth serves as President and Chairman of the Board of Arzu, Inc., a nonprofit organization she founded in response to a site visit to Afghanistan in early 2003. Arzu, which means hope, aims to provide sustainable income to underprivileged Afghan women and their families by sourcing and selling handmade rugs in the United States. Arzu is weaving hope for Afghan women and changing the world one rug at a time by providing education and basic healthcare.

Duckworth is a retired partner and managing director of Goldman, Sachs, & Co., where she was named the first woman sales and trading partner in the firm's history during her 20 year career. She co-authored a primer on entrepreneurship, The Old Girls' Network: Insider Advice for Women Building Businesses in a Man's World, and has been an angel investor, mentoring and selectively investing in women-led businesses. She is the recipient of numerous awards.

Duckworth sits on the Board of Trustees of Northwestern Mutual, the Board of Directors of Smurfit Stone Container Corporation and DNP Select Income Fund, the Board of Overseers of the Wharton School and is Vice Chairman of the Board of Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. She is a past Chair of the Committee of 200, the organization of leading women entrepreneurs and corporate business executives in the United States. She holds an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from the University of Texas.

2005: Faye T. Pantazelos, President and CEO of New Century Bank

Founder and principal organizer of New Century Bank and its parent company, NCB Holdings, Inc. Ms. Pantazelos serves as President, Director and CEO of both entities. Prior to founding NCB Holdings, Inc. in 1997, Ms. Pantazelos served as Senior Vice President Commercial Lending at Corus Bank, N.A., a $2 billion regional bank.

2004: Captain Jaden J. Kim, Marine Corps Jet Pilot

Jaden J. Kim, Captain U.S. Marine Corps, was born in Seoul, South Korea. She and her family immigrated to the United States and moved to Chicago, while she was in grade school. At that time, they applied for and received naturalized citizenship within a year.

After graduating from Princeton in 1996 and participating in the ROTC there, Captain Kim reported for flight training. She soon received her wings of gold and was assigned to the Green Knights. Captain Kim has been part of three deployments post 09/11. In October 2001, the squadron of which she was a member, was deployed to Beni Suef Air Base, Egypt, and participated in Operation Bright Star. Soon after, in April 2002, the squadron was moved to Peter J Ganci Air Base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan for a six-month deployment supporting Operation EnduringFreedom. During this support operation, she flew over 40 combats or ties and 200 combat flight hours. Next, the squadron was deployed to AI-Jaber Air Base, Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

After flying three years with the Green Knights, Captain Kim was assigned to and currently serves with I Marine Expeditionary Force at the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. Captain Kim will share with us what it is like to be one of two female Hornet Systems Officers in the Marines and how her Korean-American background has shaped her career as a woman and fighter pilot.

2003: Judy Baar Topinka, Treasurer, State of Illinois (currently Comptroller, State of Illinois)

Judy Baar Topinka was elected Illinois State Treasurer on November 8, 1994 – becoming the first woman in Illinois history to hold this post. She also became the first Republican to be elected State Treasurer in 32 years. Topinka made history again in November 1998, as she won a second term as State Treasurer – becoming the first woman to be re-elected to a statewide office. Winning re-election to a third term as Illinois State Treasurer in 2002, Topinka became the first State Treasurer to win three consecutive terms.

As State Treasurer from 1995-2007, Judy maintained a strong record of fiscal responsibility. During her tenure, the state earned record amounts of income on investments, money that helped to alleviate the tax burden on working families and made state government run more efficiently. Under her leadership, the Treasurer's Office helped create and retain more than 13,000 new jobs through an innovative linked deposits program; developed the nation's largest agriculture loan program for farmers, and helped more than 120,000 families save for college by creating one of the most affordable college savings programs in the nation.

A recognized and respected fiscal conservative and taxpayer watchdog, Judy consistently spoke up when she believed public officials were acting irresponsibly. When Rod Blagojevich wanted to raid state funds, Judy stood up to him and refused to make the transfers.

As the granddaughter of immigrants, Judy learned from a very young age to respect the hard work and sacrifice that families all across Illinois make each and every day in order to make life better for their children. Judy's parents were small business owners who taught her the importance of living within your means and managing money responsibly; a lesson our broken state government would be apt to learn today.

2002: Anne Roosevelt, Director of Community and Education Relations at The Boeing Company

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (known as Anne) leads Boeing's Global Corporate Citizenship function, providing philosophical and strategic direction to the company's integration of citizenship goals. She also leads a network of U.S. and international community investors, who employ and leverage Boeing's multiple resources to address needs of communities where the company has a business presence.

Roosevelt began her professional career when she moved to Kentucky, following graduate school, to join the faculty of Western Kentucky University. There she taught museum studies and worked on the The Kentucky Museum staff for nearly eight years. In 1983, she moved to Chicago as a freelance collection consultant, and was later named the first director of the Center for Scandinavian Studies at North Park College in Chicago.

In 1987, Roosevelt pursued her lifelong interest in politics, working for the Democratic National Committee. In 1989 she managed late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon's Chicago office and then his successful campaign for re-election in 1990. The following year, Roosevelt served as a consultant on the successful "Daley for Mayor" campaign. In 1991, she became the first executive director of the Museums in the Park, an organization representing the political interests of nine museums located on Chicago Park District land.

From 1996 through 1998, she was director of the Mayor's Office of Program Development for the City of Chicago. From January 1998 to 2001, Roosevelt served as executive director of the Brain Research Foundation, an affiliate of The University of Chicago. When The Boeing Company relocated to Chicago, Roosevelt became director of Community and Education Relations for Boeing's Corporate Offices, and now serves as vice president of Global Corporate Citizenship.

Roosevelt is a trustee of Roosevelt University where she also chairs their advisory committee for the Center for New Deal Studies. She is also a trustee of Spelman College; is a member of the advisory boards of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum Foundation, and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies; is a member of the Chicago Sister Cities Casablanca Committee and the Foundation for the National Archives board, and co-chairs the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York.

Born in Pasadena, Calif., Roosevelt holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in art and art history, from Stanford University, and a Master of Science degree in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.