Erlene Howard Owner, Collective Resource Evanston Where most people see trash, Erlene Howard sees life. “I was seeing all this beautiful garbage,” she says of the food scraps that were leftover from her mostly vegan, mostly raw diet. Her love of raw vegetables and organics led the part-time independent bookkeeper and human resource administrator to […]
Sophie Twichell Executive Director, Friends of Ryerson Woods Lake Bluff In densely populated Lake County, Ryerson Woods is an oasis of 556 acres of green, and Sophie Twichell’s job is to make sure that future generations have access to the same rolling woods for years to come. “We want to instill the core value of […]
“I want to teach people about my disease,” Jared Kuper, 10, said to his mom. He was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes only after he went into a diabetic coma. Jared, supported by his mom, has become an advocate for children with diabetes locally and beyond. “It’s not me, it’s my son,” Laura says, […]
Terri Lorenz’s philanthropy has always centered around families and children. In 2005, she and her husband, Tony, noticed that family summer gatherings in Wilmette tended to center on the lakefront, with little going on in their neighborhood farther west. Wanting to provide summer entertainment that families could walk to, they started the annual Thornwood […]
When a child is diagnosed with cancer, the whole family is thrown into crisis, but in the rush to assist the ill child, the well siblings are often ignored. Melanie Goldish realized this in 1998 when her 5-year-old son, Travis was diagnosed with cancer. He has battled cancer twice and is now a healthy […]
When Nina Winner’s daughters, Mara and Abigail, go to a sleepover or a birthday party, they have to take packed meals with them. They can’t eat what the other kids are eating because they have celiac—a genetic auto-immune disease—and their father has it, too. Her daughters’ and husband’s diagnoses inspired Nina to get involved […]
Heather Fineman was 35 when her late mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. A sadly familiar diagnosis: Heather’s grandmother had died of cancer at 44 and her great-grandmother at 54. Both Heather and her mother were tested for the BRCA genetic mutation, which is linked to both ovarian and breast cancer. Both tested positive. Heather’s […]
Losing a sister to a heart defect inspired Estrella Rosenberg to provide life-saving surgeries to children with heart defects in developing countries. A former jury consultant, she left the business world to start her own nonprofit, Big Love Little Hearts, which has saved more than 300 lives in the past year and a half. […]
While still in high school, this runner founded a 5K race to benefit Youth Services of Glenview/Northbrook. Now in its seventh year, the race boasts over 500 runners/walkers and 100 volunteers each year, and has raised almost $100,000. Garvey ran cross-country and track in high school, so in 2005 when she had an idea to […]
A friend’s tale of tainted drinking water in Kenya spurred Larry Barnett to action. The original plan was to drill a few deep wells. His efforts are now transforming lives. Larry Barnett was not a Rotarian several years ago when a fellow church member spoke about his brother who died from typhoid in Kenya. But […]
