Dr. enrico Benedetti, Head of Surgery at UIC

Dr. Enrico Benedetti is a transplant surgeon at UI Health. Dr. Benedetti is a prominent leader in organ transplantation and in the use of robotic-assisted techniques in transplantation. He has to his credit many successful surgical firsts, including the first robotic donor nephrectomy for a living-donor kidney transplant, the first combined living-donor liver and bowel transplant from an adult to an infant, the first robotic combined kidney and pancreas procurement for a living-donor transplant, and the largest series of living-donor intestinal transplants in the world. Dr. Benedetti is Professor and Head of Surgery and the Warren H. Cole Chair in Surgery.

Justine Fedak, SVP Brand, Advertising and Sponsorships, North America at BMO Financial Group

Justine is the Senior Vice President and Head of Brand, Advertising and Sponsorships for BMO Financial Group, North America. In this role, she is responsible for brand strategy and advertising across North America and all sponsorships for the BMO Financial Group.

After being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2001, Justine worked hard to recover her mobility in order to train for and run a half marathon in 2009. Although she is no longer able to run, she continues to be an advocate for healthy living. She is a regular speaker across the US and Canada at Marketing, Branding and Communications conferences; and she is often called upon by the media to speak about living with MS.

Fedak earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Toronto and an MBA from Dalhousie University. She is a member of the Board of Directors of The Magnificent Mile Association, Gilda’s Club Chicago, and Access Living; is on the Executive Committee of the Chicago Sports Commission, and is a regular contributor to the Chicago Sun-Times “Splash” column. Justine is Chairperson to the Municipal Marketing Advisory Council for the City of Chicago. Justine is honored to be the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s 2013 “Woman on the Move”; and the Chicago Business Journal’s 2015 Women of Influence.

Alex Kotlowitz, award-winning journalist and author

Alex Kotlowitz is the author of three books, including the national bestseller There Are No Children Here, which the New York Public Library selected as one of the 150 most important books of the twentieth century. It received the Helen Bernstein Award, the Carl Sandburg Award and a Christopher Award, and was adapted as a television movie produced by and starring Oprah Winfrey. It was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times.

The Other Side of the River received The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize and the Great Lakes Booksellers Award for Nonfiction, and was also selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times which said of the book, “It’s important, essential even, for the rest of us to contemplate.” Of Never a City So Real, one critic wrote, “It’s a fine successor to Nelson Algren’s Chicago: City on the Make as a song to our rough-and-tumble, broken-nosed city.”

Alex’s documentary The Interrupters (a collaboration with Steve James) premiered at Sundance in January 2011, and aired as a two-hour special on PBS’s Frontline. It was cited as one of the best films of the year by The New Yorker, The Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly and The LA Times. One reviewer wrote, “It tears at your heart…and makes you believe that change is possible.” The film received an Emmy, an Independent Spirit Award and a Cinema Eye Award.  
 
A former staff writer at The Wall Street Journal, Alex has long been a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and public radio’s This American Life. His stories, which one reviewer wrote “inform the heart”, have also appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Rolling Stone, The Chicago Tribune, Slate and The Washington Post, as well as on PBS (Frontline, the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour and Media Matters) and on NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition. He’s been honored in all three mediums, including some of journalism’s major prizes: a George Foster Peabody Award (radio), the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award (print),  the George Polk Award (television) and (twice) a Columbia duPont Award (radio and television.)  His play An Unobstructed View (co-authored with Amy Drozdowska) premiered in Chicago in June of 2005.
 
About his work, one critic wrote, “Kotlowitz is an omnivorous observer, discerning listener, and unassuming witness to urban life.”
 
Alex has been a Distinguished Visitor at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and is the recipient of eight honorary degrees and the John LaFarge Memorial Award for Interracial Justice given by New York’s Catholic Interracial Council. He regularly gives lectures and talks around the country. He’s taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Notre Dame and Dartmouth College, and is currently a writer-in-residence and senior lecturer at Northwestern University where he’s been teaching since 1999.

Alex grew up in New York City and attended Wesleyan University. After a year-long stint on a cattle ranch, he took his first journalism job at a small alternative weekly in Lansing, Michigan.

He lives just outside Chicago with his wife, Maria Woltjen, who directs the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, and their two children, Mattie and Lucas.

Awareness

First we want to help bring awareness to the students themselves by not telling them what to do but listening to them. We want to help them to be aware of their surroundings as well as their place in those surroundings. It is also important that they learn how cause and effect are acutely present at all times, meaning how different types of energy affect the result of a situation. We want to help young people to be aware of their power, their fragilities and strengths, the polarization of good and bad, empty and full, helping and breaking, empathy and ignorance. Through the art, allow them to get in touch with that voice that is their own.

Consciousness

This pillar aims to help young people find solutions through their awareness and to apply consciousness to the program and also to life outside of the program to be able to make the right choice of how to handle situations, opening to learning, and to get beyond ignorance by not knowing. Consciousness is essential as it is the bottom line of how we choose how to react to, be part of, and have a key role in what’s happening around us.

Unity

The unity pillar helps ground the idea that you are not alone. It is important to discuss the fear of not daring to truly express your own feelings of not being alone and that it is also looked at through the art. We want to allow young people to discover the power of a group for the good and the bad, and how being united together fighting for a common goal as well as the feeling of protection from being in a group can create great strength and a sense of security. The diverse knowledge, strength, and skills brought into a group can change the world.

Gratitude

The gratitude part of this initiative is the pillar that makes everything else possible. Without gratitude, there is no growth, love, empathy, or advancement. This pillar is the staple of how mindset, attitude, application of thought and energy are essential. The energy of gratitude fills the power of creativity. The fact that we are the artists of our own lives with the energy that we put into it and how we fill our days. This pillar is really about depicting what we are grateful for in our lives and bringing awareness to that. The energy of gratitude opens doors, creates friendships, makes life fuller, and brings meaning to almost everything.