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248 Beth Truett: An Ambassador for Positive Aging
Beth Truett, MDiv, BS, believes in serving. It comes naturally to her and has guided her career path over the years. Her earliest memories are of lunches with the Ladies’ Aid Society. After a lengthy corporate career where she was committed to mentoring...
243 E. Beverly Young: Speak My Name in the Room
E. Beverly Young speaks her truths about gender and race prejudices in the workplace and larger society. She entered professional policing 50 years ago, one of few women in a male-dominated field. During her 26 years in uniform, Beverly achieved the rank...
241 Berry Dilley: Who Will Be My 24/7? A Concern that Grows with Age
Berry Dilley’s areas of interest cover movement, dance and mindfulness, teaching, creativity, as well as health, disability services, and quality of life for elders. She has degrees in dance, sociology and counseling and more recently trained in Somatic...
236 Cheryl Keen: Scholarly Activist Follows Her Callings
Cheryl Keen, EdD—scholar, activist, Quaker—has always tried to follow her callings which personify commitment, connection, and community. As a pioneer in significant movements--peace education and justice, service-learning, and progressive higher...
219 Anne White: Green Elder–Climate Justice Advocate
Anne fell in love with nature as a young girl spending summers on her grandparents’ farm in north Georgia. Often alone with “nothing to do,” she read books and made friends with the insects, plants, snakes, and trees. After several decades as an...
216 Sara Paretsky: V.I. Warshawski Fights on for Women’s Rights
Sara Paretsky is a lifelong reader of crime fiction. She developed her social conscience early on, realizing that women were so often represented in negative ways, and so often invisible. Years later when she began to write crime stories herself, she...
210 Opal Lee and Dione Sims: A Lifelong Fight Ensures Freedom, Food, Housing & Clothing for Everyone
Dynamic duo, Opal Lee, 96 and her granddaughter, Dione Sims, 54 are relentless in their fight for freedom. Opal’s activism started as a home school counselor in South Fort Worth, TX. Opal believed that “access to information and resources is what helps us...
203 Nora Natof: Moving Forward and Giving Back
Nora Natof, age 87, now resides in Oak Park, IL, the village that is home to the studio of her grandfather, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many of the homes he designed. The summers Nora spent at Talieslin, her grandfather’s ‘almost’ sustainable community in...
195 Bett Martinez: An Activist Who Advocates for Others and Self
Bett Martinez has experienced more death-defying accidents than most in her lifetime. An auto accident at 33, and again, later in life caused 2 serious head injuries, badly smashed broken legs and ongoing auto-immune issues. But Bett, who began to...
192 Susan Reed: Being an Active Citizen–Why Not Me?
Susan Reed, PhD, age 70, has led a life of social-political action since her teens. She campaigned for McGovern and later for Obama; interned with the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union; protested the Vietnam War; worked on social policy for equities in...
184 Patricia Novick: Championing Reproductive Freedom in the post-Roe Era
Before abortion was legalized by the US Supreme Court in 1973 (Roe v Wade), a Chicago-based group of over 100 women--known as Jane--provided counseling and illegal abortions for 11,000 women (1969-1973). Rev. & Dr. Patricia Novick, age 75, was one...
181 Karen Kalish: Social Problems; Social Causes – Over 70 and Still Reimagining
Karen Kalish’s career included school teacher, consumer advocate, business owner, and on-air TV reporter. She became a serial social entrepreneur and believes that to whom much is given, much is required. “Partners and collaborators are what make it work....
161 Susan Stall, Ph.D. CREATIVE HOUSING OPTIONS for the MISSING MIDDLE
In 1985, sociologist and activist Dr. Susan Stall designed and taught a college course entitled Gender and the Built Environment: Redesigning the American Dream. Since then, her scholarship and activism have expanded to innovations in housing that center...
157 Frances ‘Poppy’ Northcutt: One Time Rocket Scientist, Sometime Lawyer, Full Time Feminist
Frances “Poppy” Northcutt gained national fame as the first and only woman in NASA’s mission control room working on the Apollo Program. Poppy and her team designed the Return-to-Earth trajectory that took the Apollo 8 crew around the Moon and back to...
149 Sue Smith: Sue Talks Trash & Fights Dirty
Sue Smith’s life has educated her as much as she educates others in her position as teacher, trainer and consultant, first for middle school children, and then 30 years for Keep America Beautiful. Sue recently retired from KAB. The love in her voice as...
147 Margo Morris: Diversity, Animals & Art – An Unlikely Frame for a Spectacular Life
Create diverse communities and better the lives of all people. This one sentence perfectly describes Margo Morris, 78. The communities themselves were diverse: corporate America, education, Lincoln Park Zoo, Garfield Park Conservatory and other...
144 Defying Gravity: Finding Purpose, Rhythm and Enjoyment in Retirement with Iris Goldfein & Monica Israel
Childhood friends, Iris Goldfein and Monica Israel, are both highly accomplished professionals in male saturated fields, who approached retirement with apprehension and excitement. They co-founded DefyingGravity.life in 2018 with the mission to...
141 Pamela Tate: Full-time Activist for a Healthier Planet
Pamela Tate, age 75, did not foresee becoming a full-time volunteer leader of climate reality actions at grassroots and national levels. As a member of the Climate Reality Project-Chicago Metro Chapter, Pam co-chairs the Task Force on Electrifying Public...
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