Women's L Project

05/14/2023

05/01/2023

Eunita Rushing first got interested in gardening when she was a graduate student at Loyola University and had a studio apartment filled with plants. That apartment was a foreshadowing of where she’d spend most of her professional career—the Garfield Park Conservatory. In her role as President of the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, Rushing helped raise funds but more importantly raised awareness of the Jen Jensen designed conservatory (one of the largest in the US). As educational and public programs were developed, attendance blossomed and the conservatory has become one of Chicago’s premier cultural institutions.

04/29/2023

Rebecca Gilman attended the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, graduating with a master of fine arts in playwriting in 1991. Moving to Chicago, Gilman’s breakout work was "The Glory of Living" which won the 1997 Joseph Jefferson Award Citation for New Work, the American Theatre Critics Association Osborn Award for Best New American Play and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Her subsequent plays which deal with contemporary issues in American society have earned Gilman more awards.

Gilman has mentored new playwrights while teaching at Northwestern University and Texas Tech University. She currently is an artistic associate at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

04/27/2023

Helen Valdez was a 30-something bilingual teacher at Bowen High School on Chicago’s Southeast Side in the 1980’s when she and fellow teacher Carlos Tortolero, frustrated by the lack of Mexican cultural education, decided to create a community based institution which would combine education with cultural celebration. With a budget of $900, they founded the Mexican Fine Arts Center in 1982. Now named the National Museum of Mexican Art, the museum has more than 11,000 pieces of artwork from ancient Mexico to the present.

04/25/2023

After attending the University of Illinois, Chicago native Suze Orman took off to California where she worked as a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery for seven years. Her dream was to own her own restaurant. Her career took off in a different direction, though, and Orman became a stockbroker. After gaining experience working for major investment firms, she founded her own financial firm. She went on to write ten books, appear as a guest on many television shows and have her own weekly show on CNBC for 13 years. She is now the host of a podcast that airs twice weekly—Suze’s Orman Women and Money (and Everyone Smart Enough to Listen).

04/22/2023

Who better to celebrate on Earth Day than Margaret Frisbie, Executive Director of Friends of the Chicago River! For two decades, she has led the non-profit organization in environmental advocacy work, educational programs for adults and children including the Chicago River Schools Network and a paddling program. Under her leadership, the Friends of the Chicago River opened the McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive. She is passionate about connecting city dwellers with nature and developing partnerships with businesses, community groups and government agencies to benefit the Chicago River.

04/20/2023

Salima Rivera (1946-2004) was a self-taught poet. Her poetry, both graceful and forceful, centered on the experience of Latina women as well as on international Latin American and feminist issues. Rivera was the best known poet of a group called ALBA (The Association of the Latino Brotherhood) and then Taller, which she co-founded in the wake of police violence against Puerto Ricans. She worked with various community organizations including Casa Aztlán, Movimiento Artístico Chicano and the Westtown Concerned Citizens Coalition and became a key leader in Chicago’s Latino cultural emergence of the 1970s. In 2018, she was inducted in the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.