Jane Ramsey, Legacy Leader
This Legacy Leader award by Voice of the People is generally reserved for historical and living legends among the organization’s resident leaders, staff alum, and board of directors. Although Jane Ramsey has not held any of those titles, she has, more than anyone else, been deeply engaged as a Voice investor, organizer, consultant, third-party professional supervisor, dollar-a-year advisor to the board, and liaison to universities, housing developers, and partners over the decades.
Ms. Ramsey led the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA) from 1979 to 2012, growing the organization into a progressive force for good on a wide range of issues— from racism and bigotry to police misconduct; from open government reforms to interfaith collaborations of all kinds, most notably during the tense period following 9/11. But Voice and fledgling affordable housing non-profits from the South, West, and North sides knew Jane and her cadre of organizers as capacity-building volunteers. They were a driving force for community-based groups, helping them pursue their missions and enhancing the capacity of housing and economic development coalitions for collective action. Jane also provided hands-on assistance in the acquisition and development of affordable housing in Uptown. Alongside Voice and many others, she oversaw the start of the Community Ventures Program, which brought socially minded investors and grassroots organizations together by providing Pre-Development Funding.
Following her tenure at JCUA, her activism and organizing in social justice, along with her work in organizational development, education, and training, expanded even further with the creation of her consulting company, Just Ventures LLC. She has been an uncompensated advisor to Voice’s board for many years, offering organizational consulting on partnership relations, HR recruitment, and supervision of key resident services staff, and university interns, through her faculty/lecturer status at the University of Chicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work. If that weren’t enough, along with volunteer service on multiple ad hoc and ongoing coalitions, Jane Ramsey also serves as faculty at a Shanghai-based organization for Chinese students interested in attending liberal arts colleges in the U.S. There, she teaches and mentors students both online and in person, sharing her expertise in research, history, and social justice movements.
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Aurie Pennick, History Maker
A native of Chicago and her beloved Englewood Community, Aurie Pennick has been an iconic figure in law and justice, fair housing and community development, civil rights and philanthropy, and in non-profit administration, and Diversity Equity and Inclusion – before that was a thing. Ms. Pennick has received multiple awards and has been a coauthor, contributor, and subject of numerous books and articles.
Now in retirement and living in Uptown, Voice of the People has been gratified to enlist Aurie to the board of the Dovie Thurman Affordable Housing Trust — an innovative effort to achieve permanent affordability in service-enriched affordable housing.
Ms. Pennick earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Illinois Chicago, and a law degree from John Marshall Law School. She put her education to work as a Managing Attorney for Administration at the Chicago Transit Authority and later as an instructor for Fair Housing at DePaul and for a wide-ranging curriculum for non-profits at the Spertus Institute, where she taught for 20 years.
When Aurie Pennick was not breaking glass ceilings for executives in philanthropy, she was leading by example in supporting marginalized communities and grassroots, community-controlled organizations in housing, economic opportunities, and socially just programming. In Philanthropy, Aurie served with distinction at the Chicago Community Trust, the MacArthur Foundation, and, for fourteen years, as President/CEO of the Field Foundation. In her role at the Field Foundation, she managed approximately $60m in assets and retired in 2016. At MacArthur, her design and implementation of the “The Fund for Neighborhood Initiatives” was groundbreaking in multi-year staffing and strategic planning support for community development corporations – like Voice — starting in the 1980s. Many foundations followed MacArthur’s lead, and cities around the country copied Chicago’s strategies in affordable housing development and public-private partnerships.
Aurie’s work with non-profits was nothing short of amazing, from founding/pioneering efforts at a battered women’s shelter to a ten-year stint as President/CEO of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, the nation’s only fair housing organization founded by Dr. Martin Luther King.
The number of committee and commission appointments she had, or awards and recognitions received, are almost too many to count. Suffice it to say, Aurie Pennick has both witnessed and shaped history—appointed by Mayor Washington to the Chicago Police Board and later chairing the Cook County Violence Prevention, Intervention, and Reduction Committee. She has been recognized as a prestigious Aspen Institute Fellow, cited as a Gale Cincotta Visionary, honored with a Studs Terkel ‘Uplifting Voice’ award, and received the James Joseph National Award from Black Foundation Executives.
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Mark Angelini, Mover & Shaker
At a time when many worthy new developments and affordable housing “preservation” projects await local commitments for “soft” financing support, when the state has paused applications for the same, and when housing resources from the federal government are uncertain, Mark Angelini, President of Mercy Housing Lakefront (MHL), sits atop a portfolio of 48 properties with 7,000 low-income tenants.
Each property comes with the financial burden of resident services support, to keep people stably housed with access to social and economic opportunities. Each building periodically needs new funding for upgrades or even full recapitalization to preserve those affordable housing opportunities enjoyed by residents. Voice of the People can relate,… and is related to,… the challenges of Mercy Housing Lakefront – an organization that is now being tasked by housing, service, and legislative allies to save yet another big building in Uptown – the 137-unit Leland Hotel.
With cum laude credentials in Engineering, and bachelor’s and master’s from Notre Dame and Northwestern, Mark Angelini embarked on his journey in community development by training at the local and national front lines for it – as an aldermanic Chief of Staff in Chicago and economic development staffer to Senator Paul Simon. He quickly transitioned from subsequent leadership at the Illinois Institute of Technology to the Shaw Company, a real estate and community development company known for its award-winning Homan Square Project. Centered on the abandoned Sears building on the west side, this project brought fresh investment in new construction and rehab, with rental, ownership, and mixed-income components to the broader vicinity of East Garfield and South Lawndale – which had suffered from heavy redlining, disinvestment, and housing abandonment for decades.
This was all perfect training for his senior vice president role at Mercy Housing Lakefront, where he not only oversaw maintenance and real estate development centered first in the Uptown community but expanded that impact across the Great Lakes Region. This work benefitted our most challenged individuals and families, also required a heavy lift overseeing resident services that kept people stably housed and in pursuit of a great quality of life. Mark has emerged as a consummate fundraiser and spokesperson for so many of MHL residents – low-income people who averted homelessness, seniors and vets with special needs, citizens returning to community life from incarceration, and households requiring affordable housing to turn their lives around, but friends to help them navigate physical and mental health services. In the community development field, you would be hard-pressed to find a more articulate spokesperson at the intersection of health and housing, and how we must address these needs in new and more coherent ways.
Mark has served with distinction on numerous boards, committees and task forces. logging fully 20 years on leadership at the Metropolitan Planning Council and Urban Land Institute, and most recently on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s “Cut the Tape” Task Force. Mark has been a volunteer advisor to banks, most notably Cinnaire (a community development financial institution), JP Morgan Chase, and Fifth Third Bank, and go-to guest lecturer to a half dozen universities in Chicago.
Mark Angelini’s experience and lessons learned have put him in the position as one of our nation’s penultimate “Movers & Shakers” in the field of community development. We need him now more than ever to preserve affordable housing during trying times and to model how we provide a dynamic hedge against increasing homelessness in our country.
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