Carolyn Kubitschek

Cocktail Reception and Award Ceremony 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Reception in the Cocktail Lounge and Ballroom Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres Ra!e and silent auction with original pieces by painter and muralist Alejandro Romero Entertainment by guitarist José Tito Cornier in Cocktail Lounge 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. Program Musical Interlude and Welcome Guitarist: José Tito Cornier Board President: Michael O’Connor Mistress of Ceremonies: Laura S. Washington Message from Executive Director Diane L. Redleaf Special Recognition Individual Recognition: Michael Otto (Jenner & Block) Team Recognition: McDermott, Will & Emery Firm Recognition: Sidley Austin LLP Slide Show: Defending Children and Families in the Supreme Court 2011 Family Defender Award Presentation by Carolyn Shapiro and Michael T. Brody Honoring Carolyn Kubitschek Brief Address by Carolyn Kubitschek “Why Children and Families Need Legal Defense” 6:00 p.m. – 6:15 p.m. Live Auction Auctioneer: Co-chair Salvador Cicero “Fund a Special Need”: $e Chaitanya Maddali Family Legal Support Fund Program Conclusion 6:15 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Ra"e, Silent Auction and Dessert Ra!e drawing in the cocktail lounge at 6:30 p.m. Silent Auction closes at 6:45 p.m. Entertainment by José Tito Cornier in Ballroom 1 W ecome to the Family Defense Center’s $ird Annual Bene%t Event honoring our dear friend, colleague, mentor, and child welfare reform leader Carolyn Kubitschek. On behalf of many wonderful clients, volunteers, committee members, our board and our sta*, we are here to thank you and to celebrate with you tonight. We’re often asked, “How old is the Family Defense Center?” Last year, in my program book message, I raised the question, “Which birthday is the Family Defense Center celebrating this year?” In 2010, I claimed that we were having our 5th birthday (we formed in 2005) but arguments could be made for either more recent or more distant start dates for Family Defense Center activities. I’m sorry that, as a lawyer, I make the simplest of questions complex and %nd it hard to give straightforward answers! But isn’t that what lawyers are good for? We’re also often asked, “Are you a local, state, or national organization?” Here again, I %nd myself arguing with the question as I struggle to give a direct answer. $is year’s celebration — honoring Carolyn Kubitschek for her heroic e*orts in the Supreme Court and her decades of precedent- setting work — is a truly national event. $e work we did to coordinate amicus brie%ngs in the Supreme Court established the Family Defense Center, once and for all, as a national leader — possibly THE national leader advocating justice for families in the child welfare system. We fended o* a challenge from 41 state attorneys general and the U.S. Solicitor General! If that doesn’t make us a national organization, I’m not sure what would. But I can’t claim we are truly a national organization just yet. We’re too small — just three full-time lawyers on sta*. $e clients we help directly live in the Chicago metropolitan area, most in the city itself. We do advise downstate clients, but we do not act as their lead attorneys. So we are de%nitely Chicago-based, with some claim to being state-wide. I would term us a “locally-based model organization with a national impact.” And you can believe that I do refer to the Family Defense Center in just this way! You can see I don’t like to be pinned down or boxed into categories. And that goes for our legal work, too: we provide direct services, systemic law reform advocacy, policy advocacy, community legal education and wonderful community programs like National Reuni%cation Day. So, I ask you, “Is the Family Defense Center a direct services provider or a policy group?” You tell me, but I believe we are both! Are we stretched too thin? De%nitely! Could our impact be signi%cantly greater if we had more resources? Absolutely! But our strength, I believe, is in coming up with varied solutions to the great problem of families being mistreated by the child welfare system — a system that has the power to destroy families, but one that can help heal them, if its power is used correctly. Since the struggle of the families we serve can’t be con%ned by zip code or by any one solution, we need to be /exible and use as many strategies to help them as we can. All of this is why honoring Carolyn Kubitschek this year is such a special honor for me. $ere is no one in the United States who has done more to create legal remedies for families or develop more brilliant and e*ective legal strategies than she has done. As her biography (p. 12) reveals, she has an astounding record of creating important precedents for children and families throughout the country. I’m forever in her debt and our client community is too! $e Family Defense Center is indebted to you, too! Without our friends, supporters, allies, and volunteers who do everything from handling pro bono cases to helping us get the word out, we couldn’t begin to be an e*ective local, state, or national organization, however old we are! $ank you again, and please enjoy yourself as you join us in celebrating our e*orts to bring justice to families all across America. Yours in the struggleug gl for justice,ju DianeDi an e L. RedleafR ed le af Executive Director 2 Event Co-Chairs M789;<= B>@QV joined Jenner & Block in 1984 and was named a partner in 1991. He has represented clients at all levels of the state and federal courts. His commercial litigation practice has included the defense of class actions, as well as securities, commercial tort, and contract disputes. He is Secretary of the Seventh Circuit Bar Association. He previously chaired its Representation of Indigents Committee and was a member of its Board of Governors. He is on the board of the Family Defense Center and the Evanston Community Foundation. Mr. Brody received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980. He received his law degree with honors from the University of Chicago Law School in 1983. He was selected a member of Order of the Coif and was a Comment Editor on the Law Review. After graduating from law school, Mr. Brody clerked for the Hon. Antonin Scalia on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Mr. Brody and his wife, Libby Ester, have two sons — one is a recent college graduate and the other is in college. $ey live in Evanston with their occasionally ill-behaved but very loyal dog. S;=[;Q@> C78<>@ is the principal of Cicero Law Firm, P.C., where he handles a wide range of legal matters in the state and federal courts. He is the 2011-2012 President of the Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois. Prior to forming his %rm, he directed the American Bar Association’s Ecuador project on tra\cking in persons and prior to that position, he was Chief Legal Counsel at the Mexican Consulate General in Chicago, in which capacity he directed major policy initiatives on behalf of families involved in child welfare matters. In that position, he worked with DCFS to achieve an important Memorandum of Understanding concerning consular noti%cation requirements. He published an article and did trainings concerning the Vienna convention and other consular notice issues as these a*ect both child welfare and criminal proceedings. From 2006-2009, he served on the Family Defense Center’s board of Directors. Mr. Cicero is a graduate of the Matias Romero Institute for Diplomatic Studies, received his law degree from the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University and received his B.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico. He has one daughter — Maya Aurora — and lives in Chicago. Mr. Cicero is also the Center’s on-demand live auctioneer (and when he is not advocating for the public interest, he is known to both write and perform his own repetoire of songs after a few drinks!). 3 Honorary Co-Chairs D>. C9>7^_@`9<> S{==7[;| is a board-certi%ed orthopedic surgeon who directs the Pediatric Orthopedics and Scoliosis Program at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital. He joined the surgery faculty at the University of Chicago in 1989, following residencies and further training in internal medicine, pediatric orthopedics and general orthopedics in Texas, Illinois and California. Dr. Sullivan attended college at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and attended medical school at UCLA while remaining on active duty. While at UCLA, he also earned a Master’s Degree in public health, focusing on epidemiology. An outstanding teacher and clinician, Dr. Sullivan has developed an expertise in child abuse and bone fractures through research, writing, and expert testimony in juvenile court and DCFS proceedings. Courts have frequently relied on his testimony, %nding his opinions more persuasive than the contrary testimony of other child abuse specialists in several Center cases. Dr. Sullivan was the Family Defense Center’s honoree for the 2010 Family Defender Award. D@>@_9V R@}<>_^ holds the Kirkland & Ellis Chair at Northwestern University Law School where she is also a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. A proli%c writer and researcher, she is the author or co-author of several books and has published over seventy articles and essays in books and journals including the Harvard Law Review , the Yale Law Journal and the Stanford Law Review .

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