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.

04/18/2023

Mary Bartelme grew up in what is now known as Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood but at the time was home to new immigrants like her parents. After graduating from a teachers’ college and teaching for six years, she enrolled in law school at Northwestern University. At first, Bartelme focused on probate and real estate law but the she shifted her attention to juvenile justice. She became the first female Public Guardian of Cook County and then went on to become assistant judge (the first female judge in America) to Judge Merritt W. Pinckney who presided over a growing number of juvenile court cases. She later was elected as a Cook County Circuit Court judge, another female first.

Bartelme set new standards for treating "wayward" girls. Unable to bear the thought of seeing them placed behind bars in a cold jail cell, she established homes (known as Mary’s Clubs) where the girls could be helped, encouraged and corrected. Over 2,600 girls passed through these group homes in a span of ten years. Bartelme was also active in the women’s suffrage movement and with promoting women’s rights.

04/16/2023

Viola Spolin (1906-1994) was born in Chicago to Russian Jewish immigrants. She had a lively childhood playing with her friends in her Humboldt Park neighborhood and creating and performing plays with members of her extended family. After high school, Spolin studied drama at DePaul University and at the Goodman Theater. On Saturday nights with friends, she incorporated concepts of play therapy theory with games and improvisation sessions.

In the 1930’s, Spolin and a group of other divorcees rented a North Side mansion where they lived communally. She worked for the WPA (Works Progress Administration) teaching creative dramatics to recreational leaders and to children. Improvisational theater began to emerge during this time.

After time spent living in California where she founded the Young Actors Company in Hollywood, Spolin returned to Chicago at the request of her son, Paul Sills. Sills, who with a group of University of Chicago students had formed a theater troupe called the Compass Players, knew that his fellow actors would benefit from his mother’s improvisation training. They did and the Compass Players evolved into The Second City. Spolin worked again with her son at the Game Theater and the Story Theater.

Returning to California, Spolin held drama games and improvisation workshops at colleges, theaters, mental health facilities, prisons and for the casts of various television shows. She founded an acting school and published three books on theater games and improvisation. Though she died in 1994, her imprint on the theater world remains strong and all agree that Viola Spolin is the “Mother of Improvisational Theater.”