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Recent Honorees: Esther Rothstein Award Recipients from 2010 WBAI Rise Up & Reach Back Luncheon
Each year, the Women's Bar Association of Illinois recognizes a select number of distinguished women who have demonstrated a visionary approach in their professional endeavors by making a contribution to the well-being and empowerment of women, while freely giving back to other women and members of the legal profession by conferring this distinguished award. The award’s namesake, Esther Rothstein, President of the WBAI in 1961, challenged all women attorneys "not to give back to others because we have to, but because we can." Rothstein was the first woman in 103 years to serve as President of the largest urban bar association in the United States, The Chicago Bar Association, and a few years later, to serve as President of its Foundation. She was also the first woman to serve as a director of the Illinois Bell Telephone Company, the first woman trustee of Illinois Institute of Technology, the first to chair a committee of the American Bar Association, the Gavel Awards Committee, and the first woman lawyer to be elected to the Chicago Hall of Fame.
On January 21, 2011 at our Third Annual Rise Up & Reach Back Luncheon, the WBAI will have the honor of awarding Senator Dawn Clark Netsch (ret.) and Mary Hutchings Reed with an Esther Rothstein Award. ________________________________________________________________________________
The WBAI had the honor of awarding the 2011 Esther Rothstein Awards to, Sen. Dawn Clark Netsch and Mary Hutchings Reed
Sen. Dawn Clark Netsch (ret.)
Professor of Law Emerita, Northwestern University School of Law
Former Illinois State Senator
For decades, inside and outside of public office, Dawn Clark Netsch has fought relentlessly for improved finance and performance of Illinois public schools, for higher standards of ethics in government, for State finance reform, and for the human rights of all Illinois residents.
Attorney, educator, author, state legislator, advocate for civil rights and clean government, state comptroller, and 1994 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Dawn Clark Netsch has devoted her entire career to public service for the people of Chicago and Illinois. With a group of former Governor Stevenson acolytes called the Committee on Illinois Government in the ‘50’s and as legislative aid to Gov. Kerner in the early ‘60’s, she promoted equal employment and housing opportunity policies, reforms of public welfare and the mental health system, and the quest for women’s equality. Her decades-long quest for strong ethics in government began as a delegate to the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention, continued throughout her 18 years as a state senator, deepened as a founding member of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform in the 1990s, and continues unabated in the current movement to restore ethics to government.
Since her “retirement” from electoral politics, Dawn Clark Netsch has resumed teaching at Northwestern Law School and continues to be a powerful voice for reforming public education funding and redrawing a fairer state tax structure, and for governmental ethics and campaign reform, as well as GLBTQ rights.
Asked recently by Chicago Life magazine what her motto for her public interest career would be, Dawn said: I suppose the tagline in the famous pool television ad in my gubernatorial campaign –“a straight shooter.”
Mary Hutchings Reed
Of Counsel, Winston & Strawn
Author
Mary Hutchings Reed has practiced law in Chicago for almost thirty-five years, focusing on advertising, marketing, copyright, trademark and entertainment law. She is the author of three books about law and numerous legal articles and has spoken frequently in her field. Her 456-page book, The IEG Legal Guide to Sponsorship, was the first of its kind on the subject of sponsorship law, and is still the leading treatise on the subject. Her other books are The Legal Guide to Cause Marketing and The Copyright Primer for Librarians and Educators. She has also authored a set of sponsorship contracts available on disk from IEG, Chicago.
She began her career at Sidley & Austin, Chicago, where she became partner in 1983. She joined Winston & Strawn, Chicago, in 1989 with Steve Durchslag, to help start the Firm's intellectual property practice. Over the years her clients have included a wide-ranging variety of both creators and users of intellectual property, from the American Library Association to Don King Productions. Today she continues to represent many consumer products companies and their advertising, promotion and event sponsorship agencies.
Mary has served on the board of Lawyers for the Creative Arts for many years, and also earned that organization's Thomas Leavens Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts. She also currently serves on the Executive committee of the Board of Directors of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago and on the Board of the Steel Beam Theatre. In the past she served on the boards of the American Civil Liberties of Illinois, the Chicago Bar Foundation, the Off The Street Club, YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago and WBEZ Public Radio. Mary is listed in Leading Lawyers Network and Chambers, and "The Best Lawyers in America" (Media Law, Advertising Law). She has taught entertainment law at Columbia College Graduate Program in Arts, Entertainment and Media and at Northwestern University School of Law.
Mary is also the author of eight novels, one memoir, one collection of short stories and a full-length musical, Fairways, about golf, honesty and love. Excerpts from her works are available at www.MaryHutchingsReed.com and www.fairwaysthemusical.com. Her first novel, Courting Kathleen Hannigan, was published by Ampersand in 2007 and focuses on the challenges faced by women who joined large institutional law firms in the seventies.
A 1976 graduate of the Yale Law School, Mary serves on the School’s Executive Committee. She also holds bachelors and masters degrees from Brown University in public policy making and economics.
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