Award Recipients & Guests Bios
FEATURED SPEAKER
U.S. Senator Barack Obama
Barack Obama has dedicated his life to public service as a community
organizer, civil rights attorney, and leader in the Illinois state Senate. Obama
now continues his fight for working families following his recent election to the
United States Senate.
Sworn into office January 4, 2005, Senator Obama is focused on promoting economic growth and bringing good paying jobs to Illinois. Obama serves on the important Environment and Public Works Committee, which oversees legislation and funding for the environment and public works projects throughout the country, including the national transportation bill. He also serves on the Veterans' Affairs Committee where he is focused on investigating the disability pay discrepancies that have left thousands of Illinois veterans without the benefits they earned. Senator Obama will also serve on the Foreign Relations Committee.
During his seven years in the Illinois state Senate, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state. Obama also pushed through an expansion of early childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama enlisted the support of law enforcement officials to draft legislation requiring the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.
Obama is especially proud of being a husband and father of two daughters, Malia, 6 and Sasha, 3. Obama and his wife, Michelle, married in 1992 and live on Chicago's South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.
Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961, in Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham. Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983, and moved to Chicago in 1985 to work for a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment. In 1991, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School where he was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review.
CIVIC LEADERSHIP AWARD
Mayor Richard Daley & Mrs. Maggie Daley
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has earned a national reputation for developing innovative, community-based programs to address crime, education, neighborhood development and other challenges facing cities at the end of the 20th Century. He has been a pioneer in eliminating municipal barriers that people with disabilities commonly face in their endeavors to live inclusive and independent lives in Chicago.
Within a year of his first term as mayor, in October 1990, Daley established the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) – the first and only Cabinet-level, municipal office in the world exclusively for people with disabilities. MOPD has provided thousands of individuals with disabilities in Chicago accessible housing, job training, high school mentoring programs, unprecedented access to polling places, and Access Chicago – the largest exhibition of products and services for people with disabilities in the Midwest.
Daley earned undergraduate and law degrees from DePaul University and began his public service career in 1969 when he was elected to the Illinois Constitutional Convention. From 1972 to 1980 he served in the Illinois Senate, where he sponsored landmark mental health legislation and established rights for nursing home residents.
Daley was elected State's Attorney of Cook County in 1980. He pushed successfully for tougher state narcotics laws to obtain more convictions and developed programs to combat drunk driving, domestic violence and child support delinquencies. He was elected Mayor on April 4, 1989, to complete the term of the late Harold Washington, and was re-elected in 1991, 1995 and 1999 by overwhelming margins.
Equip for Equality recognizes Mayor Richard M. Daley for his outstanding civic leadership that has made Chicago a national model for inclusion and accessibility for people with disabilities.
Maggie Daley, the first lady of Chicago and one of the city's leading advocates for children and youth, became publicly involved in disability issues in 1988 when she volunteered for Pathways Foundation, a nonprofit agency dedicated to raising awareness about the benefits of early detection and therapy for children with physical disabilities.
With a strong commitment to her Catholic faith, Mrs. Daley helped establish within Pathways the "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors Program," whose goal is to create caring congregations where parishioners of all abilities can participate. The program partners with the Chicago archdiocese to promote inclusive and accessible houses of worship for all faiths. President of the foundation for several years, Mrs. Daley retired this year to focus her efforts as Chair of After School Matters (ASM).
Through After School Matters, the only program of its kind and scope in the country, Mrs. Daley now works on providing teenagers in Chicago with engaging activities during the after-school hours. This year ASM will reach 22,000 teens. She also helped establish Chicago's Gallery 37, which this year merged with ASM, a cultural facility that employs arts programming to empower people of all ages with creative and vocational skills. The gallery has been replicated in several cities in the United States and abroad.
Margaret Corbett, born in 1943, first met Richard M. Daley in 1970 when she was an account executive with Xerox Learning Systems. Richard Daley was then beginning to campaign for the Illinois Senate. They married in 1972. Richard and Maggie have four children: Nora, Patrick, Elizabeth, and Kevin, who was born in 1978 with spina bifida and died at the age of three.
Equip for Equality honors Maggie Daley for her continuing activities in promoting inclusive and accessible environments for children and adults with disabilities in Chicago.
WITH REMARKS BY
Curt Decker, Executive Director, National Disability Rights Network (NDRN)
Curt Decker has been affiliated with the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN)* since its inception in 1982. As Executive Director of the nation's largest non-governmental enforcer of disability rights, Curt oversees all activities related to training and technical assistance, membership services, and legislative advocacy.
Before founding NDRN with other P&A Directors, Curt served as Director of the Maryland P&A - the Maryland Disability Law Center. Curt also served as Director of the H.E.L.P. Resource Project for Abused and Neglected Children for four years, and was a VISTA worker prior to working as a senior attorney for Baltimore Legal Aid Bureau for five years.
Curt currently chairs the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), a coalition of over 100 national disability groups, and serves on the boards of Friends of Research and Opera Vivente. In his career, Curt also served as a legislative consultant for numerous groups, including the American Association on Mental Retardation, the National Public Law Training Center, and the Maryland Academy of Physician's Assistants. He is a graduate of Hamilton College and Cornell Law School.
*formerly the National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems (NAPAS)
MASTER OF CEREMONIES
Dave Savini, CBS 2 Investigative Reporter
Dave Savini is one of Chicago's great investigative journalists. In 1999, he uncovered and developed a five-part expose for WMAQ-TV on public schools that locked young students with disabilities in closets for "time out." The series, 'Kids in Confinement,' on which he extensively collaborated with Equip for Equality, led to legislative and regulatory action. Besides his work reporting on the plight of children with disabilities, Dave has uncovered corruption in the police department, and exposed medical negligence, government waste and child exploitation. His reports have resulted in legal reforms and policy changes within government agencies and local corporations.
In 2003, he won the prestigious Edward R. Murrow award for his series "Code Blue, Code Red," which investigated law enforcement officials and exposed 250 drunk driving offenders among Chicago police officers, firefighters and paramedics. Dave recently moved from WMAQ to WBBM, Channel 2 News in Chicago, and he previously worked at WROC-TV in Rochester, New York as an anchor and investigative reporter. Before that, he was the Raleigh bureau chief at WNCT-TV in Greenville, North Carolina (1990-92). He began his career as a weekend anchor and investigative reporter at WHIZ-TV in Zanesville, Ohio.
Dave has been honored for excellence throughout his career with nine Emmy Awards, a national Clarion Award, the Herman Kogan Award from the Chicago Bar Association and an Edward R. Murrow Award. Born and raised in Chicago, he is a 1985 graduate of Weber High School and earned a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Dayton. Dave and his wife have two children and live in Naperville.
