Melissa Macek, President and Treasurer
Melissa Macek works for McKesson (a Fortune 20 company) as the Director of Finance for the North Central Region. Melissa joined McKesson in 2004 and is currently based in the NC Regional Office in Aurora, Illinois. Prior to joining McKesson she worked for Baxter Healthcare, where she served as Director of Finance for the North American region of Baxter BioScience. While at Baxter, she was also very involved in college recruiting process and led the recruitment process at three schools.
Melissa holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management with a general management focus. Her undergraduate degree is from Indiana University with a BS in Science with and major in Accounting.
Melissa is the President of the Women’s Board for Mt. Sinai Hospital whose mission it is to raise money for the hospital so that it can continue to provide health care to individuals to do not have public or private insurance, an effort she assists with her management of the resale shop at 814 W. Diversey. She has also involved with the Kellogg Women’s Executive Network and during her time at Indiana University was President of the Women in Business organization.
Melissa is married and has a daughter who attends Lincoln Elementary School. She has travels extensively, and worked in Europe while working for Baxter. She currently lives on Grant Place.
George Atkinson, Vice-President
George Atkinson is a Senior Client Partner at Korn/Ferry International, the world’s leading talent solutions firm. Over the course of his career in executive search, he has focused within the Global Human Resources Practice, working with Fortune 500 corporations as well as early-stage high growth companies across a wide variety of industries.
George holds a Master of Management Degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, as well as a Bachelor of Science Degree from Cornell University. He is an actively involved with The Springboard Foundation, which supports small, underfunded and grass-roots after-school programs in Chicago’s most impoverished neighborhoods. He is also a Board member of ALESMA, Lincoln Elementary School’s band program. He and his family live on Belden.
Josh Glazier, Zoning Chair
Josh Glazier grew up in Chicago Uptown neighborhood and graduated from the Francis Parker High School in 1981. Josh has a BBA from the University of Michigan’s School of Business and a JD from Harvard Law School. Josh practiced law at Altheimer & Gray for three years and relocated to Prague, Czech Republic, where in 1985 he founded Spectrum Realty, one of the country’s largest independent commercial real estate brokerage firms. Spectrum developed several projects in Prague’s Historic District, including the “Untgelt,” one of Europe’s oldest market squares dating back to the 11th century.
Since returning to Chicago in 1988, Josh has developed real estate primarily in Chicago’s south side and South and West suburbs. During this time, Josh has developed over 300,000 square feet of retail and health care space plus over 15 single family homes and small multi-unit residential buildings. He lives with his family at Cleveland and Webster, and his four children have attended Francis Parker Elementary School.
Susan Keegan, Recording Secretary
Susan Keegan has been a MidNorth Board member since 2011. Susan’s background is in law. She has served as Executive Director of the Center For Disability & Elder Law, and has more than 30 years of legal experience, focused primarily on plaintiff’s litigation, including her partnership with the international human rights firm, D’Amato Keegan & Duggan LLC in Chicago. Prior to that, she practiced in the area of business litigation. Susan also served as a Policy Advisor to then-State Treasurer Patrick Quinn. In 2012, Governor Patrick Quinn appointed Susan Chairman of the Quality Control Board for the State of Illinois. The Board monitors and oversees the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). The OIG assists in investigating reports of abuse and fosters humane and caring treatment of people with mental and developmental disabilities. Susan graduated with honors from the University of Illinois along time ago and received her Juris Doctor from Northwestern University School of Law a few years later.
Susan has lived in Lincoln Park are for more than 22 years and her present home for 15 years. Her two children attended Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, Lincoln Park High School and Saint Ignatius College Prep. She has been married to attorney Mark Furlane, a partner at Drinker, Biddle & Reath for 28 years.
Craig Varga, Legal Director
Craig Varga has lived in Lincoln Park since 1977. He graduated from Northwestern University Law School in 1979. He has practiced law since then, first with a large law firm, and then with a boutique commercial litigation defense firm, Varga, Berger, Ledsky, Hayes & Casey. He has concentrated on financial services matters and business litigation. He has long served as General Counsel for the Illinois Financial Services Association, and in that capacity has been extensively involved in public policy and legislative forums at the local, state and national levels. He is also an active participant in various national professional associations, trade groups and trade publications.
Craig and his wife Noelle Brennan, a plaintiff’s employment and civil rights attorney, live on the 2100 block of Cleveland and are parents of twin boys who attend Lincoln Elementary School.
Craig has reduced his law practice in recent years to assist with his sons. Craig also devotes lots of his time to his undergraduate school, Washington & Jefferson College, where he serves as Trustee and as a Board Officer.
Michelle Hoppe Villegas, Membership Chair
Michelle Hoppe Villegas grew up in Minnesota where she first developed an abiding love of nature, public parks and community spaces. She raised, trained and showed horses competitively for many years. She attended the University of Minnesota and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biology with an emphasis in genetics and a minor in child psychology. While there, she studied mechanisms of viral transmission and genomic mutation as an associate investigator in Cytogenetics. She continued her graduate studies in Genetics and Immunology at the University of Michigan, and later studied Art and Architecture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Subsequently employed with American Airlines for over a decade she traveled extensively with her husband, Dr. Ernesto Villegas. Michelle is currently chief financial officer and advisor at ErgoMedica, Occupational Medicine and Urgent Care Clinic in the West Loop.
After retiring from American Airlines, Michelle became an energetic community volunteer and organizer. While her children attended Park West Cooperative Nursery School and Lincoln Elementary School, she served multiple terms on the Local School Council and PTA Board, coached the Lincoln tennis team and chaired various key committees. She spearheaded the extensive 2006 renovation of Lincoln Playground, and advocated for its preservation, citing its dual use and importance to the MidNorth community as school playground and after hours community space. Michelle continued to volunteer in the local school system when both children moved on to Walter Payton College Preparatory High School. Michelle has consistently and doggedly advocated for a more robust public school system, equity in education, equity in educational funding and social justice. In the course of her work, she has forged lasting alliances with many education and social justice advocacy groups across the City of Chicago.
Throughout her life, Michelle has been active in local and national politics, recently working as Policy and Strategy Advisor to Caroline Vickrey in the hotly contested aldermanic campaign for the 43 rd Ward.
Preservation of this beautiful and historic neighborhood was a central focus of that campaign. Michelle organized her community in an effort to save MidNorth green space, uphold historic preservation, rescue landmark buildings and decrease the density of proposed developments. Advocacy for these basic tenets of responsible use and preservation continue to be the focus of her work and membership in the MidNorth Association Board. Michelle has lived in the Mid North neighborhood for nearly 30 years, in historic homes on Cleveland and on Kemper Place.
Marshall Eisenberg, Director
Marshall is a founding partner of Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP. Marshall is a director of Sally Beauty Holdings, a NYSC Company, the Jel Sert Company and many other private companies. Marshall has served on the Board of Visitors of the University of Illinois, College of Law and served on the board of MidNorth Association when Oz Park was designed and Grant Hospital was expanded.
Marshall received his J.D. with honors from the University of Illinois, College of Law in 1971, where he served as a Notes and Comments Editor of the Law Review, was elected to the Order of the Coif and was an Income Tax Instructor in the Accounting Department. He received an M.A.S. in 1968 from the University of Illinois, where he served as a teaching assistant in Accounting. He received his B.S. from the University of Illinois in 1967, was admitted to Beta Alpha Psi and became a Certified Public Accountant.
Marshall and JoAnn have lived on Cleveland since 1971. His sons, Adam and Max, are Latin Alumni who live in London and San Francisco with their families.
Kelly Faso, Director
Kelly and her husband Steven are longtime residents of Lincoln Park. They have raised their two boys, Brogan and Drake, here in Lincoln Park, where they attended Abraham Lincoln Elementary School and Lincoln Park High School. Kelly was heavily involved at both Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln Park High School in fundraising efforts. At Lincoln Park High School she headed up the Band and Orchestra Program (“BOP”) and was able to secure the donation of a monumental collection of jazz CDs and LPs from the NIB Foundation when classical radio station WNIB closed its doors.
Kelly holds a Bachelor of Arts with honors in Communications from Washburn University and is currently the Strategic Partnerships Executive at the Illinois Technology Association. Kelly has 20 years of national sales, managing and event planning experience. Her son Brogan graduated from the University of Illinois in 2016 and her son Drake attends the University of Illinois with plans to study at Berklee College of Music in the fall of 2017. She lives with her husband and their dog, Pez, on Cleveland.
Paul Levy, Director
Paul Levy is a developer known for developing the Bridgeport Art Center, which is a multidisciplinary creative home for artists, designers, and professionals working across various art forms, media and vocations. He has lived with his wife and their daughter in Lincoln Park for over 20 years.
June Rosner, Director
June Rosner is a long time community resident of Lincoln Park and along with her late husband, Dr. Marvin Rosner, has been active in the community for many years. By becoming a Mid-North Member, June is following in his footsteps. Marv Rosner was treasurer and President of the Mid-North Association before moving on the Presidency of the Lincoln Park Conservation Association. June is President of June Rosner Public relations, a boutique PR firm whose clients range from mid-size companies, law firms and social agencies to public issues, major art shows, medical associations and hospitals.
Caroline Vickrey, Director
Caroline Vickrey is a native Chicagoan, a lawyer and a mom. She is a member of the Health Care Law Group at Johnson & Bell. She attended Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she served as Editor on the Law Journal, and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where she studied history. She has experience in commercial, municipal and employment litigation and worked in the Labor and Employment Division of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. She has donated her legal services to Pro Bono Network, providing a range of legal services to low income residents across the Chicagoland area.
She and her husband, Paul, also a trial attorney, raised their children in Lincoln Park, where they attended Park West Cooperative Nursery School, Abraham Lincoln Elementary School and Saint Ignatius College Prep. At Lincoln, Caroline was a four-term member of the Local School Council, PTA President, Chair of the Sports Program and coach of the Boys and Girls Tennis Teams. She was a board member of the Oz Park Advisory Council for over 20 years, chairing the Playground Committee when her children were young, and later spearheaded the project to resurface the tennis courts.
Caroline ran for Alderman of the 43rd Ward in 2015, coming within 79 votes of victory in a runoff. It was a rewarding experience that allowed her to meet hundreds of her neighbors, advocate for her community and for sound financial decision making in our City.
Currently, Caroline is a member of the Chicago Founder’s Council of the American Writer’s Museum, which opened in Chicago in 2017.