President Kathy Tate-Bradish called the third meeting of the year to order at 7:30 a.m. on the dot with the ringing of the bell.

 

John Searles read “Why We Are Rotarians,” followed by the thought for the day: “You can get everything in life you want if you just help enough people get what they want.”

 

David Bures was  introduced as our newest club member.  Welcome, David!

 

 

Kathy Tate Bradish - We’re hosting a backyard concert this Sunday, July 31. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., concert at 7 p.m. Come in the side gate and be prepared to donate $15 to the performers. Come earlier for some club conviviality; we can sit together.  RSVP to me if you can make it. Please bring chairs or a blanket. Call me if you have questions: 224/612-2010. Who: Sarah Donner and the Middle Spoon Band. Who are they? Kathey's daughter Jessy’s ukulele teacher and their touring band https://middlespoonband.bandcamp.com/releases Where: 2307 Orrington Ave., corner of Orrington and Dartmouth, yellow house, blue door, come in the Dartmouth side gate.

 

Ann Weatherhead – Gave a brief overview of recent developments in Evanston related to housing, which is our club's signature focus.  She mentioned the need for our continued support for the purchase of the Margarita Inn.  Tours for club members will be scheduled after the Taste of Evanston.  Two links are being sent out covering the zoning code issue.  Please read them.  She also announced a PBS Documentary, "Facing Eviction - A Mother and Her Young Daughter Navigate Eviction," airing July 26 on PBS at 9 p.m.c

 

Bill Glader – Taste of Evanston continues to be in full swing:

Ann Searles - New member information/social will be held at Myra Janus’ house on August 14.  All members are invited, especially those who joined our club during the pandemic.  More information will be coming.  Sunshine Report – Phone contact.

Joan Borg – RI Building management says it is OK for members to buy food in the RI cafeteria and bring it up to the meeting room.

 

 

 

 

Georgia Vlahos - Georgis was born in Greece and lived on a mountain top village with no electricity or running water, a very traditional way of life in a very poor place.  It was a happy existence until April 21, 1967, when there was a CIA-inspired coup toppling the democratic Lee-held government, which was leaning left.  Georgia emigrated in 1968 to a tiny town in Ohio near the West Virginia panhandle with her family. 

 

Georgia stayed in Ohio for her undergraduate degree in political science and then moved on to law school at Northwestern University.  She tried working in large, medium, and small law firms and ended up working for the US Navy at Great Lakes Naval Air Station in Waukegan.   Initially, she worked for the facilities management people and did environmental law, which was very cool.  She then filed an affirmative liability claim and recovered some money and later for the training people she worked for the Admiral as a civilian in-house lawyer.  She said she was very proud of the work they did for their clients.

 

For the last eight years of her federal career, Georgia was an administrative judge.  In that role, she enforced civil service protections for employees who felt that they had been improperly disciplined or discharged.  She retired from that position at the end of 2021. 

 

Georgia loves volunteering, theatre, exercise, hiking, reading, and travel.  Georgia will be traveling to Europe in September for an extended stay.

 

“I thank you for being who you are. It's lovely being a member of this club," she declared.

 

Kelly Fidei – Kelly was born in Pasadena, Calif., and her dad worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) there.  She learned only last weekend that he worked on the first six launches into space and the first moon landers.  He was very excited because he also worked on the package sent into space that includes a recording of an opera singer and recordings of people saying hello in 100 different languages.  Recently it is a big deal that it left the heliosphere (heliosphere is the space beyond which the solar wind from our sun is gone). 

 

Kelly spent her childhood in Southern California, climbing down into earthquake faults and pretending she was a Native American as well as hiking the area.  She really fell in love with nature, which is why Kelly is so excited to be in a club that has so many opportunities to help the environment.   Before she went to college, she lived in Bogota Colombia, for a year as a foreign exchange student, which was pivotal for her. In the recent pandemic, she spent a month doing business in Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, and then on to Mexico, where she experienced an earthquake.

 

Kelly has had a few different careers.  She taught at Loyola University Chicago for 10 years.  Then she got into writing code and programming, started four companies on her own (some successful, some not) and today she is an agile coach and works mostly with Fortune 500 organizations to transform the way they work to become more values-based, specifically more based on values around respect for people and also hypothesis experimentation - what did you learn to adjust and adapt.  She is also an executive coach, mostly doing one on one coaching at the C-level. 

 

Kelly then took the Club into an exercise she uses in her executive coaching work.  She led us in writing a personal brand statement, which is also a person’s leader-purpose statement.  The first element is identifying your natural talents in two or three words and then think about a fun metaphor that describes those talents, The second part of your impact statement is thinking about what are the positive impacts that you have on people when you are at your best.

 

 

 

Kasumi – NU Student from Japan studying for MBA at Northwestern University

 

Amy Fulrow – Interested in our club

 

Noel Spain – Interested in our club

 

Jeff Snyder – Prospective member

 

Cristobal Lubinda – Interested in our club

 

Sam LaRosa Fredrickson – Interested in our club

 

 

John Osterland - July 29