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OUR TEAM
BOARD OF DIRECTORS & OFFICERS
SUSAN E. COX
Executive Director
Former Magistrate Judge, Northern District of Illinois​
ROBERT KREISMAN
Board Member
Partner, Kreisman Law
Offices
TYLER C. MURRAY
Treasurer
Quinn Emanuel
Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP
GAIL RICHARDSON
Board Member
Westside Heroin and
Opioid Prevention Center
RUBEN CASTILLO
Board Member
Former Chief Judge, Northern District of Illinois
MELISSA HIRST
Board Member
General Counsel,
Inspire11
SIDNEY I. SCHENKIER
Board Member
Former Magistrate Judge,
Northern District of Illinois
LESLIE GARTHWAITE
Board Member
Associate General Counsel,
Exelon
CONTRACTORS
WILL SMITH, MSW
Program
Evaluator
TONY JACKSON, Ed.D
Program
Mentor
TEAM UPDATES
We are pleased to have added two new distinguished Board members to our Board of Directors!
Melissa Hirst is Inspire11’s General Counsel. She is a former trial attorney who spent 16 years defending product liability suits and handling complex commercial disputes for her clients. Now, she works with Inspire11’s consultants, creatives, and executives to develop new approaches to its clients’ problems, while also counseling on legal, HR, risk management, and compliance issues. tomorrow for all.
Melissa has a JD from Georgetown University Law Center and a BA from the University of Notre Dame. She is a trained mediator and a member of the Trial Bar of the Northern District of Illinois. Melissa is committed to nonprofit and pro bono work, and has represented clients in immigration and asylum hearings, on habeas corpus petitions, in civil rights cases, and in administrative hearings. She previously advised the Chicago Ethics Reform Task Force regarding reforms and served as counsel for the committee. She is a board member of the Federal Bar Association and vice-chair of the Chicago Bar Foundation's Grants Committee.
Leslie Garthwaite is the Director of Exelon’s Corporate Investigations and Associate General Counsel. Leslie is a former veteran prosecutor of the United States Department of Justice serving as the Assistant Chief of the Market Integrity & Major Fraud Unit and a trial attorney for the Health Care Fraud Unit. During her time at DOJ, she prosecuted high-profile cases related to Covid-19 relief fraud, healthcare fraud, and “spoofing” in commodities trading. She received the “Top Prosecutor” award from Women in Law Enforcement.
Prior to her public service as a federal prosecutor, Leslie was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis and worked at Wilmer Hale. She is a frequent speaker and panel moderator on topics relating to white collar enforcement, compliance and investigations. She received her JD from Georgetown University and her BA from the University of Michigan.
Will Smith is a retired U.S. Probation Officer who served for twenty-three years in that position and is a reentry specialist. Will served on the Second Chance Reentry Court for several years before he retired. Prior to that, Will was a social worker with the Chicago Board of Education and a caseworker for PSI, assisting with the reunification of families in the care of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Will has a MSW from Loyola University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Chicago State University. He currently is the owner of Concepts Outside of Ordinary Limits LLC (C.O.O.L.) which provides informed therapeutic intervention and counseling to clients seeking to better their situation, particularly those returning from incarceration.
Will joins our team as a program evaluator. He will ensure that the program follows best practices for reentry courts and will engage new potential participants as soon as they express interest in joining the program. He also will do exit interviews for those who leave the program and follow up with them for three years following graduation.
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