For Immediate Release | Contact: Lyn Corbett Fitzgerald | 312-906-2231
Current Head of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago to Lead Largest Non-Governmental Funder of Health and Human Service in Chicagoland
Chicago – United Way of Metropolitan Chicago Board Chair Deborah L. DeHaas announced today that Laura Thrall has been selected as the organization’s president and chief executive officer.
“Laura brings a wonderful combination of leadership and operational experience which is critical to the continued growth of United Way as it begins its next 75 years,” said DeHaas, vice chairman & regional managing partner, Deloitte LLP. “Her vision in leading the human service sector through these economic times will be invaluable.”
As CEO of the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago, Thrall has led its transformation, developing the concept for the “Model YWCA,” opening the first of four planned new centers, launching its first capital campaign in 40 years and creating an infrastructure for sustained legislative advocacy.
DeHaas said, “Through her role as chair of CACE (metro Chicago’s consortium of the 23 largest health and human service agencies) and as a United Way funded agency, she has worked closely with United Way and has a great understanding of the organization, its role and the challenges facing the sector.”
“I welcome this unique opportunity to work with Chicago’s corporate, government and nonprofit leaders to strengthen the health and human service sector at a time when people across our community so urgently depend on its viability,” said Thrall. “I also want to build on the impressive effectiveness that United Way achieved with its 2004 consolidation, still the largest nonprofit merger in America.”
Previously, Thrall was division director of Campbell & Company, a leading national consulting firm specializing in providing counsel to large nonprofits, where she worked with clients such as the University of Notre Dame, National PTA in Chicago, National Children’s Museum, and Children’s National Medical Center, both in Washington, D.C., among others.
Before that she served as senior director at Los Angeles-based Starlight Children’s Foundation International.
Thrall serves in leadership roles at a number of nonprofit organizations, including as board chair for the Chicago Alliance for Collaborative Effort (CACE) and founding board member of its Back Office Cooperative. She is an appointed member of both the Visiting Committee for the Biological Sciences Division and Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago and the Governor’s Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes.
A 25-year resident of Chicago, Thrall holds a master’s degree in Public Service Management from DePaul University in Chicago. She joins United Way on March 2.
United Way of Metropolitan Chicago improves lives by mobilizing caring people to invest in the community where it’s needed most. People engage with United Way to give, advocate and volunteer in their community to advance the common good. Spanning 238 communities across six counties, United Way is the largest non-governmental funder of health and human service programs in the region. By promoting education, income and health, United Way creates opportunities for people to live stable, healthy and independent lives.
Lyn: This is a voice from your youth. How are you? Remember the work we did together at Quaker? Quaker University? I lost touch with you after you went to Ogilvy. I went on to become president of Faith Popcorn’s organization for a bunch of years before I a) adopted my daughter and b) went back out on my own, this time doing issues of business strategy for the Krafts, Hershey’s and Wyeth’s of the world. I have a friend who is looking for a (small) p.r. firm in the Chicago burbs and I started thinking about who I know in Chicago and poof! I decided to track you down. I’ve written two books (Shopportunity! and Passion Brands). Write, call, email when you have a chance.
Kate Newlin
212-227-0220