Heralded by her peers as a “natural change agent,” Sally Blount has made her mark not only in the corporate world but in the field of academia—she served as dean at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management for eight years. Her ability to pivot, helping organizations do more and better, has also served as a catalyst for her own faith journey, leading her to take on a new role as Executive Director and CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2020.
Ms. Blount is the first layperson to lead Catholic Charities, which began more than a century ago amidst a global flu pandemic. Today she is leading this institution out of another pandemic, challenged by soaring budgets, poverty, and social justice issues that seem to change daily.
We hope you can join us on January 6th as Sally Blount discusses the challenges that lie ahead for Catholic Charities in 2023 and how the complexities of her own faith journey and career accomplishments have intertwined to bring her to this next chapter in her life.
In addition to Catholic Charities, Sally Blount holds the Michael L. Nemmers chair in Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she is a proud alumna and served as dean from 2010-2018.
Blount is an expert on organizational transformation and leadership. A record-setting fundraiser, organizational change agent, and highly sought-after speaker — she has been regularly featured in top news outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Forbes, The Economist, Businessweek, Fortune, and MSNBC. She has been a featured speaker at WEF Davos and the Vatican.
Blount sits on numerous boards including the advisory board for the Aspen Institute Business and Society program and the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Finance Council. She also served as dean at NYU Stern College of Business for six years and on faculty at NYU and the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago for nearly two decades. She holds MS and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern University and a B.S.E. from Princeton University. Blount began her career at the Boston Consulting Group.
Long before he became a priest, Chicago’s Father John Kartje was a scientist, getting a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Chicago. What’s the one constant between these two vocations? “Both the scientist and the person of faith are always engaging with mystery,” he says.
Kartje describes Advent as that pregnant pause in each year when we once more engage the mystery, bringing along our new hopes and anxieties, seeing the story through fresh eyes whether we’re 30 or 70.
Currently the rector/president of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, Fr. John Kartje takes issue with the supposed disconnect between faith and science. The way science looks at the world should absolutely inform the way people of faith do so, he says. That’s why the Vatican convenes groups of scientists, of any faith or of none, to report on conditions such as climate change. Good scientists, he says, can help people of faith to stay honest.
As depression rates increase dramatically, especially among teens and young adults, learn why it's important for everyone to understand what's happening.
What young people face today looks nothing like what most of us experienced during adolescence, says Dr. John Duffy. The combined pressure of ever-present drama on social media, isolation due to covid, unreasonable expectations of perfection, and worries about climate change and war create a difficult challenge. We can't simply hand this concern off to parents and grandparents, says Dr. Duffy. The problem involves the whole community, and the solutions lie with all of us as well.
A nationally recognized parenting and relationship expert, Dr. John Duffy has worked in his clinical practice with individuals, couples, teens, and families for nearly 25 years. He is the author of the # 1 best-sellers Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety: A Complete Guide to Your Child's Stressed, Depressed, Expanded, Amazing Adolescence (2019) and The Available Parent (2014). Dr. Duffy has been a parenting and relationship expert on hundreds of national television programs, including CNN, Today, various NewsNation shows and Steve Harvey. He is part of the CNN Wellness team, and appears often on WGN and WLS radio as well as on other television, radio, and print outlets, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, NPR and the Wall Street Journal.