Board Of Directors
Laura Hermann, President
Ms. Herman is a trained journalist and experienced organizer with special expertise in grassroots communications and strategic planning for educational and nonprofit organizations. She is a director at the Potomac Communications Group in Washington, DC, where she manages the firm’s critical infrastructure and technology clients. To meet the distinct challenges facing large institutions, Ms. Hermann conducts focus groups and asset assessments among key stakeholders in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors, and works with her team to integrate primary and secondary research into the rationale for broad public education campaigns.
Previously, Laura managed member development for the American Nuclear Society, where she helped implement the association’s brand strategy throughout 54 local chapters. She served before that as senior education manager for the American Red Cross of Greater Chicago, where she developed disaster preparedness curricula and worked with city and state agencies on planning efforts that included emergency and risk communication for natural disasters, industrial accidents, and terrorist attacks. As a disaster specialist at the Red Cross, she provided disaster assessment and public affairs support on response operations and collaborated with Chicago’s international communities to enlist translators to coordinate non-English speaking audiences.
Her awareness of grassroots organizing grew out of her experiences as the Northwest Regional Director for the Association for Safe Highways and as staff organizer on fair housing and community policing campaigns in Chicago. Ms. Hermann holds a master of science in communication from Northwestern University. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa at Loyola University at Chicago where she received her bachelor of arts, magna cum laude. Ms. Hermann is a member of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, Women in Media & News, and a contributing producer for WLUW-FM in Illinois.
Joseph Lipari, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer
Mr. Lipari is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois – Chicago, where his dissertation, ‘Policing the Color Line,’ examines the relationship between African Americans and the police in Chicago from World War II through the 1980s. Mr. Lipari teaches African American history at the University of Illinois and at Harold Washington College, and has also taught a world history course on Slavery and the Atlantic World System at the University of Illinois.
He received his B.A. in Anthropology from Louisiana State University in 2000 and his M.A. from the University of Illinois in 2004. He has had three articles published in The Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, edited by Eric Arnesen and published by Routledge Press in 2007. He has also served as a researcher and expert witness for a prominent Chicago law firm handling cases of police abuse dating back to the 1950s. A native of south Louisiana, Lipari hopes to return to the New Orleans area to teach and publish on the relationship between African Americans and the police in New Orleans.
Joseph Pellis, Director
Mr. Pellis is the founding and managing partner of the Chicago office of Leech Tishman. He is Chair of the firm’s Environmental, Safety & Toxic Torts and Insurance Coverage & Corporate Risk Mitigation Practice Groups and a member of the Construction Practice Group. Joe’s diverse practice spans the firm’s Corporate, Construction, Environmental, Energy, Litigation and Real Estate Practice Groups. He has extensive experience handling policyholder based coverage disputes and litigation, assisting corporations in the management of corporate legacy liabilities, particularly environmental, and counseling clients on various risk management related issues. In addition to his experience, Joe’s approach and demeanor are unique. So much so, that he often receives referrals from opposing counsel who recognize that the wisdom and value Joe brings to his clients is a rarity in today’s complex business environment.
Joe has substantial experience interacting with the insurance industry, where he is skilled in negotiating and drafting contract and insurance language to help clients mitigate risk. For a number of clients, he is a resource for the in-house legal, risk management, and financial teams to utilize in their ongoing efforts to create a robust risk management program. By employing his knowledge of the traditional and non-traditional insurance marketplace and evaluating current contracts and coverage for potential gaps, Joe provides clients with the opportunity to cede or limit liability before a loss manifests. His insurance knowledge has also led to a unique perspective in counseling clients regarding risk transfer. He evaluates policies for weak language and gaps in coverage, and identifies areas missed in the existing risk transfer program. Joe also brings an outsider’s view to his analysis of an entity’s risk transfer program to ensure that the programs in place are adequately matched to the business risks assumed by the client, before the need arises to pursue coverage. This global approach has proved to maximize the value of the client’s dollars spent on a risk transfer program and greatly enhances the chances that when a loss occurs, the program will minimize the negative financial impact of losses and more effectively transfer the risk. Where necessary or appropriate, Joe has experience with the development of alternative risk transfer mechanisms and utilizing the non-traditional insurance marketplace that can offer an economical substitute to traditional insurance products.
Elce Redmond, Director
Elce Redmond is a community organizer and trainer. For the past twenty-five years he has been working with community groups throughout Chicago, in the nation, and around the world on issues such as the living wage, displacement of public housing residents, an end to the War in Iraq, equal access & disability rights, healthcare, human rights, and more.
Internationally, Elce has conducted leadership development and political education projects in Ireland, Argentina, and East Timor, organized against child slave labor in Cote D’Ivoire, and advocated for Palestinian rights in Israel/Palestine. He also led an election-monitoring program in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and conducted trainings on sexual violence on behalf of the Roma population in Budapest, Hungary. In 2005, he traveled to Baghdad with the Christian Peacemaker Team to advocate and organize on behalf of detainees in Iraq.
Currently Mr. Redmond is on the Executive Committee of Chicago Jobs with Justice and is the Organizing Director for the South Austin Coalition. He is working on a campaign to spark banking reform, and organizing efforts to pressure the US government to adopt a national jobs program. He also organizes the unemployed and mobilizes low-income people to fight to maintain and improve social safety net programs.
Barry Weisberg, Director
Mr. Weisberg is an American social scientist, human rights activist, and Executive Director of the Violence Prevention Peace Promotion Strategy (VPPPS), an international NGO based in Chicago that is undertaking pioneering work on strategies to break the intergenerational transmission of family, school,
community and urban violence, poverty and inequality, with a special focus on children and youth. He has served as a consultant to the United Nations Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice Division, including as an invited expert to the 9th, 10th and 11th Crime Congresses. He has also served as a consultant to UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the American Bar Association, the American Criminal Justice Commission and a variety of other international, national and local organizations, and has made presentations to a wide range of scholarly conferences. He has visited over half the countries of the world and lectured, provided interviews and been published in dozens of countries, where his work has included many PowerPoint presentations for children, students of all ages and adults.
He is currently enrolled as a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and other local work in Chicago includes teaching a social science seminar on Global Violence at Roosevelt University. Mr. Weisberg is the author of Ecocide in Indochina: The Ecology of War (1970); Beyond Repair: The Ecology of Capitalism (1971); The Shell Strike 1973, Workers Strike for Health and Safety (1973); and The Fascist Menace in the United States (1981). His work Urban Security in the Global Age is scheduled to be published shortly. His research focuses on the character, causes and cures for global violence; urban safety, security and sustainability in the mega cities of the developing world; urban security in Shanghai; peace building in families, schools and communities; and the life and painting of Jesse Reichek.
