ACTIVISM (CHILDHOOD-2009)
An Illinois native, Christine Kelly was born in the City of Evanston, and raised in the North Shore of Chicago, including the Northbrook and Riverwoods.
Kelly spent much of her childhood with her paternal grandparents, including winters in Florida, primarily in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea. Her grandfather, R. Emmett Kelly, was the Vice-President of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America and secretary-treasurer of Union Local 546.
Emmett, a graduate of University of Notre Dame, followed in the footsteps of his father Michael Kelly, who was a founding charter member of Union Local 546. Her grandmother, Mary Pantages Kelly, was a housewife who dabbled in interior design and architecture after attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
It was in Riverwoods that Kelly began her charitable initiatives. Growing up on two golf courses, Kelly often collected wayward golf balls in the backyard. Setting up a lost ball stand at the edge of her property line, she then sold the balls back to the amused golfers at 100% profit. Kelly donated a percentage of her earnings to Arts & Riverwoods, a yearly cultural festival which showcased local artists and artisans, and featured sculptures, ceramics, and paintings.
Arts & Riverwoods was sponsored by local businesses, and events were hosted in private residences to promote the town's unique mid-century prairie modernist architecture, sprawling woodlands, environmental conservation efforts at Edward Ryerson Woods, and tight-knit community focus on small-businesses and local artists. Money raised by Arts & Riverwoods went to pave bike paths in busy areas of Riverwoods. Kelly volunteered at Orphans of the Storm Animal Shelter on weekends,
In her youth, Kelly also organized and performed a first-of-its-kind puppet show series for children at the Deerfield Public Library, featuring the stories of Rumpelstiltskin. Kelly worked alongside her mother at organizations like Infant Welfare Society of Chicago, a community health center providing underprivileged youth with health care, dental care, optometry services, and mental health services. As part of its Riverwoods Auxiliary, Kelly also collected donations for its heavily-subsidized clothing and thrift shop, which was aimed at servicing low-income families, including women heading back into the workplace.
Kelly and her mother were members of the Ravinia Festival Associates Auxiliary Board, as well as active sweat equity supporters of Ravinia Festival’s Women's Board, Ravinia’s Development Department, and former executive director Edward Gordon. The board raises funds for scholarships at Steans Institute for Young Artists, as well as the REACH*TEACH*PLAY® education programs in Chicago-area schools. Kelly also sold Ravinia Dollars and Noteworthy cookbooks to support the festival’s initiatives, volunteered in the Ravinia Festival gift shop, and raised yearly funds for YEA! Highland Park, which focused on youth, arts, and education.
Kelly was a youth leader of Holy Cross Parish's CCD program. Kelly volunteered at local soup kitchens, several nursing homes, and was a member of the Friends of Saint Malachy’s program, spending quality time with Saint Malachy students. She was part of Lincolnshire Police Department's Youth Peer Jury Program, and was at volunteer with the Arts & Riverwoods Festival. Kelly was also a leader of Holy Cross School’s Girl Scout and Brownie Troops.
In college, Kelly worked on service projects with the St. Lawrence Catholic Center, aided friends in the organization of a Relay for Life event for the American Cancer Society, and oversaw high-risk youth while completing community service at the Lawrence Humane Society. She was also an active volunteer with Habitat For Humanity. Kelly served as a platform consultant for Miss Kansas 2005 Adrienne Rosel, an author and public speaker. In this capacity, Kelly worked on Rosel’s Miss Wichita, Miss Kansas, and Miss America campaign strategies, as well as attended the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas.
Returning to Chicago, Kelly was a member of American Liver Foundation's Junior Board, as well as an associate with Junior League of Chicago.
ACTIVISM (2009-2012)
Upon relocating to New York in 2009, Kelly is most notable for her work in the SoHo-NoLIta neighborhoods. Kelly, with assistance from a next-door-neighbor, successfully rallied the community to evict an illegal hotel company from operating a business within their apartment building. The illegal hotel rooms presented major safety and quality-of-life concerns to residents of the building (especially to female and transgender occupants), as well as safety concerns to tourists staying in these illegal hotels.
Kelly first discovered that an illegal hotel was operating rooms in her building after a tourist’s paperwork with the company’s name on it as the tourist opened an apartment door. Upon discussing the situation with her neighbor, the two attempted to reason with the illegal hotel company and its legal counsel, to no avail.
Undeterred, Kelly and her neighbor then used a strategic grassroots approach, which included leading door-to-door conversations with every building resident, encouraging every resident to deposit future rent checks in escrow, suggesting residents call 311 to report the situation, flyering the neighborhood to alert the community, sending out media releases to real estate press outlets and blogs, and completing direct negotiations with the landlord and illegal hotel company.
As a result, the duo managed to force the company out of the neighborhood completely in a few weeks. This success led Kelly and her neighbor to form the SoHo-NoLIta Neighborhood Committee, alongside resident activists. SoHo-NoLIta's concerned citizens went on to tackle zoning, civic, and safety issues facing the neighborhood.
Meetings were held at the Parish House of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Mulberry Street. Shortly thereafter, Kelly testified against the illegal hotel chain in a civil lawsuit filed in the State of New York's Supreme Court by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office of Special Enforcement, resulting in a fine of $1 million dollars (converted into a restitution fund for tourists), and a change of New York housing laws to eliminate a leasing loophole which allowed these illegal hotels to operate. She also provided quotes to key media outlets on behalf of Mayor Bloomberg's Office of Special Enforcement.
In response to the illegal hotel project, Kelly’s landlords retaliated by cutting off heat in her apartment in an attempt to force her to move out, which would let the building gain control of her rent-controlled apartment. Kelly, upon realization, promptly reported to the New York City Housing Department.
During this reporting process, Kelly and staff realized Kelly’s building was illegally charging rent-subsidized/controlled residents increased rates based upon illegally changing the apartment numbers of the building in order to collect a building restoration tax break from the city. This realization came due to Kelly remembering her apartment was labeled as apartment number 9 on utility bill paperwork, despite reading 2F on the door. The city handled accordingly, as Kelly was first learning just then her apartment was rent-controlled in the first place. Only in New York!
ACTIVISM (2012-2016)
On April 14/15, 2012, Kelly was physically, verbally, and sexually assaulted by a University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine student named Justin Hellman. At the time, she twice reported Hellman and the assault to OkCupid* ,the platform on which the two met. She also attempted to report the assaults to the Chicago Police Department, but as she was out-of-state at the time she inquired, she was unable to do so. Jurisdiction lines require in-person reporting by the victim of any assaults to the precinct which governs where the assault took place. Kelly also had a rape kit and STD tests done shortly thereafter, paying out-of-pocket for the services.
At the urging of friends who noticed symptoms of Complex-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder due to the assaults and were concerned, Kelly went on to inquire about reporting what happened to the University of Chicago’s Associate Dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine, Dr. James Woodruff, on April 14, 2014. Kelly reached out to Woodruff/University of Chicago to inquire about reporting the assaults to the school after seeing press mentions, during Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month in April, of former President Barack Obama’s multi-faceted campaign to end campus rape, which was spearheaded by former Vice President Joe Biden. Sexual assault reform, and protecting survivors, were key parts of Obama’s Department of Education platform during his time in office.
After a string of questionable communications with the school, Kelly decided to bring on an attorney. These communications included inappropriate demands by Woodruff that Kelly immediately come on campus, clear disrespect of Kelly’s boundaries and desire to create a written statement to launch the sexual assault investigation, and completely ignoring her use of the words “NO” and “STOP” to Woodruff, as well as several incidents in which a female support staff at the school was consistently removed from communications by Woodruff without explanation any time Kelly included the support staff on the emails.
After extensive research, Kelly went on to retain Christine Evans, then senior legal director at the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE) and Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law Professor, for legal representation with her sexual assault investigation. After submitting a written statement to the University of Chicago in order to officially launch an investigation, Kelly had an in-person deposition with Evans, Woodruff, and Theodore Stamatakos, senior associate general legal counsel at University of Chicago who also handles sexual assault matters.
Eventually Kelly was forced to pull out of the sexual assault investigation with the University of Chicago, due to retraumitazation with how the investigation was being handled, the schools refusal to handle her investigation according to TitleIX guidelines, and its refusal to properly train staff to handle both trauma and sexual assault investigations.
This decision came from Stamatakos’ position that Kelly was not covered under TitleIX, given her “undocumented” status with the school as a non-student. The final decision to pull out out of the investigation came after Kelly and Evans requested that a new sexual assault investigation be launched under TitleIX guidelines using the new sexual assault investigation policies and procedures that University of Chicago created, which came after Kelly had interacted with Woodruff but before she submitted her written statement with her attorney to officially launch a sexual assault investigation.
During this window of time, when the University of Chicago’s policies and procedures for handling sexual assault were being updated, from May 2014 to late July 2014, the school inexplicably dodged emails and calls from Evans and Kelly requesting that a sexual assault investigation into Hellman be officially launched. The school finally responded after Kelly and Evans submitted her written statement about the sexual assault, which was followed by a deposition at CAASE in which rape shield laws and “Dear Colleague” guidelines were broken.
Before pulling out of the investigation, Kelly also requested that a trauma-informed TitleIX guidelines coordinator be looped in to all communications with the investigation. Woodruff and Stamatakos denied her requests, agreed to seal her file from her rapist and internally, closed the case without hearing additional key facts and seeing new evidence, denied her right for an appeal to the decision, and suggested she go to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) with any complaints Kelly and Evans, who had already quietly met in-person with the Office for Civil Rights’ attorneys and staff at this point, went on to file a complaint with the OCR against University of Chicago under TitleIX, citing discrimination on the basis of sex.
Kelly became the first ever non-student to file a complaint of this nature, putting the subject of jurisdiction of TitleIX into question. In February 2015, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights ruled in Kelly’s favor, resulting in Kelly and Evans setting a major equality benchmark under Title IX. The decision expanded the scope of Title IX to protect ALL people seeking equal access to education, not just students, faculty, or administrators.
In 2017, Kelly was forced to pull out of her OCR TitleIX case, withdrawing both her individual and pooled complaints due to unlawful and relentless retaliation by the University of Chicago and its partners for reporting her sexual assault and filing with the OCR. The city, state, and federal government has handled accordingly.
Despite the difficulties that came with the situation, Kelly is eternally grateful to the countless individuals who stepped up to help her, as well as the many organizations that provided pro-bono or reduced-rate services
Kelly’s team included Kaethe Morris Hoffer (executive director), Christine Evans (senior legal director), Rachel Johnson (senior staff attorney), and Sheerine Alemzadeh (senior staff attorney) of the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE), Ru (group therapy counselor) and the entire staff at Resilience (formerly Rape Victim Advocates), Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN), Dr. Madeline F. Neems (MD), Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo (psychologist), Dr. Katheryn Schoenbrod (psychiatrist), staff at Jewish Child & Family Services of Chicago, Melinda Roth (nurse practitioner) and Supriya Mohan at The Josselyn Center, the entire staff at To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA), Anne K. Ream and R. Clifton Spargo of The Voices And Faces Project’s “The Stories We Tell” trauma testimonial writing workshop, Mike Theriault of The Brave Way Self-Defense Training, the staff at the Deerfield Public Library for providing private conference rooms, the staff at Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods Market, Heinen’s and Cafe de Oro for providing safe spaces to work on the TitleIX filing and follow-up, the staff at Brushwood Center at Edward L Ryerson Woods Conservation Center and Chicago Botanic Garden for providing nature therapy/ecotherapy, Teny Gross (executive director) of Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, Reverend Dr. Thomas Dickelman (founder and minister), and the entire congregation at The Community Church of Lake Forest & Lake Bluff.
*after years and years of being on the receiving end of retaliation, while justifying it as “she wasn’t going to have kids anyway” and “by the time she realizes it, it will be too late” or attempts to try justifying rape and calling it resistance, and preventing her and others from testing to OCR, celebrating their Title IX win, and lying to try to control the narrative bc her documentary was not “lucrative” to him and his boss, while bragging he was going to bs his way to fame and exploiting her
ACTIVISM (2016-PRESENT)
In addition to this achievement, Kelly has lobbied for systematic changes to be made to the discrimination, bias, and harassment training policies at an upscale department store in Chicago, after experiencing discrimination, bias, and harassment herself in its store in 2016. Kelly also lobbied the Village of Deerfield, City of Highland Park, and Illinois State representatives to clean up construction sites in order for residents to avoid undue harm to vehicles using the major roadways in each town.
Kelly also volunteered at 2017 Net Gain, a fundraiser to support the Orr Academy High School (CPS) basketball program. The event included a game between Orr and Lake Forest High School, followed by a community barbecue. The day served to positively impact young men and women from each community. Partially put on by Kelly's church, The Community Church of Lake Forest & Lake Bluff, as well as The Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, it raised over $33,000 for new sports equipment for Orr Academy.
Most recently, Kelly discovered and reported an anti-LGBTQ+ hate crime in the form of graffiti located in Riverwood's Woodland Environmental Learning Center. Kelly lobbied local officials for a renewed community focus on transparency about the hate crime itself, as well as increased community education on how to speak with children about hate speech. Kelly then teamed up with Molly, Bob, and Caroline Pinta to support The Pinta Pride Project, an organization focused on increasing LGBT+ awareness within suburban communities.
Kelly also aids in supporting her town's environmental preservation and educational efforts, including partnering with the Riverwoods Preservation Council to improve and upkeep the Woodlands Environmental Learning Center.
And she’s just getting started…