We are honored to have Chancellor Sylvia Manning provide opening remarks on women's leadership at UIC. As chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Sylvia Manning heads the Chicago area's largest university, with 25,000 students, and one of the nation's leading academic research enterprises. Under her leadership, UIC has sustained the upward trajectory that has made it one of the nation's most dynamic metropolitan university campuses. Chancellor Manning will discuss her own experience with leadership and the state of women's leadership here at UIC today.

Prior to becoming chancellor, Manning served for five years as vice president for academic affairs for the University of Illinois system. Manning received her undergraduate degree with honors from McGill University and earned her Ph.D. in English language and literature from Yale University. A former Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Danforth Teaching Fellow, she has written numerous books and articles on Charles Dickens and other Victorian writers. She has continued to teach and write throughout her administrative career. Manning serves on numerous committees including the Commission on Women in Higher Education of the American Council on Education.

We are fortunate to have the opportunity to showcase the accomplishments of one of our very own alumni, Helen Mitchell, MPA. A policy analyst with UIC's Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, Mitchell shapes public debate on issues affecting the African-American community.

Mitchell will reveal the hardships she faced on her journey from welfare to self-actualization. A face of statistics we are all too familiar with, Mitchell has first-hand knowledge of systemic inequities and disparities affecting women. She shares strategies of survival, as well as lessons she's learned through it all.