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Anna Eleanor Roosevelt |
SPRINGFIELD – Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, vice president of Global Corporate Citizenship for The Boeing Company, Chicago, will be the speaker at the University of Illinois at Springfield's 36th commencement ceremony, which will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 12, at the Prairie Capital Convention Center in downtown Springfield.
Ms. Roosevelt is currently enterprise-wide leader of Boeing's global corporate citizenship activities, providing philosophical and strategic direction to a network of U.S. and international community investors.
Before joining Boeing, she served as executive director of the Brain Research Foundation, an affiliate of The University of Chicago. From 1996 through 1998 she was director of the Mayor's Office of Program Development for the City of Chicago.
In 1987, after a stint as the first director of the Center for Scandinavian Studies at North Park College, Roosevelt refocused her efforts to pursue a lifelong interest in politics, first working for the Democratic National Committee. She managed Sen. Paul Simon's Chicago office in 1989 and his re-election campaign in 1990 and the following year was a consultant for Richard M. Daley's mayoral campaign. In 1991, she became the first executive director of Museums in the Park, an organization representing the political interests of the nine museums located on Chicago Park District land.
She is the daughter of the late James Roosevelt, eldest son of President Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, and has been a Chicago resident since 1983 when she moved to the city as a freelance collection consultant following eight years teaching museum studies at Western Kentucky University.
Ms. Roosevelt is a graduate of Stanford University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in art and art history, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she received a master's degree in library science.
Those who can not attend in person can watch Roosevelt's address via a live webcast of the UIS commencement ceremonies at www.uis.edu/technology/uislive.html.
