Vice President of Development

Kristina Lederer

Over the last fifteen years, Kristina Lederer has served in leadership roles to help create impactful organizational growth for domestic and international nonprofits. Most recently, Kristina served as the Director of Development of Kakenya’s Dream, a nonprofit organization that empowers girls from severely underserved communities in rural Kenya through educational, health, and leadership initiatives and combats harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation and early marriage. In her role, she developed and implemented the organization’s annual fundraising strategy, established a donor giving program and corresponding donor stewardship plan to maintain a strong retention rate year-after-year, and managed a pipeline of institutional funders and prospects to increase organizational sustainability.

Prior to Kakenya’s Dream, she served as the Executive Director of WildlifeDirect and the Director of Development of Advancing Girls’ Education in Africa. Having begun her career as a middle school teacher, Kristina transitioned to nonprofit development at the National Kidney Foundation, eventually living in Uganda to focus on fundraising and program development to improve children’s access to education. Kristina currently serves as a Board Member for 200 Orphanages Worldwide and has consulted with domestic nonprofits across a range of missions.

Kristina is excited to draw from her own experience as an adoptee to build upon The Cradle’s impressive foundation and help deepen the impact in the community. Originally from Maryland, Kristina moved to Chicago in 2019 where she enjoys volunteering with Urban Rivers, urban hikes with her dog, and sharing her passion for travel and the outdoors with her husband and 8-month-old son.

 

 

The meeting was chaired by Rich Lalley, with Amy leading the group in the Pledge of Allegiance.  Other announcements by Rich were that the one day District Conference meeting is coming up on October 5.   Our regular lunch meeting at WCH on November 7 will be move to Rotary International HQ in Evanston. Rich also reported that Moha wants to have our Club’s committee chairs have their finished reports to him by the October 17^th Board meeting. 

 

   Rich reminded us to buy tickets for the October 11^th Operation Warm evening benefit at the ValleyLoClub in Glenview from 6:00 to 11:30 PM with buffet dinner, cash bar, auction/raffle and dancing to the Gerald McClendon Band. Tickets are $100 each and this is the 6^th annual benefit supporting new winter coats for needy Chicago area kids.  Rich also reported that there will be two more Chicago library events for needy youth in October with more details to follow. 

 

   Liz gave us two “thoughts for the day”—Oscar Wilde once said “the smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention” and Mark Twain stated “kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not”.  Liz also shared with us her birthday celebration which included passing out milk chocolate candies to those attending and her generous donation to the Operation Warm project.  

 

   Rich then mentioned that our records show that Tony has been a Club member for 45 years, Fred for 12 year, and Heidi also for 12 years—so add them all together and you get 99, so Rich added another dollar to the sum and gave an even $100 in honor of these 3 long term and loyal Club members.  Other Happy Bucks were given by Barb for her son seriously considering taking the marriage step; and by Tony who attended a reunion of his old college football team with lots of old stories (some actually fairly close to the truth) but with no one getting hurt during the event!  Patti added a little humor to the meeting with her question about why the financial expert got fired—“he kept losing interest”!! 

 

   SPEAKER WAS RICHARD KOENIG, PHD, FAICP, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF Housing Opportunity Development Corporation.  Richard has been working on the production of affordable housing in our North Shore communities for the last 27 years.  Most of the regular  residents in these communities are not aware of all the work and progress being made over this time in supplying housing for needy people who are mostly low income families who cannot afford to rent or buy the type of housing that most of us enjoy.  Other information presented by Richard was the following: Most of these units are in the suburbs and currently involve about 30 projects in 18 communities; units are now in Wilmette, Arlington Heights and Northbrook; 90% of the units are rental and not for sale and there is usually 40 to 60 units in a building; average  annual income for these residents is less than 40 to 50 thousand dollars and there are some homeless people qualifying to live in these buildings; these buildings cost about $500,000 to build; there is an effort to get teachers closer to their students and workers closer to their employers; and the financing of the building and operation of these buildings is very complicated with several government tax credit programs involved. 

   The very informative 15 page power point used by Richard in his presentation is available upon request to Rich, David or Patti. 

   After a short question and answer period, the meeting was adjourned around 1:15 with the recitation of Rotary’s 4-way test.