Chuhak & Tecson’s award-winning event partners with the quest of teaching empathy

On the evening of Oct. 25, the women attorneys of Chuhak and Tecson, P.C., along with over 130 women business leaders and entrepreneurs, gathered at Rivers Restaurant in Chicago in support of Lauren Schrero and The Nora Project, an organization that designed an elementary school curriculum to teach empathy by sparking friendships between typically developing students and children with disabilities, as part of this year’s Women Helping Women (WHW) Mix-and-Mingle. 

Hosted by the women attorneys of Chuhak & Tecson, WHW is an after-hours networking group that offers professional women the opportunity to build their businesses and also supports a charitable organization. While enjoying wine, specialty cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, each Mix-and-Mingle highlights a different nonprofit agency serving women or women and their children in the Chicagoland area. WHW is also a winner of the 2017 IDEA (Innovation, Development, Engagement and Advancement) Award sponsored by the Association of Legal Administrators.

This particular night also demonstrated that Schrero was more than the president of an organization with a successful elementary school curriculum – she also happens to be the mother of Nora Levy, a child with epilepsy and developmental delays and the organization’s namesake.

“On the day I brought my daughter Nora to a trial day at a therapeutic preschool near my house, it was immediately obvious that there were no students quite like her in the class,” Schrero recalls. “I asked myself if it was really necessary to put her in an environment where she would be so different from her peers, and I thought: ‘YES.’”

Then came the women attorneys of Chuhak & Tecson. Kim Boike, a Chuhak & Tecson principal, met Schrero from The Nora Project and suggested partnering with the organization for this year’s event. To support Schrero’s mission of fostering inclusivity in elementary schools, Chuhak & Tecson women attorneys along with women business leaders and entrepreneurs came with gifts in hand to the event – refurbished IPads, school supplies, monetary donations and more totaling over $6,500 – for children participating in The Nora Project.

The event included remarks by Schrero and Kerry Ryan Lynch, the mother of a participant in the program. After Schrero’s heartfelt speech concerning her daughter and The Nora Project, Lynch spoke about how The Nora Project is a perfect complement to her tireless work spreading the message of inclusion by encouraging students to “Choose Kind.” She was recently quoted in an article about an upcoming movie that promotes the same message.

This particular Mix-and-Mingle was one of the most successful WHW events to date with 23 refurbished IPads collected, enough to outfit almost three classrooms of students and their Nora Friends so that they can work to better connect and understand each other. And the donations keep rolling in.

Prior to the event, Chuhak & Tecson hosted a Jeans & Jersey Day where Chuhak & Tecson attorneys and staff had the opportunity to wear jeans and jerseys in exchange for a donation that went toward The Nora Project. Between that and online donations made through the event’s website, over $2,800 was collected.

Providing the tools needed for The Nora Project to achieve its two fundamental goals – to teach students to see the world through another’s eyes and to create opportunities for social inclusion of children with complex medical needs and disabilities – is just one of many reasons why Chuhak & Tecson is proud to support The Nora Project.

If you would like information on Chuhak & Tecson’s Women Helping Women program, contact Jane La Grassa at jlagrassa@chuhak.com.