Uniting Voices Chicago was honored to welcome four new Directors, each a leader in their field, to our Board of Directors during the 2024-25 season. The Board of Directors provides essential guidance, strategic direction and fiduciary oversight to the organization. Read on to learn more about our additions: Kathleen Gerdes, Cornelia Grumman, Patrick Rynell and Rahul Sekhar.
Kathleen Gerdes
Kathleen Gerdes is a seasoned executive with a passion for building trusted relationships and advancing mission-driven work. As Executive Director and Head of the Client Group at Harris Associates, she leads the firm’s client engagement strategy, overseeing distribution enablement, relationship management, and communications across institutional and intermediary channels.
Kathleen and her family live in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Her son George has been a joyful member of the Uniting Voices family for the past five years—an experience that has deepened her appreciation for the organization’s mission and impact.
Cornelia Grumman
Cornelia Grumman has worked as a non-profit and philanthropic leader specializing in strengthening city, state and federal education and early care and learning systems. As the former Education Director of the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, Grumman spearheaded multiple efforts to increase kindergarten readiness among Illinois’ nearly 900,000 young children under age 6. At the start of her career, Grumman spent 23 years as a newspaper journalist, covering social justice, criminal justice, state, metropolitan and education issues. From 2000 to 2008, as a member of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board, Grumman’s series of editorials on Illinois' death penalty helped spur sweeping legislative reforms, including electronic taping of police interrogations in homicide cases. That series won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.
She and her husband, journalist Jim Warren, reside in Chicago. Both their sons have been Uniting Voices Chicago participants, and her youngest, Eliot, performs currently with Voice of Chicago.
Patrick Rynell
Patrick spent five years scheduling audits at Ernst & Young before finally finding his place in the world at Leo Burnett. In the 25 years since, he has created advertising for over 100 brands and led such formidable accounts and campaigns as Samsung, PGA of America, ComEd, Marlboro, Beef It’s What’s For Dinner, and Chicago Cubs Charities. He was also responsible for dyeing the Chicago River blue on November 4, 2016, in celebration of the Cubs’ World Series win. In his free time, food is his favorite form of folly.
Through Patrick Rynell's advocacy, Uniting Voices Chicago and Leo Burnett collaborated on the Get Amp'd campaign, promoting registration for our after-school programs across the city.
Rahul Sekhar
Rahul Sekhar is an Executive Vice President with economic consulting firm Compass Lexecon in Chicago. At Compass Lexecon, Rahul consults on economic issues arising in corporate litigation, focusing on issues relating to valuation (including appraisal), mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy-related issues, damages, corporate finance, executive compensation, duties of corporate boards and directors, and general corporate governance.
Rahul’s involvement with Uniting Voices Chicago (formerly Chicago Children's Choir) began in the 1980s through his brother, who participated in the Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir, and continued with his two adult children, Nikita (Class of 2020) and Kira (Class of 2022), who both participated in the Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir, as well as Voice of Chicago. Rahul lives in Lincoln Park with his wife Lauren Johnson and their son, Everett.